Solidarity and gratitute

The DSS Bill consumed my week, but others had time and were keeping watch on what else was going on. Here's some of the writing that deserves your time (and a big thanks to everyone for your support)

It’s been a week and I’m shattered. The DSS Bill has taken up a large chunk of my capacity and attention. I’ve seen other appalling things occurring, and simply haven’t had the head space to give them the attention they deserve. Thankfully others have picked up these issues and responded.

I am grateful for several Substackers and their writing work highlighting the cruelty, foolishness, short-term thinking, and failures of this current government. These writers are bearing witness, keeping watch, and consistently urging that our nation can and must do better for everyone.

Before I summarise their excellent work, here is a lovely virtual bouquet of flowers for you all.

We have all done so well in responding to a myriad of attacks on our land, our people, and our care systems. To everyone that wrote a submission, made a comment, shared an article, spoke to a friend - thank you.

The silver lining from the past couple of weeks has been the solidarity, care, and checking in that people have done. We’ve supported each other, seen each other, encouraged each other and cared about what is happening. There is power in this care for each other, our collective refusal to go along quietly, and the solidarities we are showing. This generosity and care leaves me feeling both proud and humbled.

a bouquet of colorful zinnias in a colourful vase

Substackers whose writing I am thankful for this week:

Nick Rockel wrote about the death on a man in the Waikato Emergency Dept, who had already waited 9 hours to be seen, and then linked this to the major underfunding and understaffing driven by Simeon Brown:

With the country still reeling from the death of a man in ED, Minister Simeon Brown’s statements suggested that the unacceptable failure to deliver healthcare when it was needed, which he calls targets, was down to Health NZ and not a result of the cuts that have been made by this government …. The coalition just doesn’t get it; they seem unwilling to entertain the idea that this death was a result of ongoing underinvestment. But at least someone seems to have recognised the possibility that targets and staffing numbers might be linked, as the following story, coincidentally, announced a halt to some of the cuts in the region.

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Bernard Hickey did a mini-hoon with NZ CCSS CEO Alicia Sudden about their recently released report which documented that measures of the number of people in Aotearoa who are hungry and living in poverty has risen over the last year to their worst-ever levels. One in six households are living in income poverty after housing costs, just over one in ten have to go without essential items regularly, and one in three households experienced food insecurity in the last year.

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Melanie Nelson has been doing solid work regarding the Conservation Amendment Bill, which is another ugly and poorly written piece of legislation being hurriedly rushed through Parliament with limited consultation:

The Government’s Conservation Amendment Bill is more than a rewrite of conservation law. Released documents show the reforms interact with about 700 Treaty settlement commitments in the conservation portfolio, with unresolved questions over how some of those commitments will be upheld in the new system. That matters because Treaty settlements were meant to settle past breaches and reset the Crown-iwi relationship – not become arrangements the Crown can unilaterally reshape when existing commitments become inconvenient.

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Bryan Bruce highlighted the multiple failures of Seymour’s school lunch scheme, as raised by the Auditor General:

Multiple food safety concerns arose during the early days of the revamped programme, ranging from dietary meals being mislabelled to students finding melted plastic, broken seals or bits of glass in their food, or being burnt by overheated meals.

The report found 51 complaints were logged in February alone. Some concerns were resolved in a single day, one took 260 days.

·Assistant Auditor-General Melanie Webb noted that even where there was measurement, “not all the programme’s goals are being met”. She said the number of unopened, uneaten meals - or surplus - were higher than the maximum contracted for, and rates are increasing.

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Both Paul Singh and Dr Andrew Dickson wrote about the cruelty of ACTs anti-welfare policies where, if re-elected, they would target those with health conditions and disabilities. Paul shared the complexities and realities, grounding it in his lived experience of Young Onset Dementia:

Frontotemporal dementia can be especially poorly understood. So can atypical Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia, and other progressive neurological conditions that do not fit the public stereotype of dementia as simply memory loss in old age.

A narrow checklist may look fair on paper while missing the reality of daily life. In dementia, the longitudinal story is not optional. It is often the evidence. The usual GP, specialist, neuropsychologist, whānau, carers, former employers, and support people must not be treated as background noise.

Andrew wrote about the broader systems failures that ACT conveniently ignores:

Australia ran this experiment for years with its Cashless Debit Card and its income management schemes, and the evaluations are about as damning as our polite social science gets: little to no evidence of the promised improvements, a great deal of evidence of stigma, humiliation, administrative cruelty, and people locked out of the cash economy that the poor actually depend on, the second hand sales, the koha, the emergency twenty bucks. The card does not lift people up. It marks them. But I think that is what Seymour really enjoys, staining the poor whilst ignoring evidence-based research.

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The reason Supported Living recipients stay on a benefit for an average of more than thirteen years is not a national outbreak of laziness. It is that disability is durable and the labour market has almost no room in it for people whose bodies do not perform for the capitalists on command. The reason mental health claims have climbed is that we are living through a mental health crisis, and that poverty itself is one of the most reliable manufacturers of intense stress and mental illness that we know of.

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Lastly, while I’ve been in the thick of it, down in the weeds, practicing my oral submission and trying to get it down to 5 minutes, checking in with other organisational leaders and wider community, sharing petitions and so on, Huhana Hickey has been producing some fabulous posts about the broader issues of disability rights and human rights, including how we create a good life for us all. Her writing the past few weeks has challenged current societal attitudes, pointing us towards how we can think and act differently in our framing, belief systems, and policies.

I leave you with her astute comments about the announcement that Labour will repeal the DSS Bill if elected to government:

As the 2026 election campaign gathers momentum, something important has happened. For the first time in many years, disability has become a visible election issue. I welcome Labour’s commitment to repeal the Disability Support Services Act and its pledge to work alongside disabled people in developing replacement legislation. That commitment recognises an important principle that our movement has championed for decades which is Nothing About Us Without Us.

I also acknowledge the Green Party for its consistent advocacy for disability rights, accessibility, and disabled leadership throughout this parliamentary term and into the election campaign. These commitments deserve recognition because they reflect the voices of thousands of disabled people who have spoken out against the erosion of our rights.

However, genuine partnership means more than consultation. It requires disabled people to share decision-making power from the very beginning, including tāngata whaikaha, whānau hauā, Deaf people, neurodivergent people, disabled migrants, Pacific disabled people, family carers, and others whose voices have too often been overlooked.

If the next Government is serious about rebuilding trust, then co-design must be authentic, transparent, and adequately resourced. It cannot simply return us to where we were before; it must create a disability support system that is firmly grounded in human rights, Te Tiriti o Waitangi, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the lived expertise of disabled people themselves.

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