Editor’s Note: Here below is a list of the main issues currently under discussion in New Zealand and links to media coverage.  Click here to subscribe to Bryce Edwards’ Political Roundup and New Zealand Politics Daily.

Today’s content

Housing: Rental market
Glenn McConnell (Stuff): Forget first-home buyers, the metric of success in the housing crisis is rental prices
Mark Quinlivan (Newshub): New Zealanders react after Finance Minister Grant Robertson says tenants will ‘go looking elsewhere’ if landlords hike rents
Rachel Sadler (Newshub): Housing crisis: Social media users attack Jacinda Ardern over Government’s new housing plans
RNZ: Housing package opens door to investor angst, renter despondency
Madison Reidy (Newshub): Housing crisis: Landlords’ warning to increase rents not an empty threat – economists
Anne Gibson (Herald): Government housing changes: 12-house landlord reveals plan to defeat state, avoid extra tax (paywalled)
Kate Hawkesby (Newstalk ZB): The housing announcement will not help renters
Thomas Coughlan (Stuff): Judith Collins says rents will rise thanks to Government housing package
The Civilian: Landlords threaten to install uneven stairs, put light switches in awkward places if bright-line test is extended

Housing: Govt announcement
Shamubeel Eaqub (RNZ): Housing policies: Tilting towards supply, away from landed gentry
Stephen Forbes (Stuff): Salvation Army questions Government’s new housing package
Dita De Boni (NBR): Housing package doesn’t address irrationality underlying real estate market (paywalled)
Greg Ninness (Interest): Government’s new housing policies should bring hope to first home buyers
Nikki Mandow (Newsroom): Higher house price caps would have helped only a few hundred first home buyers
Mike Hosking (Newstalk ZB): Will the Government’s housing policy work?
RNZ: Labour hopes changes bring stability to housing market, Ardern says ‘we’ll see’ if prices fall
Daniel Dunkley (Stuff): Govt reforms put investors and first-home buyers on collision course
Michael Reddell: Messing around with housing
Heather du Plessis-Allan (Newstalk ZB): Housing package likely makes it harder for first-home buyers
Bryan Bruce (Daily Blog): You can’t get the right answer if you keep asking the wrong question
Steven Cowan: Housing: Labour tinkers with a failed system
Mark Quinlivan and Mel Logan (Newshub): Government housing policy appears to have been made ‘on the fly’ – political scientist Bryce Edwards
Martin Gregory (International socialists): Labour’s 23 March Housing Announcement
Adam Jacobson (RNZ): Housing Acceleration Fund welcomed but industry questions if it is enough to fix crisis
1News: First home buyers: What you can buy around the country under the new First Home Loan price caps

Housing: Tax deductibility changes
Hamish Rutherford (Herald): ‘Will my sector be next?’ – BusinessNZ slams Government’s move on interest deductibility (paywalled)
Jason Walls (Herald): Housing package interest policy: Economist questions Treasury’s lack of advice due to ‘time constraints
Priscilla Dickinson (Newshub): Not ‘money-hungry fat cats’: Landlord takes exception to Government reference to interest deduction ‘loophole’
Tamsyn Parker (Herald): Investment property interest write-off change prompts lending rethink by ANZ

Housing: Ten-year bright line test extension
Claire Trevett (Herald): Will housing be PM Jacinda Ardern’s political capital gains tax risk? (paywalled)
Pattrick Smellie (BusinessDesk): Brightline test reform ‘worse than doing nothing’: Treasury (paywalled)
Thomas Coughlan (Stuff): How much tax has come from the bright-line test? Inland Revenue doesn’t know
Henry Cooke (Stuff): How the Government is changing rules for renting out your ‘main home’ and the bright-line test

Housing: General
Brendon Blue (Democracy Project): Non-homeowners are paying the cost of the Covid recovery
Sam Kelway (1News): Government must ‘build houses now’, Ōpōtiki mayor pleads amid housing crisis
Mike Treen (Daily Blog): Banks have created the speculative bubble and should be nationalised
Rebecca Moore (1News): Property commentator Ashley Church predicts house prices will double in next six years
Stuart Smith; Arena Williams (Stuff): If we are to solve the housing problem we need more houses – not a capital gains tax

Health
Audrey Young (Herald): Health system under serious stress, major reform coming, Andrew Little says
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Government set to urgently restructure stressed and unequal health system
Richard Harman: The big health overhaul picks up pace
Hannah Martin (Stuff): How coronavirus and lockdown impacted New Zealand’s health system
Hamish MacLean (ODT): Code black at Dunedin Hospital: ‘Avoid ED if possible’

Parliament Speaker Trevor Mallard
Barry Soper (Herald): Jacinda Ardern seems to have a ‘la la la’ moment when it comes to Trevor Mallard
Yvette McCullough (RNZ): National calls on PM to back no confidence vote on Mallard
Henry Cooke (Stuff): Judith Collins renews call for Trevor Mallard’s head in letter to Jacinda Ardern
Herald: National, Collins step up campaign against Speaker Trevor Mallard
Newstalk ZB: Judith Collins renews calls for removal of Trevor Mallard as Speaker
Martyn Bradbury (Daily Blog): New Mallard allegations – when you go Welly Woke, you go Welly Broke

Parliament and Government
Audrey Young (Herald): Former Air NZ boss Christopher Luxon explains his Christian faith in maiden speech
Luke Malpass (Stuff): Ex-Air NZ CEO Christopher Luxon gives maiden speech to Parliament, defends his Christianity
RNZ: MP Chris Luxon tells Parliament his religious views not extreme
Stuff: Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds delivers maiden speech
Derek Cheng (Herald): Invercargill MP Penny Simmonds tells Wellington to get out of the way
Herald: National MPs Nicola Grigg and Simon Watts deliver maiden speeches

Security Intelligence Service
Tova O’Brien (Newshub): NZSIS boss Rebecca Kitteridge can’t promise spies are looking in right places, picking up obvious far-right threats
Jane Patterson (RNZ): Andrew Little defends SIS, criticises media coverage
RNZ: SIS expansion of data mining powers not off the cards – Andrew Little
Thomas Manch (Stuff): Spies increasingly investigating ‘white identity extremism’, including organised extremist groups
Derek Cheng (Herald): Spy agency’s shift to far-right white nationalist threat – but SIS won’t say how far balance has swung
Rebecca Moore (1News): Threat of young people, mainly men, joining extremist groups ‘very real’, security expert says
Alex Braae (Spinoff): Spy chiefs grilled about priorities in rare public appearance
Zane Small (Newshub): NZSIS top spy Rebecca Kitteridge tells group of powerful MPs there’s ‘no doubt’ white supremacy is on the rise

Economy and work
RNZ: More than a third of people living pay day to pay day – study
Herald: Westpac Bank considers selling New Zealand business, cites RBNZ pressure
Mike Hosking (Herald): Has the Government sabotaged our economy? (paywalled)
Sarah Robson (RNZ): Covid-19 employment hardship: Where does New Zealand stand a year on?
Tom Pullar-Strecker (Stuff): Power bills start to climb as wholesale prices surge

Local government
RNZ: Otago Regional Council ponders general rates rise of 73%
Bernard Orsman (Herald): Secret planning under way for second Auckland Harbour Bridge (paywalled)
Joel MacManus (Stuff): Seventeen years have passed, but Let’s Get Wellington Moving plan hasn’t budged
Brittany Keogh (Stuff): Some Hutt City councillors face $6500 pay cut, in a move labelled as seeming ‘petty’
RNZ: Three Christchurch City Council redundancies cost ratepayers $316,000
Tina Law (Stuff): Canterbury’s civic leaders call for Government to slow down its water reforms

Racism; Police
Qiuyi Tan (Herald): Racism prevalent in New Zealand, says Human Rights Commission
Newstalk ZB: Meng Foon criticised by both political parties for calling police racist
Tim McKinnel (Spinoff): Is Police Ten 7 fly-on-the-wall reality or propaganda? These documents make it clear
Debbie Ngarewa-Packer (Herald): A greater Māori TV presence? We’re not talking Police Ten 7 (paywalled)
Darroch Ball (Kiwiblog): Police are not racist, they are just doing their job

Covid
Jo Moir (Newsroom): One year on: How Covid changed politics
Colleen Hawkes (Stuff): A year since the first lockdown, how the pandemic has changed how and where we live
Herald: One year on from New Zealand’s unprecedented move into full lockdown
Marc Daalder (Newsroom): One year on: Behind the scenes of NZ’s first lockdown
Stuff: Editorial – The toil and trouble of the trans-Tasman bubble

Other
Tom Peters (World socialist website): New Zealand documentary Six Angry Women defends 1984 vigilante attack
Stephen Hoadley (The Guardian): No matter how disagreeable Australia is, New Zealand may just have to accept it
Jared Davidson (Spinoff): Making women’s prisons more gender conscious won’t solve anything much
Jason Walls (Herald): 2021 Budget date revealed: Finance Minister Grant Robertson unveils the big date to MPs