At 12 minutes past seven this morning I just wanted to put my head in my hands. Because what I was listening to was so depressing. 
You may have heard it too. It was the conversation Mike Hosking was having with a bar owner in Rotorua, who was talking about homeless people living in motels. 
Megan Woods was in Rotorua yesterday to do some cheerleading about a new “hub” the Government is setting up to help homeless people there. 
Rhetorical question: When did we become a nation of “hubs”. These “one-stop shop” things that are full of good intentions but leave you walking out the door with not much more than you walked in with. Maybe a few pamphlets. 
Someone needs a roof over their head at night, so what does the Government do? It builds a “hub”. 
Politicians love setting up “hubs”. They do it all the time, all over the show. Because it means they can say they’re doing something about a problem when they’re actually not doing a damn thing. 
“We’re here to help”. Come and see us at our one-stop shop. Yeah yeah…do me a favour. 
Have you ever seen those people doing it tough carrying a sign saying “I need a hub”. Of course not, their signs say things like “looking for work”, “need money for food” that sort of thing. 
And on the same day Megan Woods was setting up the hub in Rotorua, we heard that New Zealand is currently spending a million dollars a day on motels for emergency housing. 
That’s $100 a day for the 10,000 people in this country who currently live in motels paid for by the Government for emergency housing. 
And so, Mike was talking to this guy about what’s going on in Rotorua. 
Here’s what he said about the scene at the motels where people are living paid for by the Government. 
He said: “You see kids running around the streets late at night unattended.” And he wasn’t talking about teenagers - he said these kids are 4, 5, 6, 7. 
He also said: “It’s disgusting and way beyond our imagination. And if this terrible underbelly isn’t ripped open and exposed, we’re never going to solve the problem.” 
And I just pictured the scene he was talking about. I thought about 4, 5, 6, 7-year olds running around the streets at night. Cooped up living in a motel. The ones who’re at school trying to do their homework amongst all that. 
I pictured what these kids are being exposed to - with the types of people that will be living in other units next door, upstairs, and downstairs. 
As I said, it was depressing. 
Apparently, the Prime Minister thinks having people living in motels is better than having them living in cars. Again - do me a favour. 
Of course, living in a motel is better than living in a car. But that’s like telling someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer and told they have a year to live, that it’s better than being told they have six months left to live. It’s meaningless. 
What wouldn’t be meaningless - is the Government coming out and saying 'this is an appalling situation we’ve got ourselves into and we can’t keep spending a million dollars a day putting homeless people in motels and expecting the problem to fix itself'. 
Because it’s not going to fix itself. It’s just another example of a government playing whack-a-mole - that game where things pop up and you have to bang them down as fast as you can. 
Cost of living crisis - bang. Homelessness - bang. Covid-19 - bang. Mental health crisis - bang. Whack-a-mole. Left, right and centre. Whack-a-mole. Labour, National, ACT. 
And I’m exhausted by it. Because it feels to me like we are living in a permanent state of crisis and the only thing any of our political parties seem capable of is having the hammer on hand and whacking things down when they pop up. Responding, not leading. 
And this appalling situation where we have 10,000 New Zealanders living in motels paid for by the Government, is just the start. If the Government - and the Opposition - are...

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.