What locals want from the Budget
For some it’s help with housing, others it’s mental health
Help with housing and food costs is at the top of Rotorua resident Leah Pepito’s Budget wishlist. Mum of three and co-owner of Pinoy Tres Cuisine with her husband Francis, Pepito said the issues she thought about most were housing and her kids’ education.
“At the moment if you’re looking at a house worth $600,000 the deposit is 20 per cent. That’s about $120,000. I don’t think a small business owner, regular employee or anyone on the minimum wage can afford that. There’s no way.”
Pepito said lowering the deposits required to purchase a house wouldn’t just help her and her family but a lot of other Kiwis get into their first home.
Pepito’s three daughters are aged 18, 17 and 11. The two eldest were planning to go to university. While Pepito said she had no complaints about the quality of education, she did worry about the cost of living in places like Auckland, where her eldest would like to study.
“Food is so expensive. So many people are finding it hard to feed their children.”
Mamaku resident David Beuth said the key issues for him were the environment and social development. Beuth has been a dairy farmer for what felt like his whole life.
“We’re all living in the same world and it’s all we’ve got.”
The father of two would like more government investment in research.
Beuth said many of the solutions he saw the Government proposing seemed to be “ambulances at the bottom of the cliff”.
“I want more long-term solutions. I want people to ask why problems are happening and then how to fix them at the root.”
Beuth said the Government was putting forward a lot of rules and regulations but no alternatives. Research into converting methane gases and the possibilities of hydrogen energy would go a long way, in Beuth’s view.
“I see that as being the future rather than batteries, which come with their own set of problems.”
The Government’s Emissions Reduction Plan released this week included $18 million for developing new energy strategies, including a hydrogen roadmap. The plan also incudes a goal to reduce biogenic methane by 10 per cent by 2030.
Beuth was also concerned about how much the Government, which has raised benefits, was spending on social development.
“Where is that money coming from? I just don’t know if the current welfare spending is solving the problems or adding to them.”
Te Mana Hauora o Te Arawa chairman Michael Naera said he would like to see funding for kaupapa Ma¯ori mental health services from Budget 2022.
“The plan that we had prior to Covid hitting has probably become defunct and so we have to reset the agenda.”
This meant ensuring kaupapa Ma¯ori mental health services were available for Ma¯ori, iwi and hapu, he said.
“Prior to Covid-19 hitting, we were managing under the He Ara Oranga report . . . then Covid hit and obviously the stress and the anxiety and the depression hit.”
The He Ara Oranga report was a Government inquiry into mental health and addiction that recommended changes to improve the approach to mental health.
Naera said “all cultures” were affected due to the rise in unemployment from the pandemic.
“I think we’re in recovery mode for mental health.”
Naera said the $1.9 billion mental health package announced in Budget 2019 was a “celebratory moment” at the time because funding under National was “pitiful”.
“That has become defunct now — we’ve had Whakaari/white Island erupt, we’ve had the mosque shootings, we’ve had the floods and now Covid. I think we’ve got people that were managing their distress that have become more distressed. ”
Rotorua Chamber of Commerce chief executive Bryce Heard said allocating money was not the solution.
“It has become the norm in recent years to see a lot of announcements about large sums of money being allocated to various causes. The solutions come from building the actual solutions and then funding them.”
Heard said throwing money at problems without specific solutions resulted in funding for bureaucrats and report writing.
“What we would like to see could include specific plans to help address problems of public safety, displaced persons, mental health issues and drug addiction. [We need] measures to counter inflation and the rising cost of living, measures that encourage people off the benefit and back into productive employment.”