Mana | Movement of the People

Hone Harawira – Ae Marika!

Last week I asked a question in the House about “how forcing people out of their homes and selling off the land to wealthy property developers, fits with Government assurances that every New Zealand family should have warm, high-quality housing?”

The answer I got from the Minister of Housing Phil Heatley, was “we no longer house criminal gangs in old, cold, mouldy State houses on half-acre sections where three bedrooms are empty…”

What a prick!

Poor people are being dumped on the street for no reason at all, and all he can come up with is some crap about gangs.

So here’s a few facts just to clear up the mud that the minister was slinging …

1. The houses aren’t “old, cold and mouldy”; I know because I did a tour of the houses being moved and most of them are in very, very good condition (better in fact than a lot of the houses up here in the far north).
2. The only state houses where “three bedrooms are empty” are empty ones – where poor people have been forced out or where poor people can’t afford to live.
3. Not one of the houses targeted for relocation was the home of a “criminal gang”.
4. The government is kicking state housing tenants out and then selling the land to their rich real estate developer mates to build wealthy little enclaves with a really nice view of the sea (poor people don’t rate a vista).

It’s tough enough out there without some smarmy-arsed minister making with the kind of demeaning wise-crack that does nothing but highlight the arrogance of his party and the disregard they have for people who are genuinely struggling to make ends meet.

And the relevance of all this to the north? Well, we’ve got quite a few state houses spread right around the north, and a lot of them are empty as well. Not because we don’t have a problem with housing, because we do.

We have empty state houses in the north because government is making it harder for people to get into a state house in the first place. In fact, under certain circumstances, a family on the minimum wage is now listed as making “too much” to qualify for a state house.

And we also have empty state houses in the north because government has a policy of driving rentals up to market rates rather than the income-based rentals scheme they used to run, and those rates are forcing people to move out of their state houses and into garages or doubled up with somebody else.

Phil Heatley may be the Minister of Housing, but he is also the MP for Whangarei and the people of the north deserve a better answer than the one he gave last week.

And while we’re talking about what it is that our leaders say, one of Northland’s mayors is telling porkies … to somebody. Apparently he’s telling people over here that “the controls over mining in NZ are among the most restrictive internationally” but he’s telling investors overseas that “NZ’s … systems rule out many of the problems that affect overseas investments, such as unnecessary compliance costs or burdensome regulations.”

Come along now Mr Mayor – who is it that you’re working for? Us … or them?