TL;DR: My top six things to note around housing, climate and poverty in Aotearoa’s political economy in the week to August 4 were:
1. The week the front fell off
The Govt’s austerity mask fell off in Health, Education & OT
The National-ACT-NZ First Coalition Government’s essential promise before last year’s election that it could deliver $16 billion of income tax cuts from this week without cutting frontline public services just dissolved on contact with a winter of discontent in Aotearoa’s hospital, child protection and school systems.
Decades of underfunding in real, per-capita terms (see Charts of the Week below) came home to roost as an exodus of stressed and underpaid staff to Australia and the new Government’s cuts combined to tip the systems over the edge.
Among other news items showing how spending cuts, hiring freezes and project suspensions were affecting services, we saw:
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