Politics 🗳️ NZ Politics

[marv.]

The policy would have been further funded had labour retained power.
Sure, there are probably lots of kids that don't need it. But there are 1000s and 1000s of kids that do. Principles and teachers have said the policy has been helping.
The rest of your rant is weird. On the one had free lunches are good, but also kids are buying junk food and we should be responsible for ourselves. Lol.

i agree it would have been continued but it wasn’t.
all those whinging and implying that seymour was cancelling something that was in place forever when they knew it wasn’t was bullshit.

i do think all kids should be entitled to free lunches.
i don’t think kids who have enough money to shovel that kind of rubbish into themselves before and after school NEED free lunches. the same way i don’t think people who spend their pay on pokies NEED the government to pay their rent.

i do think we need to learn/be taught to look after ourselves and not be reliant on governments who never have and never will give us everything we need.

i would absolutely LOVE to see all children fed, healthy, clothed, learning and thriving. but relying on the state to make that happen is an impossibility.
and we’re seemingly unable to do it ourselves. shit, we struggle not to neglect, make obese or beat our children to death, how are going to help them to thrive?

our biggest issue is ourselves.

 

[miket12]

I also like the fact that a number of schools have a close relationship with foodbanks in their area and ensure that food not used for the school program is provided to foodbanks.

As much as I dislike a lot of what Destiny Church does (more the leadership than the actual members) but they go and collect food from schools and then go down to the likes of Bruce Pullman Park to feed people in cars. A lot also goes through to the Auckland City Mission.

 

[Rizzah]

View: https://youtu.be/6zXDo4dL7SU?si=le27hsB7n_CH5OTy

I do get carried away sometime, apologies marv. - this was probably a bit far for a laugh!

 

[marv.]

I do get carried away sometime, apologies marv. - this was probably a bit far for a laugh!

no way it was a good one! i literally did laugh out loud.
haha

 

[MaybeTop8]

So it turns out Labour wasn't so bad with the economic management after all.

This lot are appalling. The economic vandalism continues, the regressive policies will set us back decades

 

[MaybeTop8]

Meanwhile Shane Jones is OWNED by the fishing industry, and here's a bit more info on the corruption and bribery from the smoking lobby

Minister left $46b benefit of smokefree reforms out of Cabinet paper

Without the smokefree reforms passed in 2022, New Zealand would only reach its goal of a five percent smoking rate in 2061, officials told Casey Costello

newsroom.co.nz

 

[miket12]

Warner Brothers Discovery, owners of TV3, have called a meeting with NewsHub staff for 10.30 this morning. It looks as if Stuff will be producing a nightly news bulletin for TV 3 using a lot of old NewsHub staff and sell the bulletin to WBD to be broadcast between 6-7pm with one Newsreader. Part of the deal will mean Stuff will have access to all old NewsHub video content.

There’s also speculation of some sort of merger to be about to produce news content between One News (TVNZ) and RNZ.

 

[miket12]

Interesting that we are continuously told that how the current government that wants to sell of everything and we all saw how the previous Labour government was continuously patting itself on the back about the increases in the government housing stock in their time in government..... now it's being released that, in order to try and recover money from the previous government's blank cheque housing policy, Labour had instructed Kainga Ora to sell 10,000 or 15% of the state houses.

Not a good look for Hipkins, Woods or Labour in general!!!!!

 

[Rizzah]

Could you post the article, it's paywalled (where democracy dies).

 

[dean]

Interesting that we are continuously told that how the current government that wants to sell of everything and we all saw how the previous Labour government was continuously patting itself on the back about the increases in the government housing stock in their time in government..... now it's being released that, in order to try and recover money from the previous government's blank cheque housing policy, Labour had instructed Kainga Ora to sell 10,000 or 15% of the state houses.

Not a good look for Hipkins, Woods or Labour in general!!!!!

Utterly corrupt, that last regime.

 

[Rizzah]

Interesting that we are continuously told that how the current government that wants to sell of everything and we all saw how the previous Labour government was continuously patting itself on the back about the increases in the government housing stock in their time in government..... now it's being released that, in order to try and recover money from the previous government's blank cheque housing policy, Labour had instructed Kainga Ora to sell 10,000 or 15% of the state houses.

Not a good look for Hipkins, Woods or Labour in general!!!!!

Is this because they deem KO to be spending too much money? KO should have a blank cheque. We desperately need large scale building of housing, incl social housing.
I am constantly frustrated with the short-termism around govt financing we seem to be beholden too. Meeting tiny debt targets, ironically called fiscal responsibility is crippling the country. Both flavours of Govt appear to not understand how Govt debt works, and how to use it to boost the economy.

 

[dean]

Warner Brothers Discovery, owners of TV3, have called a meeting with NewsHub staff for 10.30 this morning. It looks as if Stuff will be producing a nightly news bulletin for TV 3 using a lot of old NewsHub staff and sell the bulletin to WBD to be broadcast between 6-7pm with one Newsreader. Part of the deal will mean Stuff will have access to all old NewsHub video content.

There’s also speculation of some sort of merger to be about to produce news content between One News (TVNZ) and RNZ.

People may watch it because of habit but really the content has to improved and Stuff reporting is not great. One or two good columns only.

 

[dean]

Is this because they deem KO to be spending too much money? KO should have a blank cheque. We desperately need large scale building of housing, incl social housing.
I am constantly frustrated with the short-termism around govt financing we seem to be beholden too. Meeting tiny debt targets, ironically called fiscal responsibility is crippling the country. Both flavours of Govt appear to not understand how Govt debt works, and how to use it to boost the economy.

KO are up to their neck in debt.
Giving them a blank cheque is a dumb idea. They very quickly become the dominant player in the housing market at entry level driving prices up and making it yet more difficult for first home buyers who end up competing with the State.

 

[Rizzah]

KO are up to their neck in debt.
Giving them a blank cheque is a dumb idea. They very quickly become the dominant player in the housing market at entry level driving prices up and making it yet more difficult for first home buyers who end up competing with the State.

What is considered up the their neck in debt for a govt run house builder? Esp considering need.
They should be the dominant player in the social housing market. I call bullshit on them competing with FHB. Speculators would have far more impact on FHB than KO.
More supply of housing will drive rent down.

 

[dean]

What is considered up the their neck in debt for a govt run house builder? Esp considering need.
They should be the dominant player in the social housing market. I call bullshit on them competing with FHB. Speculators would have far more impact on FHB than KO.
More supply of housing will drive rent down.

KO are $12-$13billion in debt but the true figure will be revealed when Bill English gets to the bottom of it.
You can call bullshit on KO competing with FHB as much as you like but it is the reality and something they are very aware of. It is simple to figure out. KO has big budget for housing ( in Auckland that is primarily South and West ), developers come flocking in with proposals. In most cases they don't own the land, they have a conditional agreement with a due diligence period to allow them to cut a deal with KO. The market becomes aware of this, like every agent in town and every wannabe developer. The result is land prices shoot up yet again.

 

[miket12]

What is considered up the their neck in debt for a govt run house builder? Esp considering need.
They should be the dominant player in the social housing market. I call bullshit on them competing with FHB. Speculators would have far more impact on FHB than KO.
More supply of housing will drive rent down.

Part of the escalation in land values in the early 2000's was when developers were competing against KO to purchase land for terraced housing in Auckland.

That's now impacting a number of builders/developers going under now. They paid too much for the land (especially that within the rail corridors), materials costs went through the roof because of supply chain issues and then house values dropped. Builders/developers are now struggling with stock they are selling at a loss.... that can only go on so long until bills aren't paid, loans aren't paid and tax isn't paid.... and someone loses patience and calls in the liquators.

I'll have to see if I can find it but there were reports last year, that without a substantial government bailout, KO will not be able to pay back it's present debts by 2060 something with it current commitments, let alone adding more debt to continue to grow the housing stock and to replace those which are now no longer needed (i.e. no longer the population in certain areas due to internal migration) or are uneconomic to upgrade to healthy homes or just no longer viable.

Here's the Herald article about KO wanting to sell 10,000 (15% of the housing stock) houses.....

Treasury says Kāinga Ora plans to sell 10k homes unreasonable but Kāinga Ora might be right to want to sell​

The Government is shifting its focus to Kāinga Ora, the agency charged with building and managing New Zealand’s state housing stock.

Housing Minister Chris Bishop has accused the agency of being poorly run to the point it was fiscally unsustainable. He appointed former Prime Minister Bill English to review its finances. That review is running slightly late but is meant to be before ministers shortly.

In the meantime, the current Government has lashed at the previous Government for planning to sell more than 10,000 state houses. The attack is a damaging one, given Labour governments tend to pride themselves on building and retaining the stock of public housing. Selling 10,000 homes would be severe - it would be about 15 per cent of the 67,000 homes owned by Kāinga Ora.

The Herald looked into the claim, and found that under Labour, Kāinga Ora did indeed forecast selling many of the houses that it owned, but that Treasury found this assumption to be unreasonable. Further digging into Kāinga Ora’s plans suggest they were not necessarily something National would disagree with as the sales increased the stock of both public and private housing, an idea National was very keen on in opposition.

The claim first popped up in Prime Minister Christopher Luxon’s State of the Nation speech in which he said the new Government had “uncovered a big financial mess at Kāinga Ora”.

Luxon said Treasury had warned that Kāinga Ora’s financial forecasts “relied on the sale of 10,200 homes in the coming years just to balance its books, even while Kāinga Ora’s debt is set to rise to $29 billion”.

The Herald filed an Official Information Act request for the advice behind the claim.

The Government would not release the document containing the advice in full, but it did release two paragraphs of the Treasury advice on which the claim was based.

The briefing appears to be about the agency’s borrowing, which is significant. For a time, Kāinga Ora was allowed to issue its own debt, unlike other parts of the Government which are forced to go via their Minister and Parliament to Treasury. In Opposition, National grew concerned about the level of that borrowing.

“Kainga Ora’s borrowing is driven by investment in the public housing portfolio, which Kāinga Ora’s forecast assumes will be offset by $6 billion in revenue from the sale of 10,200 public homes over the forecast period.

“These sales partially offset the new public houses built, such that Kāinga Ora forecast no change in the size of the public housing portfolio between 2025/26 and 2027/28 (additional are equal to demolitions and sales),” Treasury said.

In other words, yes, Kāinga Ora was forecasting the sale of those houses. However, a fact neglected in both Luxon’s speech and Bishop’s Facebook post, is that the organisation was planning to build new homes to replace them so the net number of houses would not change.

Treasury included another line, saying it “does not consider this to be a reasonable assumption and have identified other assumptions that undermine the efficacy of the forecast modelling; the viability of their forecasting warrants further investigation”.

The Herald asked Treasury to clarify what was unreasonable about this assumption. Treasury said that a rate of about 3000 home sales a year was unreasonable given previous annual sales rates for state houses were “around 100″ and Treasury was “not aware of specific plans to enable such a change”.

That is a fairly searing rebuke of Kāinga Ora’s financial competence from Treasury. This is an organisation that, according to a recent Select Committee hearing on its annual review has $43b in assets and debt of $12b. The fact that Treasury considered the number so unreasonable also invites questions as to whether it was appropriate for the figure to be used as an attack line in a speech.

Staggeringly, Kāinga Ora told the Herald that it was not aware of Treasury’s remarks about its assumptions.

Gareth Stiven, Kāinga Ora general manager strategy, finance and policy, told the Herald they had “have never directly received advice from Treasury that they felt these assumptions were unreasonable, and we have not received a copy of the report from which that comment is drawn”.

Stiven said the sales assumption was based on Kāinga Ora’s 2022 Asset Management Strategy (AMS) which dealt with the fact that it has about 45,000 homes that are near the end of their economic lives and need renewal over the next 10-20 years.

This strategy responds to the problem presented by those 45,000 ageing homes. Kāinga Ora can either extensively renovate them to bring the houses up to scratch, or it can sell some and replace them with other homes. Stiven said that this approach meant New Zealand as a whole would add an extra home to the national stock of housing. This is because while Kāinga Ora was only replacing one home with another, and therefore not increasing the overall number of state houses, the fact that Kainga Ora was selling one of its houses to build another meant that New Zealand as a whole would be left with two houses when before there was one.

Stiven said that as per that 2022 review, Kāinga Ora anticipated renewing about 10,000 homes via a retrofit, and about 15,000 through redevelopment. A full 20,000 were to be replaced with new homes.

“From a financial perspective, replacement means that instead of paying say $300k per home to renovate it, we pay say $700k to build a new one, and as long as we can sell the old one for more than $400k we are in a better financial position, and New Zealand has one more home,” Stiven said.

“The sales were to enable Kāinga Ora to deliver on our renewal strategy, while not decreasing the size of the portfolio. The proceeds from any sales would be reinvested in homes that meet the needs of our customers,” he said.

When presented with the 10,200 sale figure in February, Labour said it had never seen that number, nor had it agreed to a sell-off of that magnitude when in government. It said the problem related to the current Government not agreeing to fund additional housing places through the Income Related Rent Subsidy when the current funding ends in June 2025, according to The Post.

Treasury backs up the first part of this, noting that it hadn’t seen any plans to allow that level of asset disposal, but Kāinga Ora, as an independent agency, has a great deal of latitude to deliver the level of housing places it is asked to deliver however it sees best, including by selling some houses to build others.

The bigger challenge for Kāinga Ora is in 2025, when the programme to increase public housing places ends.

The number of public housing places is effectively capped by the funding for Income Related Rent Subsidy. This is the operational funding that supports a public housing tenant, either a tenant in a Kāinga Ora home, or a home owned by someone else. After funding for new places runs out in 2025, Kāinga Ora will switch its focus to renovating and replenishing existing stock, rather than building new places. If the Government wants to continue adding more public housing places, it will need to increase that funding.

Kāinga Ora chief executive Andrew McKenzie told MPs in March the organisation had budget to grow the portfolio to 2024/25.

“There isn’t budget beyond that to grow our portfolio, so what we’ve been looking at is as we renew our homes, what are the choices we might make - a renovation? Or use the land more intensively and get three for one [three state houses where a single house once stood] and then we’ll have two older homes elsewhere in that suburb that we might choose to sell - the gross side of the portfolio is going to stay the same,” he said.

Unreasonable: Treasury slates Kāinga Ora plans to sell 10,000 homes

ANALYSIS: Plan to sell thousands of homes would actually increase NZ's housing stock.

www.nzherald.co.nz

It's a laugh Labour saying they were not aware of the housing sell off figures..... Treasury's report was based on an Asset Management Report prepared for the Minister in 2022.

 

[BabylonPink]

I've noticed Wiz has been a bit quieter lately?

 

[Rizzah]

I've re-written this 5 times, each time with less and less expletives.

We have two options. KO provides the social housing or private companies do. But we must realise that the govt pays off both (the KO option will be cheaper long term).
KO housing is better in the long term, because the govt retains an asset and is not paying off someone else's.
Housing and social housing is precisely what we should be using govt debt for.

Any KO homes in poor condition and no longer viable to re-build on, due to location suitability should be sold.

 

[miket12]

I've re-written this 5 times, each time with less and less expletives.

We have two options. KO provides the social housing or private companies do. But we must realise that the govt pays off both (the KO option will be cheaper long term).
KO housing is better in the long term, because the govt retains an asset and is not paying off someone else's.
Housing and social housing is precisely what we should be using govt debt for.

Any KO homes in poor condition and no longer viable to re-build on, due to location suitability should be sold.

While I can't disagree with what you are saying that it is cheaper for government to provide the housing, Labour repeatedly told us it was going to build over 6,000 new houses in this next term if re-elected, but they were only replacement houses. They were not increasing the housing stock.

The fact is, that despite their policies stating how many more new houses were provided under their terms in power, less than 1/4 of the housing for transitional and social housing was provided by KO, with over 3/4 coming from charities and other providers. Even these were not new builds, but existing dwelling being leased long term to the government.... when you read figures like 27,000 new public houses by 2027 that means 6,000 new builds and 21,000 re-purposed existing dwellings owned outside of government.

In the release below, Woods states that over their term in office, Labour provided over 4,000 more transitional homes, but the KO report from Sept of last year says that KO only manages 2,408 transitional homes. I wonder where the extra 2,000 homes Labour was supposed to have built are? That's right.... they're provided by others.

In the release below, Woods stats that Labour delivered over 13,000 new public homes.... but only 6,000 of those were new houses to the KO numbers, 7,000 replacement stock.

Release: Supercharging public housing

Release: Supercharging public housing

www.labour.org.nz

For the true numbers for how many new dwellings (additional to what National provided), compare the KO stock figures from 2017 to 2023. They show what's has really happened outside of the spin provided by National and Labour.

https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Archive-Managed-and-Vacant-docs/Managed-Stock-December-2017.pdf

https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Managed-stock/Managed-Stock-National-Summary-September-2023.pdf

 

[Rizzah]

While I can't disagree with what you are saying that it is cheaper for government to provide the housing, Labour repeatedly told us it was going to build over 6,000 new houses in this next term if re-elected, but they were only replacement houses. They were not increasing the housing stock.

The fact is, that despite their policies stating how many more new houses were provided under their terms in power, less than 1/4 of the housing for transitional and social housing was provided by KO, with over 3/4 coming from charities and other providers. Even these were not new builds, but existing dwelling being leased long term to the government.... when you read figures like 27,000 new public houses by 2027 that means 6,000 new builds and 21,000 re-purposed existing dwellings owned outside of government.

In the release below, Woods states that over their term in office, Labour provided over 4,000 more transitional homes, but the KO report from Sept of last year says that KO only manages 2,408 transitional homes. I wonder where the extra 2,000 homes Labour was supposed to have built are? That's right.... they're provided by others.

In the release below, Woods stats that Labour delivered over 13,000 new public homes.... but only 6,000 of those were new houses to the KO numbers, 7,000 replacement stock.

Release: Supercharging public housing

Release: Supercharging public housing

www.labour.org.nz

For the true numbers for how many new dwellings (additional to what National provided), compare the KO stock figures from 2017 to 2023. They show what's has really happened outside of the spin provided by National and Labour.

https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Archive-Managed-and-Vacant-docs/Managed-Stock-December-2017.pdf

https://kaingaora.govt.nz/assets/Publications/Managed-stock/Managed-Stock-National-Summary-September-2023.pdf

Most of that is noise. Labour strangled itself with the debt responsibility targets, and their spin reflects this.
Do you not consider replacement stock as new (if the homes weren't usable previously)?
They can claim, in a way, that they are providing all transitional housing, because they are paying for it all at great cost.
My angle is whether the Govt should be doing it. Because that is the bit that is going to be dismantled by Bill English (I suspect).
The biggest thing holding KO back is the govt adherence to shitty low debt targets. Which are meaningless.
KO helps in two ways, expanding housing supply (lowering rents, increasing disposable income) and expanding the building sector (increase capacity). Debt should not matter here, until we meet need. Oversight should be about whether they are functioning and providing the new homes efficiently, not whether the debt is too high.