NEW LABOUR POLICY TARGETS LANDLORDS
Labour wants to make it harder for landlords to give tenants the flick to sell investment properties for capital gain.
Labour leader Jacinda Ardern and housing spokesman Phil Twyford will be in Auckland today to announce more policy to deal with the effects of an overheated housing market.
It is understood today’s measure will address the situation affecting many tenants in the Auckland market — being repeatedly evicted so their landlord can realise rising property values.
Landlords must give tenants 90 days’ notice, or 42 days if the landlord has sold the property to someone wanting vacant possession or if the owner or family member is moving in.
About half of New Zealanders, or a third of households, live in rented accommodation.
Ardern hinted at the policy announcement on a street corner meeting in Grey Lynn, where she was feted by supporters.
She also caught up with local music legend Chris Knox who suffered a massive stroke in 2009. The pair had a five-minute private conversation.
Prime Minister Bill English campaigned in Tauranga with local MP Simon Bridges and Conservation Minister Maggie Barry.
She announced $69.2 million of new funding over four years as part of the target to make New Zealand predator-free by 2050. Part of that is a $40m contestable fund for predator-free community projects.
The biggest election play of the day was Act’s $1 billion policy to give schools the power to set teachers’ pay rates and to give excellent teachers huge pay rises.
Schools that opted in would be bulk-funded by an extra $20,000 a teacher to do with what they wanted in terms of salaries, said Act leader David Seymour at the party’s campaign launch in Epsom today.
“Right now the best teacher earns the same as the worst teacher.”
It drew immediate criticism from teacher unions.
But Seymour says the unions are part of the problem and education had been monopolised by “thuggish union bullies”.
He said the union had an allfor-one and one-for-all mentality, which had “drained the joy from the teaching profession”.
The union’s collective agreements had suppressed wages for 30 years, he said.
“You might end up paying a phys-ed teachers a bit less,” Seymour said.
But inspirational teachers might kept in the classroom at $120,000 year.
NZEI president Lynda Stuart said Act’s position undermined education, teachers and unions.
It was good to see Act acknowledging teachers needed to be paid more, she said, “but with teacher workload growing, along with a teacher shortage, all teachers need a pay rise, not just some.”