Bruce Bisset: Quarter acre gone for no good

Bruce Bisset.

Let's face it, the endearing description of Kiwiland as a quarter acre half-gallon pavlova paradise no longer includes the quarter acre.

Indeed for many it no longer includes pavlova or beer, and our descent from a paradisiacal state is nearing terminal velocity.

Attempts by the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues to downplay the crisis in "affordability" - not only of house prices, but of living standards in general - would be laughable if they were not so cynically detached and uncaring of those in plight.

Sure, as always, what's "affordable" depends on who and where you are, your relative socio-economic bracket and what changes in circumstance you may face - or be prepared to make to afford what it is you want.

But regardless of those equations, an increasing proportion of Kiwis face the prospect of never owning a home, because property in general is no longer affordable. Not for the average-income earning household, and certainly not if you're a first-home buyer looking for something in Auckland.

The catchphrase Generation Rent was coined for good reason. Today's youngsters face a huge task just to save a deposit, followed by burial under a much larger mountain of debt for their effort.

Irrespective of cause, this government has spent most of a decade making no real attempt to control runaway prices and is still - still! - pretending average New Zealanders have a realistic chance of climbing the property ladder, long after the bottom rungs have been broken.

Speaking of bottom rungs, about 50,000 New Zealanders sleeping in cars, garages, or on the street is a damning indictment of our social welfare system's failings.

Or rather, of the dismantling of said system under Nationals tender care. Gone is any attempt to act as a catch-all safety net; instead we have a subjective selective punishment-oriented regime which rewards the "good" pathetically compliant poor with debt and tosses the "bad" won't-easily-fit-a-box remnant to the wolves of winter and predatory fellows.

It is unconscionable to allow a child to starve by refusing its parent(s) any assistance. Yet with about 2000 former beneficiaries permanently in this predicament, at a guess perhaps 4-5000 children have no support. None.

Even that doesn't stop local rightists telling untruths they think will somehow excuse this abominable treatment. John Harrison's recent Talking Point piece for example: state houses in Maraenui were demolished because they were infected with P or had been trashed, so the poor have only themselves to blame for being homeless, he claimed.

But according to a man who worked on demolishing those houses, not one was contaminated with P; most were sound, and many had been renovated only a year before. They were demolished for entirely different - read, political - reasons.

That hasn't stopped a swag of ignorant ranters texting in about dumb Maori deserving what they get - apparently only brown people are poor - and suggesting iwi should pick up the Government's tab.

As it happens, a number of marae are effectively doing just that, providing food and shelter for homeless families of any background. But that won't assuage the racists

Because they lack all understanding and compassion.

This is not the Aotearoa I grew up admiring. Not a quarter acre of it.

- Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.