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Alan's avatar

...Paul Goldsmiths’ media account, captioned “Really positive Budget day - going for growth”...

Congratulations Paul, great plan to get growth in unemployment, growth in the numbers leaving for Australia, growth in numbers of children living in poverty, etc, etc, ad nauseum.

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Dr Bex's avatar

Indeed. The article about how many in our core workforce are now headed overseas outlines several concerning implications, none of them good (for NZ)

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Brigid  Sinclair's avatar

Met an engineer the other day while loading food donations into car for free pantry (pataka kai). He said “ things have to change. The economy isn’t working. People who have been doing it tough are used to it being tough . So it doesn’t really matter if it gets a bit tougher for them for a while. They’ll cope. “!!!

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Kate's avatar

All very well if you're not the one doing it tough. The sheer grinding horror of day to day poverty and food & housing insecurity has to be experienced to be understood. It leaves enduring damage to both physical and mental health, with generational effects.

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Clare Sheehan's avatar

WTF???

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Summerhaze's avatar

Gee, Brigid. How did you not smack him?

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Keith Simes's avatar

That Willis/Luxton photo deserves a caption competition! “A toast to us! Paid for by the poor.”

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Dr Bex's avatar

heh. it is quite an amazing pic, that one

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Clare Sheehan's avatar

All I could think of was : Pigs at the trough

And seeing Bedleg Sam stuffing his gob 🤬

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Hilary's avatar

I am a bit suspicious about how the learning support money will be used. There is a lot in the announcement about behaviour management and nothing about inclusion. It will also be phased in very slowly over 4 years.

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Dr Bex's avatar

Indeed. There are some good bits, but no substantive changes, just ensuring sufficient funding for current need (more ed psychs, more SLTs, more LSCs, increased ORS), with a chunk of it coming from disestablished roles (RT-Lit, RT-Māori, Kahui Ako). This is pretty good summary tbh: https://www.education.govt.nz/our-work/publications/corporate-documents/budget-2025/learning-support

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Hilary's avatar

Let's see in a year or so what has changed in inclusion for our kids in schools.

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