Because it's a bald-faced fucking lie. If we, as a country, were ...

> always focused on helping those in need

... There wouldn't be people sleeping on the streets, or teenagers pushing their few possessions around in shopping carts. There weren't when I was a child, because back then we *were*.

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Almost everything NatACT First have done in government - like the Key regime before them - has made life harder for those in need. They were warned by social service agencies that this would happen, and they did it all anyway. They've been focused on helping the most comfortable - like the landlords with their billions in tax loopholes - not our most vulnerable.

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@Salty
> The Key government was largely indifferent

It's pretty well recognised that the Key regime precipitated the housing crisis, by using policy designed to inflate the housing bubble, to goose the numbers on economic growth. As well as selling off public housing instead of building more affordable housing to address the growing need, especially in Tamaki Makaurau. They were warned this would lead to massive increases in homelessness. They carried on regardless.

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The Key regime made it harder to access welfare benefits, in a whole range of ways. Including ramping up enforcement of benefit sanctions and welfare fraud, while mostly ignoring white collar fraud involving much higher figures;

https://jacobin.com/2017/03/new-zealand-neoliberalism-inequality-welfare-state-tax-haven/

Also, pressuring solo parents to get fulltime paid work as soon as their youngest turns 5. Ignoring the fact that even without children at home during weekdays, a solo parent still has double the domestic workload of 2-parent households.