Budget 2020: With the unemployment rate growing and predicted to rise further, many more people face financial hardship and poverty. Alan Johnson explores how the government could address this in Thursday’s budget. In previous budgets the finance minister Grant Robinson proved himself a fiscal conservative, suggesting that it wasn’t time to fully address our various … Read more
Government fixation on gentrifying state housing neighbourhoods to provide sites for KiwiBuild developments seriously undermines the opportunity to meet the most pressing needs, writes Alan Johnson, the Child Poverty Action Group’s housing spokesperson. The recent media preoccupation with KiwiBuild as a middle class welfare programme risks overlooking a far more critical housing story. It is … Read more
The big picture of Budget 2018 is that the Labour-led government has missed its chance to help those in the worst poverty, writes Alan Johnson Pre-election budget releases often focus on small budgets and specific programmes which have some public appeal. This focus on small detail often means that we are distracted from the big … Read more