The Kākā by Bernard Hickey

Kia ora. Long stories short, here’s my top six things to note in Aotearoa’s political economy around housing, climate and poverty on Monday, November 4:

* Budget cuts are storing up costs for future taxpayers and Governments.

* Scoop of the day: The Government is set to deliver another budget-cutting blow for the South Island.

* Deep-dive of the day: Chris Bishop’s RMA reforms have an element of ‘Xi Jinping’ thought about them.

* Solutions news: There’s great news coming out of Cannons Creek on housing supply.

* Quote of the day: One of the Cannons Creek house-builders rightly highlights how important housing is for everything.

* Chart of the day: A shocking poll from Iowa suggests Kamala Harris may actually win handsomely.

(There is more detail, analysis and links to documents below the paywall fold and in the podcast above for paying subscribers. If we get over 100 likes we’ll open it up for public reading, listening and sharing.)

1. Penny wise and pound foolish

Today’s news is dominated by the effects of real budget cuts and worsening poverty, which are often just piling up further costs for future Governments and taxpayers, along with imposing the opportunity cost of lost productivity gains and worse health.

Health workers quit over safety fears as police pull back on mental health callouts RNZ’s Phil Pennington

Documents reveal Treasury’s fears for Health NZ's finances: 'The more we hear, the worse it sounds' NZ Herald

Health Ministry says emergency preparedness may be deprioritised with staff, budgets pressure NZ Herald

Funding shortfall closes unit keeping high risk state care kids in school. As the government tries to get troubled kids back in school, a service doing just that is closing because of a funding shortfall. SST-$$$’s Nikki Macdonald

'Disgusting': Toddler hospitalised multiple times due to mouldy rental NZ Herald

Doctor brain drain about to get worse. Changes in Australia are opening the door for a list of medical specialists to swiftly move across the ditch. Will mirrored changes here stem the flow? The Post-$$$’s Rachel Thomas

2. Scoop du jour: Another hit for the South Island.

1News reported last night the Government is about to shut down an earthquake support fund, which could hit Christchurch hard by stranding 700 home owners without help.

The “on-sold” support package was created in 2019 to provide ex gratia payments to eligible homeowners in Canterbury to cover the over-cap portion of the cost to repair natural disaster damage.

It covers properties that were repaired post-earthquake and signed off, but once resold it became clear the work was not to standard, with many homes needing entire rebuilds.

The original budget for the programme was $300m, but Treasury has revealed to 1News under the Official Information Act that the figure has more than doubled to $717m. Building costs have risen by 40% and more homeowners have come forward.

Around half of the settlements are still yet to be paid out, with hundreds of homeowners left waiting. 1News

Honorable mentions

Legal cone of silence around emergency housing motels. More than 300 motels offer emergency housing, but they don’t have to tell guests that. SST-$$$’s Kevin Norquay

The large previously hidden chunk of NZ’s population at risk from coastal flooding NZ Herald

Government was warned against work-for-the-dole sanctions RNZ’s Anneke Smith

3. Deep-dive du jour: ‘Two laws & 10 principles’

Thomas Manch wrote an excellent deep-dive published on Saturday in The Post-$$$ into Infrastructure & RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop’s process for replacing the RMA, including a bunch of useful quotes from Bishop.

National has carried on the commitment to replace the RMA, but in its own way, so how we get there remains in dispute. And like a drawn-out Environment Court case, the reform will take years still.

But, last week, some movement and a skirmish that illustrates a small part of the wider political battle were at play.

The Government passed the first of two Resource Management Act amendment laws, unwinding Labour government regulations put on farmers for freshwater management. Tucked in there at the final minute was a hammer-blow for the Otago Regional Council, which was preparing to vote through a new Land and Water Regional Plan.

Thousands of people had been involved in the drafting of the plan over five years, according to the council, which was proceeding with the plan despite the Government in December giving councils a three-year leeway on freshwater plans, signalling national-level changes were coming. The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

The shock in Otago was palpable.

A day before the vote, the Government declared it would enter an amendment into its prospective law, to stop councils from implementing new freshwater plans until a new National Policy Statement on Freshwater Management was in place. The council cancelled its vote.

RMA Reform Minister Chris Bishop, spearheading the reforms, says most councils paused their freshwater plans as the Government wanted. But Otago did not.

“It's a bit stupid to notify a plan and then have to redo it six months later. It would cost a huge amount of time and money. We've been arguing with them about that.

“Some would say [this was] heavy-handed, but actually it's been widely welcomed by a lot of people down south.” Bishop via The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

Otago Regional Council chairperson Gretchen Robertson seemed to put her finger on one of the problems: the new delays in finding certainty.

“Otago has been caught in a difficult situation simply because it was diligently doing its job and tackling some tough local issues,” she says.

“RMA reform is coming ‘thick and fast’ now and is creating an environment of uncertainty for those operating businesses and for councils undertaking resource management functions.”

While ministers were saying the change would be positive for farmers, she says Otago farmers wanted certainty -- and that was “still some time away” when it came to freshwater. The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

A comparison to ‘Xi Jinping thought’ may not be welcomed by the Government.

The Chinese Communist Party has a penchant for using shorthand phrases to describe its policies, such as “dual circulation”, “four comprehensives”, “two studies and one endeavour”, and in this vein the Government’s RMA replacement could be dubbed “two laws, 10 principles”.

Another phrase that has entered the resource management vernacular, thanks to the National-ACT coalition agreement, is the “enjoyment of private property rights”.

Bishop says this is a “basic precept” of New Zealand’s economy. He described the RMA as originally being a “libertarian statute” that allowed people to do what they want with their property as long as the effects to others were managed.

“This is about going back to basics ... some people have got really excited about the property rights thing, but my general point to them would be that the foundation of New Zealand's economy is the concept of private property in a market-based economy.” Bishop via The Post-$$$’s Thomas Manch

Honorable mentions

Dental system costing $2.5b a year in lost productivity RNZ’s Giles Dexter

Smoke & Mirrors: What’s gone wrong with the ETS? Critics say the emissions trading scheme is doing little more than carpeting the country in permanent pine forest. Meanwhile, the price of carbon credits has gone from boom to bust. The Post-$$$’s George Driver

Somewhere to call home: How emergency housing numbers are changing. The number of people living in emergency housing has been slashed but it’s not clear where all the families who have left are now living. It’s something that worries community advocates. The Post-$$$’s Nicholas Boyack

Mike King charity accused of greenwashing over booklet RNZ’s Eloise Gibson

5. Solutions news: ‘Our Whare Our Fale.’

The Our Whare Our Fale housing project being jointly done by Ngāti Toa and the Central Pacific Collective (CPC) in Cannons Creek in Wellington is creating some hope in the one of the most housing deprived parts of the motu. Building started on Friday.

The combination of using Kāinga Ora land and using leases for community-oriented homes is one way to solve the land cost problem. Here’s the detail via Sunday Star Times-$$$’s Sapeer Mayron and 1News’ Kate Nicol-Williams.

It depended on $115 million in Labour’s 2022 Budget under the Ministry of Pacific Peoples and on the leadership of Ngāti Toa’s Helmut Modlik and CPC’s Tino Pereira, who some might know of as a former Radio NZ journalist.

By Christmas 2025, it is hoped 18 homes will be built with families living in them. In another nine years close to 300 more homes will be built in the area, along with community meeting-houses for neighbours to share. Sunday Star Times-$$$’s Sapeer Mayron

This story from Pereira featured in both pieces.

“A provider told me one day there were grandmothers being discharged early from hospital, and they came to their home — a dilapidated state house in Porirua — with no ablution facilities in the middle of winter, and her children had to go and find a bath from the dump," he told 1News, speaking about the incident from 2018.

"All of the commitments that our communities have made … generations … the story of the migration coming here … that got to me.

"That surely must be the motivation, it gave me the courage to do whatever's necessary and I didn't really care what was in front of me — whether it was the prime minister, or the minister, or a bureaucrat — we just need it done." Tino Pereira via 1News’ Kate Nicol-Williams

4. Quote du jour: ‘Housing is everything’

“We're not just building houses.”

“We are making sure we address health, education, through housing. If you build significantly well-designed warm, dry, efficient homes that are comfortable, that would address the number of our kids who are getting sick and going to the hospital.

“If they are sick, the parents stay home and the kids don't go to school. So what we are providing here is an antidote, addressing all of those disparities in a real significant way.” Central Pacific Collective (CPC) CEO Tino Pereira talking about the joint Our Whare Our Fale housing project in Cannons Creek to Sunday Star Times-$$$’s Sapeer Mayron.

6. Chart of the day: A shock poll

Here’s why it’s so important: Selzer’s poll just before the surprises often everyone and gets the result right, as the DesMoines Register reports, and The Cook Political Report’s Matthew Klein via X.

Nate Silver, who is now on Substack via his Silver Bulletin newsletter, also picked up on the result.

The Kākā’s Journal of Record for Monday, November 4

* Housing & economy: Stats NZ reported that 33,677 new homes were consented in the year ending September 2024, 17% fewer than in the year ending September 2023. 49% more retirement villages were consented in the September 2024 quarter compared with the September 2023 quarter, whereas townhouses and apartments were down 20% and 28% respectively.

* Justice: The Ministry of Justice announced it’s seeking feedback on a legislation review undertaken as part of the Government's plan to enable more remote participation in court proceedings. The move is one of several initiatives intended to reduce court delays, including the rollout of Te Au Reka, a digital case management system.

* Trade: Trade and Agriculture Todd McClay announced that NZ and the Gulf Cooperation Council have finished negotiating a trade agreement to deliver duty free access for 99% of NZ's exports over 10 years. RNZ reported that the trade agreement is the first the GCC has done with a Western country to include a commitment to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All forms of Discrimination Against Women.

* Te Tiriti: The Public Service Association reported that the Government's plan to transfer the key functions of Te Arawhiti, the Office for Māori Crown Relations, to Te Puni Kōkiri would see 44 staff transferred and 42 roles cut. Te Arawhiti Chief Executive Lil Anderson called the plan’s benefits “overstated”, according to documents released under the Official Information Act.

* Infrastructure & water: A Te Waihanga the Infrastructure Commission report found that, by introducing water metering, councils were able to improve their ability to identify leaks. The report also found that volumetric charging could reduce costs for low-income ratepayers, and was effective at discouraging wasteful water usage.

* Health: New Zealand Nurses Organisation members employed by Te Whatu Ora said they are "alarmed" by its plans to temporarily stop using its needs-based programme to calculate nurse staffing requirements. The Care Capacity Demand Management programme has been paused during collective bargaining and will be discussed at union meetings across NZ this week.

Cartoon of the day: ‘Surgery for the South Island’

Nature pic of the day: Feijoas in the making

Ka kite ano

Bernard