If there’s a bigger tell on Luxon’s end of days as Prime Minister, it’s the about turn National’s Ministers are now making on policy. From Prime Minister aspirant Chris Bishop on homelessness, to “heartless” Louise Upston signalling changes on disability, National are kicking into gear for 2026’s election, and image is king.
Chris Bishop appeared on Q&A with Jack Tame this weekend where he was given a wide berth on homelessness / rough sleeping:
“So we're specifically targeting rough sleepers with this package. We know that there's a huge amount of concern about that and that they are the people in the most severe need, sort of by definition, you know, people sleeping rough on the streets.
No one wants to live in a country like that. The cause of that is long running and is rooted in the dysfunction of our housing markets, all of which we've got work on a way to fix.
But there is an immediate need, and that need has grown over the last few years.”
For almost a year now, homelessness providers have been begging Bishop & Potaka to help the housing vulnerable, and not to evict people from emergency housing - actions which have directly caused spikes of homelessness around the country.
In August 2024, Potaka admitted he didn’t know where at least 20% of kids went, nor did he intend finding out.
In March 2025, I reported spikes of 53% in Auckland in just four months. It accelerated quickly. By July, it was up 90% in our largest city, almost doubling in fast succession. Children as young as 9 are now living on Auckland streets, and affluent North Shore suburbs aren’t exempt.
Auckland’s not the only city experiencing a crisis.
In Canterbury, Christchurch Methodist Mission’s executive director Jill Hawkey said in May that the majority of people they help had been turned away from emergency housing - without being given a reason.
“We could count on one hand the number of people who have been offered emergency housing”
“Chris Bishop said in an interview that if people are homeless they could go to the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) and housing support would be available to them… we know that’s not true.”
In Northland, the homelessness crisis saw Whangārei District Council report homelessness spikes of almost 60% to 1066 last year. And at the current rate, it noted, Whangārei was forecast to reach more than 1200 reports in 2025. In all, it’s estimated more than 200 Northland children are now at serious risk of illness due to this issue.
A report last week also showed the number living in cars is now ~600 - again a direct result of National’s failed emergency housing policy and this number only reflects those who are still trying to get government support, with advocates saying for months now that National has made the entire process “almost like a trap”.
The Post also points out:
In 2022, when in Opposition, Housing Minister Chris Bishop was highly critical that there were 435 people recorded as living in a car and he said:
“It is heartbreaking that any Kiwi, let alone a child, is forced to go to sleep in a car every night.
Yet it appears the only thing genuinely “heartbreaking” enough to move Chris Bishop, the former tobacco lobbyist and son of the Taxpayers Union co-founder, is optics, because the information on homelessness spikes & risks has been reported for nearly a year.
Last week, Julia Gabel reported that data to the end of June 2025, showed that even though the number of emergency housing applications has dropped significantly due to the stringent conditions National imposed, the numbers being declined continued to rise.
Auckland’s City Missioner Helen Robinson has called our national homelessness, at over 113,000 Kiwis at the end of 2024 - “a moral shame on our country”. And it’s becoming harder to hide.
Bishop’s big response is tiny
Chris Bishop’s ‘big announcement’ facilitated by media headlines as “housing support” for the vulnerable, represents 300 private, subsidised placements despite this government increasing homelessness by thousands around the country.
Bishop on Q&A -
“300 additional social houses coming on stream almost immediately that will be contracted from the private rental market by these approved providers with almost like a ring fencing of the 300 for rough sleepers.
So we'll be going out and trying to find these people, make sure they can get into a social house and then provide the extra support.”
In other words, they’ve thrown the homeless, vulnerable, disabled, mentally ill etc out without help, care, or knowledge of where they are - while loudly “celebrating falls in emergency housing numbers” - but a year later, are now going out to “try to find these people” to “help.”
This is the type of preposterous behaviour that works in New Zealand due to poor media scrutiny and analysis. Where cause and effect can largely be teased away through PR obfuscation.
Jack Tame largely allowed Bishop his spin but did point out:
“Your government changed the eligibility for emergency housing grants in August of last year so that people could be rejected when they applied if they were deemed to have contributed to their situation.
In the time since, reporting from the Herald shows the number of rejected applications nationwide has increased 70%, which has coincided with a reported spike in homelessness and rough sleeping around the country.”
And it has been largely up to the opposition and social agencies to point out what is happening again and again. In May, Maddy Croady (The Press) covered this topic, quoting McAnulty at the end:
Labour housing spokesperson Kieran McAnulty said the “trumpeting” of the [emergency housing] initiative as a major success was “not true”.
He said the only reason why the number of people in emergency housing was down was because the Government was not letting people in.
“They are locking people out of accessing emergency housing to save money… When every single frontline provider is saying the same thing, that the Government’s change in the criteria is making it impossible to get in, the Government should listen.”
The Green Party last week also pointed out Bishop’s ‘announcemnt’ is “a drop in the ocean in the context of the current crisis.”
It is not new, and directly correlated to National’s emergency housing KPIs. It’s easy to throw the poor and vulnerable out on the streets. It’s not easy to fix root causes.
This PR exercise has been shameful.
Bishop auditions for PM
If Luxon “resigns” or however their storyline develops, Bishop, Stanford or perhaps the Simeon Brown/Maureen Pugh #BrownPugh ticket that is making the rounds on social media, are likely1 to step forward to present their party are anew.
They will count on Kiwis to forget who stood by and designed most of what is at play right now (Bishop, Willis, Simeon Brown remain some of the primary Ministers responsible for this government’s ethos and in the cases of fast-track and its associated environmental destruction, law breaking)
Bishop is also likely to exercise the Atlas Network motto of never letting a good crisis go to waste. And I will admit, he’s good at the spin.
We are all the worse for it though - and we shouldn’t forget the real stories that led us here.
Democracy at stake
Separately, Sir Geoffrey Palmer appears on Q&A today to warn Kiwis how fragile and essentially at risk our democracy is in New Zealand. And Laura Walters & Sam Sachdeva (Newsroom) report that the government is still forging ahead with the ultra-dangerous Regulatory Standards Bill, which retains its core substance, despite NZ First and National reviewing it. The RSB had ~88% opposition.
This government has dropped the pretence of democracy.
And on the left, we have left wing voters still attacking Labour for everything sundry and related - from the dangers & dissatisfaction we face today, to our political system’s weaknesses, to the current economic system that the majority bought into for decades, and the significant numbers of Kiwis who genuinely believe in right wing narratives e.g. that Labour was fiscally reckless when the evidence does not bear it out or the Greens are “radical” etc - but is also the electoral system Labour is forced to operate within. Surely, maturity and political context is just out of vogue. And we are now all responsible for whatever outcomes come to be.
Credit to the journalist who asks Chris Bishop to speak in “simple language” as this can cut through the obfuscation
Video courtesy Christopher Luxon GPT
Likely does not apply to #BrownPugh
🤷 The homeless situation in Otautahi-Christchurch would be even more obvious if we hadn't gained some unoccupied land courtesy of the major EQs of 2010/11 - there are people tenting, parked up in cars etc that would otherwise perhaps be on the footpaths & more visible, but I'm sure if Mr Bishop wanted to "find them" it wouldn't be hard 😱 They were warned what would happen with tightening emergency housing criteria & literally making people homeless by govt action, but only care about "numbers" and hoped no-one would notice each "number" is a person who is being denied a home (including children & other vulnerable humans) . Of course in tandem with this was the cessation of the 1000's of Kainga Ora homes that the last govt had planned & largely brought up to the ready-to-start-building stage - not only less social housing, but again sunk costs that Willis et al deliberately threw away, like the ferries.
I agree we are in for some "interesting" times with National et al as they feel the next election looming - hope enough people see through the desperate attempts to pretend they are the good guys by marginally improving the disasters they caused in individual lives & society in general by their callous adherence to disproven ideology.
I see Kieran McAnulty said on a recent BHN interview that Labour will be putting out policy in the next few months, and I agree that those on the "left" need to work on supporting improvements to policies 👍 rather than dumping on potential coalition partners for not being "perfect" - whatever they might do, nothing will be as heartless & cruel as what Aotearoans have endured recently, apart from the wealthy & sorted of course 💩🤡
Another PR stunt. The devil is always in the detail. Qualifying details will be sketchy and unmeasurable so the numbers can mean anything they say. Like hospital waiting lists.
I pass through a largish car park each day on our dog walks, an increase in car dwellers is certainly noticeable.