The Bonfire of the Vanities

Marie from Waikanae

Nicola Willis wants to take food from hungry children. Hungry children do not learn well. Children who do not learn well do not attain a high educational standard. Children with no qualifications find it hard to get a job. They often choose alternative pathways in life. They are at risk of ending up in prison. Nicola Willis wants to build more prisons and reduce the wasteful spending of food in schools. We think this might have come out of the right wing think tank she headed up. It doesn't make any sense to us, but she might need those prisons to house all the people she will condemn to poverty.
The winter energy payment is also under fire. They have said it will stay for now. But watch this space. This and numerous other welfare initiatives will all go on the bonfire. If they are elected, they can do what they like. And they usually do.
Nicola Willis wants to sell billions of dollars of real estate to foreign buyers, in addition to opening up immigration and allowing a lot more people in. It will fuel a deepening housing crisis and even worse affordability for kiwi families. This would also flow on to rental prices.
But don't panic yet. It might not eventuate. Maybe she is just in fantasy land imagining that there are that many interested foreign buyers out there. If that's the case the money to pay for their tax cuts would have to come from somewhere else. Nationals go to budget has always been Health, Education and Welfare when they need some extra cash.

It hasn't escaped our notice that Christopher Luxon, John Key, Nicola Willis and Hugh Fletcher are all very good mates. Did Key know when he increased immigration quotas significantly during his term that it would flow on to more housing demand? National likes to reuse the same old tired initiatives, cf boot camps, roads of national significance, welfare penalties etc. Are they gearing up to produce another steep rise in house prices? Home ownership on the bonfire?

Another area they repeatedly use as a cash cow is public housing. This was a particular fetish of Bill English. Nicola's side-kick, Chris Bishop, really loathes Kianga Ora, (formerly Housing NZ). He's vowed to dismantle it, sell off our public housing stock and farm the business of providing public housing out to various charities. Its the same old tired neoliberal argument that a private enterprise can do better. But their definition of better is different to ours.
Don't hold your breath if they manage to form a government. We bet the amount of funding that housing charities receive would be minuscule. But the sales would be massive. Kianga Ora on the bonfire. It always amuses us when we hear people accusing Labour of not delivering on housing, when they have built more houses in their current term than National ever has.

Lurking in the wings, also in the National caucus is Judith Collins. We can't wait to see what the queen of dirty politics has up her sleeve. She's probably stoking the bonfire as I write.