Porirua Knows What Works. Does the Budget?

Opinion piece by Dr. Nethmi Kearns

Porirua Knows What Works. Does the Budget?

Every budget is a statement of priorities. While Budget 2026 is framed as a responsible path back to surplus, it also reveals what the Government is willing to defer, and who is being asked to carry the burden in the meantime.

In Porirua, through community reimagining sessions and the Porirua Community Leaders’ Forum, three priorities consistently emerge: healthy and affordable housing, kai security, and climate resilience. These are not abstract policy concerns. They are the everyday conditions that determine whether whānau are thriving or simply getting by.

There are aspects of this Budget that deserve recognition. The Government has committed $45 million for community food support and school breakfast programmes, alongside $212 million to continue Healthy School Lunches and early childhood food programmes in 2027. Investment in the Healthy School Lunches in particular will provide broad and significant benefits for tamariki[1][2][3] and help relieve pressure on families facing rising living costs.

There is also welcome investment in housing and child well-being. The Budget includes $69 million to fund up to 2,250 additional social homes, $22.4 million to help prevent households entering emergency housing and provision of temporary support for households and public services facing fuel pressures.

These investments will make a genuine difference for many whānau. But they also highlight a deeper concern. Much of the spending is focused on responding to hardship after it emerges rather than investing in the conditions that prevent hardship in the first place.

Housing provides perhaps the clearest example. While the Government has announced additional social housing places, it has also increased the proportion of income that many social housing tenants will pay in rent, from 25% to 30%. For households already struggling with rising costs, this is effectively asking some of the country's lowest-income families to contribute more while receiving no increase in the quality or security of their housing.

The Government argues this will improve fairness and sustainability. But for many Porirua whānau, an additional 5% of household income is not a minor adjustment. It is money that would otherwise go towards kai, electricity, transport, school costs, or unexpected expenses. At a time when many whānau are already making impossible trade-offs, this decision risks deepening hardship rather than reducing it.

At the same time, the Budget’s own child poverty data shows that New Zealand remains off track to meet most targets. Only one of three child poverty measures[4] is projected to meet the 2027 target, with none on track for 2028. If child poverty remains stubbornly high despite increasing investment in crisis responses, then this yet again begs the question whether the system is addressing symptoms instead of the causes.

The same question can be asked of climate change.

The recently released National Climate Change Risk Assessment reinforces that New Zealand’s climate change policy is insufficient. As well as the physical hazards people in this country are used to dealing with (such as earthquakes), there are new and intensifying hazards from climate change that are creating challenges outside historical experience. Yet assessments of our current policy continue to identify significant gaps in overall readiness.

In Porirua, the Climate Change Assembly highlighted that climate action is fundamentally about well-being, not just emissions. It is about warm homes, resilient infrastructure, affordable energy, and safe futures for tamariki. This whakaaro echoes the moemoeā of Atiawa-Toa Iwi Māori Partnership Board-Oranga Whenua, Oranga Wai, and Oranga Whānau-that the health of te taiao underpins the health of our people.

Yet Budget 2026 offers little indication that this integrated understanding is driving investment decisions.

No funding has been allocated to meet New Zealand's Paris Agreement commitments. At the same time, $1.8 billion has been committed to a single Road of National Significance. There is good news in the $1 billion investment to renew and upgrade New Zealand's rail network, but the overall direction remains clear. While transport infrastructure is important, the scale of this commitment contrasts sharply with investment in equity and climate-focused policy infrastructure.

The disestablishment of the Ministry for the Environment, alongside proposed law changes that would open public conservation land to sale and development, adds to a broader sense of retreat from long-term environmental stewardship and sustainability.

This is not an argument against fiscal discipline or infrastructure investment. Both matter. But budgets are ultimately about choices, and choices reveal what we value.

If the Porirua Community Leaders Forum has shown anything, it is that communities are already building the future they want to see. Iwi, providers, schools, organisations, and residents are working together in ways that are practical, local, and forward-looking.

Porirua has been clear about its priorities: healthy homes, kai security, climate action, and wellbeing built through prevention rather than crisis response. These are not competing goals. They are the interconnected foundations needed to make Porirua the best place to raise a whānau; and for us to be good ancestors for future generations to come.

[1] Mana Pounamu Consulting & Ministry of Education. (2024) Nau Mai E Ngā Hua: Kaupapa Māori Evaluation of Ka Ora Ka Ako | Healthy School Lunches Programme.

[2] Vermillion Peirce, P., Jarvis-Child, B., Chu, L., Lennox, K., Kimber, N., Clarke, H., Wang, N., Nguyen Chau, T. and Winthrop, P. (2022). Ka Ora, Ka Ako New Zealand Healthy School Lunches Programme Impact Evaluation. Ministry of Education.

[3] Toro, C and Swinburn, B. (2024). Evidence for free school lunches: Are they worth investing in?. Public Health Communication Centre

[4] Material hardship: This measures child poverty by looking at the proportion of children living in households lacking seven or more items on the MH-18 material hardship index.

The after-housing-costs fixed-line measure (AHC50): This measures child poverty by looking at the proportion of children living in households with incomes that are less than half the median income in 2017/18, after paying for housing costs (e.g. rent) and adjusting for inflation.

The before-housing-costs moving-line measure (BHC50): This measures child poverty by looking at the proportion of children living in households with incomes before housing costs that are less than half the median income for the financial year.