How dare you announce this for political points and sit back on full pay for 3months claiming its too tricky to change the law.
'It’s about leadership’: Ardern takes 20% pay cut over coronavirus pic.twitter.com/F6gqCHMVES
— The Guardian (@guardian) April 15, 2020
If the real reason Winston Peters’ friends got a taxpayer-funded trip to Antarctica was philanthropy, the Government should release the paper trail to back it up.
The Government has sold at least 146 state homes worth more than $30m since late 2017, despite Labour promising to stop the sale of state houses if elected to government.
From late October 2017, when Labour formed a coalition government with New Zealand First and the Green Party, to December 2019 the Government’s housing agency Kāinga Ora sold 146 state houses, figures released under the Official Information Act show.
In the lead up to the 2017 election Labour said if elected it would immediately end the sale of state houses.
In December that year former housing minister Phil Twyford issued a press release titled: Government stops the sale of state houses.
The statement said the Labour-led Government had “cancelled the sell-off of state houses, fulfilling another of its first 100 day promises”.
Twyford said it was the end of “large-scale” state housing sell-offs.
However, towards the bottom of the statement Twyford said it would still sell houses that were no longer fit for purpose.
Massey University associate professor Grant Duncan, who teaches public policy and political theory, said politicians were known to make statements without providing additional information to qualify it.
While it made sense for the Government to sell housing stock that may not be fit for purpose or not geographically suited to demand, it had not done what it said it would and stop the sale of state houses, he said.
“They didn’t stop selling, that’s clear,” Duncan said.
“What you say today is going to come back to bite you tomorrow if you’re not absolutely correct to the letter.
“This whole failure to deliver is being used against them.”
Kāinga Ora government relations manager Rachel Kelly said as a general rule a house would not be sold when it became vacant.
However, in some circumstances selling a property would be considered, she said.
That included when a property was too old and expensive to maintain, no longer met tenants’ needs, or was not in the right place to meet demand, she said.
When Kāinga Ora sold a house the money received was reinvested in the redevelopment of existing property or in buying new properties that would meet the needs of tenants, she said.
The total value received for the sale of homes between October 2017 and December 31, 2019 was $30.7m.
Megan Woods took over from Phil Twyford as Housing Minister in June.
The lowest priced home was sold for $38,000 and the highest sold for $1.7m.
The mean price was $330,411 and the median was $230,000.
Since October 2017 Kāinga Ora spent a total of $568.3m buying new property.
The Kāinga Ora property portfolio was valued at the end of each financial year. As at June 30, 2019 it was worth $28.6 billion, she said.
The total number of properties managed by Kāinga Ora was 65,769 as at December 31.
Housing Minister Megan Woods did not respond to questions.
Kāinga Ora figures show that, under National, in the 2014 financial year it sold 598 homes and built 398, in the 2015 financial year it sold 492 and built 724 and in the 2016 financial year it sold 308 and built 409.
That equates to 1398 houses sold and 1531 built in National’s last three full financial years in power.
Former National Party housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis recently accepted there was net loss of state houses during National’s nine years in Government.
She said the party was wrong to sell and convert more state houses than it built.
However, the current Government failed to deliver on original targets set out in its KiwiBuild housing programme, which was meant to build 100,000 houses over 10 years.
To date fewer than 400 have been completed.
A few statistics that show Ms Ardern’s election slogan of “Lets keep moving” is a farcical fantasy. Her govt is all about big flashy announcements & large budget items, but in terms of accomplishment, there’s not much. Get ready for huge tax increases as the reality hits.
A few statistics that show Ms Ardern’s election slogan of “Lets keep moving” is a farcical fantasy. Her govt is all about big flashy announcements & large budget items, but in terms of accomplishment, there’s not much. Get ready for huge tax increases as the reality hits.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1279899109109841920
Newshub can reveal the party’s guide to services for over 60 year olds contains at least 50 apparent breaches of copyright, all authorised by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
If you put Labour’s guide for over 60s into an online plagiarism checker, 56 apparent breaches of copyright show up, with examples from 19 different sources, some government and some not.
Copyright lawyer Kate McHaffie said it seems Labour has “taken work, they’ve used it without permission, and that is technically copyright infringement”.
It includes a cut and paste job from the LA Times about moderate activity making a difference.
The guide also uses word-for-word work from American lifestyle site Liveabout: “During nice weather, many communities offer free lunchtime concerts in pleasant locations where there is a high concentration of office workers.”
Sound advice it may be but it’s not Labour’s.
National leader Simon Bridges said it’s “not good enough”.
“In fact, it’s much worse than that,” he told Newshub. “They’ve literally cut and pasted from their Google searches into their Labour Party material and brochures.”
Labour has had previous issues with plagiarism. MP Clare Curran was forced to apologise in 2015 for ripping off The Economist magazine in a policy document.
Curran told Newshub she didn’t produce the document herself, so “therefore I can’t have any responsibility for the content”.
Newshub alerted Labour on Monday and the party is now pulling all the booklets. But on Wednesday, Labour MP Marja Lubeck was on Twitter posting about handing it out.
Labour is insisting there is only one breach, because it believes the rest is public information that can be lifted.
Chief Whip and Labour MP for Mt Roskill Michael Wood told Newshub: “No plagiarism is acceptable.”
But he said the party will correct the document and “get it back out there, because this is actually a really well-loved resource that many older people enjoy receiving”.
“What we’re seeing from the Labour Party, given the repeated breaches, is they’re very slow learners.”
There is no suggestion Labour will be sued over any of this, least of all by the government departments it copied, which likely want the information out there.
But copying material without permission or attribution is risky and there’s a simple solution: Labour, use your words.
Newshub.
Jacinda Ardern only won 25% of the vote, but is now PM of NZ, & her Union of Socialist Youth comrade Hipkins now controls Health & Education. Global socialists always see NZ’s interests as secondary to what they perceive as the global good. Patriots need to vote them out.
