John Harrison
WITH local elections on the horizon it is little wonder that Cr Maxine Boag, representing the Napier South ward, has rushed into print as a liberal handwringer, wailing in faux rage at the lack of social housing in Napier.
To illustrate the point she has used the case of "Mary" and her five children. No mention is made as to the father, or fathers involved, nor her extended whanau.
Ms Boag is very explicit as to who is to blame. "Central government has created this problem, and it is their responsibility to fix it," she opines. Oh no it is not, Ms Boag, it is the constituents in your ward who are to blame.
Ms Boag is in high dudgeon when stating that 93 state houses have been demolished in Maraenui over the last four years. The result is the creation of dozens of empty mini-parks on which she correctly claims that the Government is not planning to build on but will leave it up to social housing providers to do so. This to me is wonderful news.
You and I as hardworking taxpayers had these well-built and "good boned" homes destroyed by the very same beneficiaries that we all continue to pay for, and have done so for decades.
Ms Boag fails to state that these once perfectly good homes were vandalised and contaminated by P use, either by tenants smoking or producing this vile drug. Apart from the wanton destruction of taxpayer property, the smoking or production of P in our homes is tantamount to child abuse of the very worst kind.
She then has the temerity to state that "social housing providers need resources (yet more taxpayer money) to fill the gap". What a joke!
Over the past decades literally billions of dollars have been handed out to iwi in Treaty settlements. Some up to three and four times as so-called "final settlements". In Hawke's Bay alone, the figure is in the hundreds of millions.
The money was to be spent on improving Maori living conditions. It now appears that apart from very, very generous payments to the Maori elite, little, if any, is trickling down to the beneficiaries most in need. Anyway, why would the Maori elite waste money on social housing when they see the results of taxpayer funds being destroyed by the same tenants whom we are providing for?
Last year in Christchurch a brand new state housing development of 19 homes was found to have four contaminated by P within six months. I have no doubt that by year's end the rest will suffer a similar fate.
This is not the Government's fault, Ms Boag, but the fault of the feral tenants who wantonly abuse a privilege offered to them by the overtaxed and hardworking people of New Zealand. If Ms Boag wishes to positively address this issue, I suggest the following:
1.Conduct parenting classes in her ward.
2.Actively promote the benefits of contraception, thus stopping the cycle of children having children. Many claim their child was an "accident", yet many seem to be seriously accident prone.
3.Ensure that the mothers recall the name of the father(s) so the IRD can enforce payment instead of the taxpayers footing the increasing bill.
4.Make a submission to our local MPs that no payment be made to mothers unless the name of the father is provided.
5.Propose to all Hawke's Bay iwi that they must ensure their millions of Treaty settlement funds be used to provide social housing in Maraenui.
6.Teach the benefits of having a work ethic, thus saving our local employers the cost of regularly flying in thousands of workers from overseas to undertake work the unemployed refuse to do.
7.Remind her constituents that the taxpayers already pay to feed, clothe and school their kids while heavily subsidising their home.
8.Teach them to respect our property and maintain it in good order so others may benefit in the future.
9.Teach them that state housing is a privilege and not a right.
10.Teach them that smoking or manufacturing P in our homes is child abuse of the very worst kind.
If Ms Boag undertakes only a couple of these issues as the NCC ward councillor then she will have done herself and her constituents a world of good.
I look forward to learning of her success - but I will not be holding my breath.
-John Harrison is a former Napier city councillor.
-Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz