Intriguing to see an up-and-coming ACT MP and a long-serving Nat MP debate each other;
"I don't think we have to have this obsession with wanting to cut New Zealanders' jobs. In fact, people are important. I don't care whether they're in the private, sector, the public sector, or a politician like myself, they're all people, and this obsession to just go and cut 15,000 jobs is not the way forward."
Of all the candidates in all the election debates I've heard, ACT's Brooke van Velden is the one I find hardest to stomach.
In this electorate debate, she cries crocodile tears about a Tamaki resident who's had to consider cancelling swimming lessons. While other kiwis are choosing between paying rent and feeding their kids. Then...
"Since 2017, has anybody actually seen any more value for the extra money that's been spent by government?"
every journalist funded by the Public Interest Journalism Fund, and anyone who read an article or watched/ heard a show they produced with the funding
RNZ and everyone who listens to its radio stations or podcasts, or reads its news articles, thanks to the funding boost they desperately needed
everyone who's no longer subject to the "postcode lottery" of health spending priorities by DHB, thanks to their abolition and replacement with Te Whatu Ora
everyone living with a disability in Aotearoa, who now has a ministry focused on making sure public services address our needs
everyone who pays rates, who will face much lower rates increases to cover the replacement of aging water infrastructure, thanks to the Three Waters reforms.
I could go on, but hey, let's make this a group effort. What have I missed folks?
I forgot to mention the massive increase in public housing since 2017. As will as the millions spent on paying motel owners for emergency housing, due to the previous government selling off public housing instead of building more.
The fact that house prices continued to skyrocket under the NatACTs, despite this increase in supply from the privatisation of public housing, rather undermines their claim that increasing supply of private housing is an effective solution to housing affordability.
"[People] want more hospitals, they want more roads, they want more schools... we just can't fund it ourselves. We're going to ultimately need foreign investment."
"I actually do believe that we have a climate change problem... I did actually vote Green before I came all the way over to ACT... I do want to leave the world a better place, but I studied economics and international trade when I was at university..."
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