{"id":136852,"date":"2025-11-15T20:06:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-15T20:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/136852\/"},"modified":"2025-11-15T20:06:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-15T20:06:09","slug":"government-too-focused-on-elites-fine-dining-over-homeless-shane-te-pou","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/136852\/","title":{"rendered":"Government too focused on elite\u2019s fine dining over homeless – Shane Te Pou"},"content":{"rendered":"

It wasn\u2019t so long ago that homelessness was pretty uncommon in New Zealand. Even in our major cities, you saw few people living on the streets. It was a mark of pride that we didn\u2019t let our fellow Kiwis live like that, part of our egalitarian values. It was part of what made New Zealand special in contrast with other countries around the world.<\/p>\n

Now, there\u2019s homeless people everywhere in downtown Auckland <\/a>and even in our smaller towns. It\u2019s become a lot worse in the past couple of years \u2013 and it\u2019s easy to see why.<\/p>\n

Two years ago, 3333 individuals and families were hosted in emergency housing. National said that was costing too much money. Now, there\u2019s just 438 individuals and families in emergency housing<\/a>. Where do you reckon those people have gone? A lot of them are on the streets.<\/p>\n

In July, Auckland Council reported there are more than 800 rough sleepers in the city, a 90% increase since last September. These are the victims of a failed economic policy that has seen the economy lose 50,000 jobs in two years and failed to provide affordable housing.<\/p>\n

\"The\u00a0Michelin\u00a0guideThe\u00a0Michelin\u00a0guide (of\u00a0Michelin\u00a0star fame) is doing its first NZ guide. Photo \/ Supplied <\/p>\n

Having the police hassle our fellow New Zealanders and get them \u201cout of the way\u201d doesn\u2019t solve the problem. It\u2019s just heartless and cruel.<\/p>\n

If we want to fix homelessness, we need more homes. Simple as that.<\/p>\n

But Labour\u2019s house-building programme<\/a>, which built over 20,000 homes, was canned by the current Government. Cost too much money, according to a $500,000 report from Bill English.<\/p>\n

K\u0101inga Ora is stopping $220m of building projects and is now planning to sell off 900 homes with a fifth of the empty land that was planned for new homes, by the end of 2026. Housing Minister Chris Bishop promised 1500 new social houses in Budget 2024, but only 136 have been delivered so far.<\/p>\n

In particular talk to our disabled wh\u0101nau; they are finding access to appropriate housing particularly tough.<\/p>\n

The Government stopped building homes and lost 50,000 jobs, and now it blames the victims for being in the way and damaging tourists\u2019 impression of Auckland.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, ministers have no trouble finding $6.3m for ads in Michelin for elite New Zealand restaurants.<\/a><\/p>\n

Call me a cynic, but I find it hard to believe that we\u2019re really going to get any measurable number of tourists coming all the way to New Zealand just to eat at a restaurant based on reviews on a website. At best, you\u2019ll see tourists who were coming anyway and Kiwis who are planning to eat out anyway choosing to try out Michelin-starred restaurants.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not growing the economic pie; it\u2019s just helping some get a bigger slice. Seems to me that restaurants can pay for their own advertising, without a Government handout. There\u2019s a reason the Australian Government refused to do a similar deal.<\/p>\n

But for this Government, the plan, literally, is that jobless and homeless Kiwis will be shoved out of sight while rich foreigners come here to eat at fancy restaurants.<\/p>\n

It speaks to me of a Government that is too focused on the elite and is out of touch both with the fundamentals of the economy and with the lives of ordinary Kiwis (or \u201cbottom-feeders\u201d in Luxon\u2019s language).<\/p>\n

If it wants to earn a second term, this Government needs to forget about gimmicks and get-rich-quick schemes. It needs to forget about selling off our public housing and energy assets, and start building them, instead. That would even create some jobs at the same time.<\/p>\n

If we want New Zealand to live up to the values we hold dear, we need leaders who will build an economy that works for everyone. And a Government that makes sure no-one misses out on the basics for a decent life.<\/p>\n

Catch up on the debates that dominated the week by signing up to our Opinion newsletter<\/a> \u2013 a weekly round-up of our best commentary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It wasn\u2019t so long ago that homelessness was pretty uncommon in New Zealand. Even in our major cities,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":136853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[22503,93437,156,3278,6204,92509,266,681,111,139,69,90,1523,1860,7228,8690,6173],"class_list":["post-136852","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-dining","tag-elites","tag-entertainment","tag-facts","tag-fine","tag-focused","tag-government","tag-homeless","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-over","tag-pou","tag-shane","tag-te","tag-too"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=136852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/136852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/136853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=136852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=136852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=136852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}