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Joseph Mooney is the National MP for Southland.
OPINION: It has been a busy month here in the Otago-Southland region, from the housing crisis in Queenstown-Lakes to concerns about increasing criminal activity in Gore, the ongoing tremendous challenges to our health system and, of course, commemorating Anzac Day.
National have also been detailing our plans on housing, health, and agriculture, among others, to get the country back on track.
Queenstown-Lakes is facing an accommodation crisis so I recently hosted the National Party’s Housing Spokesperson, Chris Bishop, so he could hear and see for himself what is happening in our region.
Chris Bishop also announced a housing policy to address the immediate crisis which sees many houses in our region sitting empty while people sleep in cars, tents, and on couches.
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* MPs foresee an average mortgage rise of $267 in Southland
* National promises to pay more than $22K off nurses’, midwives’ student loans
* National’s Christopher Luxon sharpens pitch to middle-income voters as party warns of Labour’s ‘envy-driven tax-grab’
In addition to restoring the brightline test to two years and restoring interest deductibility for rental properties, National will also reverse Labour’s removal of no-clause terminations, and provisions that require a fixed term tenancy agreement to become a periodic tenancy agreement upon expiry.
Many landlords who used to offer short-term fixed tenancy for some months of the year have decided renting is too difficult.
While Labour’s changes in 2021 may have been well-intentioned, they are an example of perfect being the enemy of the good with Labour’s policy backfiring badly, discouraging landlords from offering their properties up for rent.
Labour’s removal of no-cause termination has hit vulnerable people particularly hard. Many landlords are now reluctant to ‘take a chance’ on tenants with poor rental histories, due to the difficulty of ending the tenancy if it doesn’t work out.
Since 2017, rents have risen an average of $175 a week, the social housing waitlist has quadrupled to more than 23,000 and more than 3000 families live in motels.
CHRIS SKELTON
Nadia Frazer-Holland, 21, and her young son Malcolm, 1, have been applying constantly for rental homes for the past three years, to no avail. (First published July 8, 2022)
The Southland region has its roots in agriculture, an industry that forms the backbone of New Zealand’s economy.
The National Party recently announced our ‘Getting back to Farming’ policy, which aims to deliver smarter rules for the future, super-charge the rural economy, and reduce Wellington’s involvement in farming.
We need good environmental legislation that is less prescriptive and is outcome focused.
Farming is essential to rural communities and to New Zealand’s earnings, with one in every nine employees working in the sector and agriculture accounting for 63% of our goods exports in 2022.
Labour has introduced more than 20 new or amended laws and regulations since 2017, which directly impact the agricultural sector’s ability to operate. These one-size-fits-all rules and regulations have created massive compliance costs with limited or no environmental gains in most cases.
To address this, National will introduce a 2-for-1 rule for new regulation over the next three years to focus policy makers’ minds on developing better integrated outcomes-focused regulation, require local and central government to assess the costs of all new rules on the rural sector and publish their findings, and establish a permanent Rural Regulation Review Panel.
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National has pledged $22k of student loan help for nurses and midwives.
New Zealand’s health system is in crisis, with a severe shortage of nurses and midwives contributing to ballooning wait lists, delays accessing treatment, and dangerously overcrowded emergency departments. We are now 4000 nurses short.
National will pay nurses’ and midwives’ student loan repayments up to $4500 a year for the first five years of their career. This means a nurse or midwife over five years’ experience would be $22,500 better off.
Labour has overseen a crisis in the health workforce. National will deliver more nurses and midwives so our hard-working frontline feel supported, and Kiwis can access the health care they deserve.”
Finally, Anzac Day is always an opportunity to remember those who sacrificed for the freedoms we enjoy today.
This year I attended the Dawn Anzac Service in Gore, where the founding president of the town’s RSA, Lieutenant Colonel Edmund Bowler, was likely the first person in the New Zealand army uniform to step ashore at Gallipoli 108 years ago.
Not far behind was my great-great-uncle Joseph Martin Cornwall who unfortunately was one of the many who lost his life that day.
I then joined the Anzac Service in Tapanui which was followed by an unveiling of a new War Memorial in Tapanui, where Sadie Lietze officially unveiled the stones.
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