"Paul Goldsmith Doesn't Have a Homelessness Policy: He Has an Interior Design Policy — and the Design Calls for Your Whānau to Be Invisible" - 14 March 2026

Paul Goldsmith read the advice. All of it. His Justice Ministry opposed the policy. His Housing Ministry opposed it. Corrections warned prisons were full. Officials told him in writing the $2,000 fine was "neither appropriate nor proportionate."

He published the policy anyway.

This is not incompetence. This is a values statement — and the values say: we would rather spend $120,000 a year imprisoning a homeless person than build them a home.

My latest essay traces the whakapapa of this cruelty — from the gutting of kaupapa Māori housing funds, to the war on tikanga in the courts, to the conveyor belt that runs from welfare punishment straight to the street.

The cloak is in Goldsmith's hands. This essay pulls it off.

👉 Read: Ko te Tōpuni o te Ariki