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Labour's Biggest Failure

Apart from women and youth groups who left the Labour Party Conference highly dissatisfied with the party, another group fed up with them is the Tenants' Protection Association, On the final evening of the conference TPA held a picket outside the Town Mall and handed out a leaflet which read as follows:

"Shortly before the last election, the current Minister of Housing, Mr Fraser, made this statement:

'New Zealanders are about to embark on the most imaginative housing policy this country has ever seen.'

But what has the Labour Government achieved since its wild promises before the last election?

As far as tenants are concerned, rents have continued to sky-rocket. The government set up rent appeal boards, which although they appeared at first to give help to tenants, have proved that they are nothing more than rubber stamps for the landlords.

Rents which should be assessed on the basis of a tenant's income are instead based on a "fair return to the landlord" and on the prevailing level of rack rents in the area. This from a Labour Government which pledged to end rack renting!

This same government has refused to give tenants any security of tenure by limiting the grounds for eviction, tenants can still be evicted for any and no reason. The iniquitous Distress and Replevin Act of 1908 still allows landlords to seize and sell a tenants goods if they are as much as one day behind in their rent. Discrimination against familes with children and Polynesians, on the grounds solely of their having children and their race, continues despite complaints to the Labour Department which administers the Rent Appeal Act.

Since the Labour Government was elected, the State Advances Corporation, well known for its callous and inhuman attitudes towards people in need of decent housing, has exceeded its reputation. People have rung TPA after having been told that if they could find an empty State house they could have it; but having found such a house, they are inevitably told that the house is for someone else. When TPA threatened to help people squat empty state houses the Labour Government put a 24 hour guard on these houses to avoid political embarrassment.

What is more, with the encouragement of the State Advances Corporation and the financial rulers of this country, prices of houses, and rents, have risen even more under this government than under previous ones. Price rises of 40% a year are certainly 'imaginative' housing policy, never occuring before in New Zealand's history.

Throughout its history the Labour Government has betrayed working people in the interest of big business. Its landlord friends have never had anything to fear from this 'Labour' Government.