BFD readers will be no doubt aware that the terms “Jacinda Ardern” and “abject failure” are often heard together. Except in the New Zealand legacy media. The Team of $55 Million only ever stops their fawning of the prime minister to occasionally gently waft her with a damp lettuce leaf. After all, they’re contractually obligated by the government’s bribe Public Interest Journalism Fund.
Australia’s media aren’t under any such obligation. Some of them are even sufficiently weaned off the unfailing adulation that La Jacinda seems to think is her due to notice just how relentlessly pathetic her government has been.
Especially on Ardern’s two, great big, neon-light, marquee policies.
One of the key planks of Jacinda Ardern’s 2017 election campaign – to defeat homelessness and lift children out of poverty – is at risk of imploding, with the Labour government forced to spend more than $1.2bn placing families in motels and emergency housing.
“At risk”? It’s not only already imploded, but it’s also fast collapsing into a singularity of failure.
After failing even to come close to delivering on its promise to build 100,000 state houses, the government has turned to the private sector, housing homeless and low income families in often substandard motels where, it was revealed this week, sexual assault and crime are rife.
Bear in mind that this is no ordinary policy failure: this is the complete and utter, abject failure of Ardern’s two biggest policies.
Ardern came to power in 2017 vowing to end the homelessness crisis threatening to engulf the country. In 2018 then Housing Minister Phil Twyford promised to deliver 1000 houses in the first year of government, with a total of 10,000 by 2021; and 100,000 within 10 years, via the much vaunted KiwiBuild scheme […]
Yet as of July this year, only 1,366 new state homes have been built – 1.4 per cent of the promised total. Meanwhile, the government is spending more than $1m a day on motels – more than 10 times the cost under National. What’s more, under Ms Ardern the number of families on the state house waiting list has risen from 5000 to more than 25,000 while, despite the number of children living in poverty trending down, the number sleeping in cars has risen by around 340 per cent, according to figures released to the opposition National party.
The swirling black hole of failure is also sucking in more and more collateral damage, with tourism, one of NZ’s biggest export earners, spinning on its event horizon.
While these figures are not unexpected, the spotlight has once more fallen on what the Salvation Army is now calling a housing catastrophe after an investigation into government funded emergency housing in the tourist city of Rotorua exposed appalling living conditions – with one family of six crushed into one room – and claims of drug crime and sexual abuse by a security firm hired to guard tenants.
Allegations in the NZ TV investigation include that security guards had sex with vulnerable clients, used drugs on the job and employed patched gang members to work some shifts. One woman was reportedly so terrified of the guards she bought a car to live in with her child rather than remain in a Rotorua motel.
That would be the Rotorua that’s one of New Zealand’s major tourist drawcards.
Or at least, was. The more the town turns into a dumping ground for Jacinda’s Ferals, the less likely tourists are to keep holding their noses and spending their money.
The Empress, meanwhile, continues to flatly deny her state of undress.
Despite the crisis threatening to spiral out of control, Ms Ardern continues to defend her government’s record, telling NZ media it was better to have families in motels than sleeping in cars.
“I would much rather people have temp housing that is not a garage, that is not a car,” she said.
The Australian
Get that, New Zealand? You’ll have run-down motels full of homeless people and be grateful for it.
