They have now reappeared in the NZ Herald. You can read the details at those two links.
What frustrates is that the two reporters who have written up the Latu family's plight have seemingly asked no questions about how much income the family actually receives and how they budget it.
Mr Latu cannot work due to a knee injury and neither does his wife.
A couple on welfare with two or more children receives on average $1,244 net per week. Here is a chart from the 2024 Total Incomes Report issued by MSD:
A couple on welfare with two or more children receives on average $1,244 net per week. Here is a chart from the 2024 Total Incomes Report issued by MSD:
Click to view
The green portion - tax credits - refers to what is paid for the children. In the chart above, the average for two or more children is $397. But because there are eight Latu children that sum would rise to $967 weekly. According to MSD the first child receives $144.30 weekly and each subsequent child $117.56. You can do the maths.
So the Latu family's weekly income is now in the territory of $1814. The children each receive a further $50 monthly from the charity Variety through sponsorship, effectively adding another $100 onto the family's weekly income.
The chart above does not include the Winter Energy Payment which is $31.82 a week.
If you are following the calculation, the sum has reached $1,946 weekly during the winter months. Or $101,192 annually. After tax.
Additionally there are two relatives living with the family who will also bring in income but one can only speculate about what that is.
What can be safely stated is this. In New Zealand in 2025 the 'poverty' threshold is very high.
Now obviously I do not know what the family's outgoings are; whether they live in a state house and pay income-related rent, in a subsidised private rental or pay a subsidised mortgage. They may have high-interest debts; they might tithe to their church.
All we get with these types of mainstream media reports is emoting over unfair hardship and helplessness. One might wonder how much of the story was written by the charity and how much the journalist contributed.
In fact the redistribution of wealth into these families is substantial, by some people's standards, possibly eye-watering.
After nearly ninety years of social security it would be reasonable to conclude that the state cannot solve 'poverty'. Indeed, the more the state does, the more the state is expected to do.
Lindsay Mitchell is a welfare commentator who blogs HERE - where this article was sourced.
11 comments:
It's not journalism. It's advocacy for undeserving malingerers.
TL/DR: “Now obviously I do not know”
Many advocate the teaching of home economics and civics in schools. If we did very many more would opt for the lifestyle described. Their democratic takeover of the country would be hastened even further. A myriad masters and doctorate studies have been made of the effect of home insulation etc on life, but no one seems to have studied in detail the spending of these supposedly impoverished groups. I was brought up by parents the product of the Depression and inherited their approach. I am confident I could trim very many dollars from the household expenditure yet enjoy life. We conventional folk, both working, too fatigued to do full justice to children, constantly chasing after them, endlessly beavering to pay off a house to finance later care or leave in a will, with few to look after us in old age are the irrational mugs.
It's not even advocacy Anon 6.54. It's sheer self-interest on the part of the media involved. With a 24 hour news cycle and every "journalist" fighting for recognition, no-one makes money if the stories aren't read. It's what they teach at journalism school. Grab the readers attention. Then milk the story for emotional content. Avoid too many facts. Facts bore readers. Besides, facts remind readers of their own inadequacies. Report what the subject of your story feels about their predicament, not how they got into it. If a TV journalist, get them to cry on camera. Only publish the back-story if you can blame somebody famous, or in authority, or better still, both. Otherwise never look behind the story. it bores the punters, and boring doesn't sell newspapers.
Um, who CHOSE to have 8 brats?
Next question: who SHOULD be financing them?
Answer: THEY did, and THEY should, not the taxpayer!
And every time you attempt address this tax funded lolly scramble, the corrupt MSM wails and the docile followers start humming their tune.
Michael Joseph Savage must be turning in his grave.
And there will be many many more all over NZ having children they cannot afford and passing this cost onto the taxpayer.....I resent having to pay for other peoples children.
"If you are following the calculation, the sum has reached $1,946 weekly during the winter months. Or $101,192 annually. After tax."
For comparison this is MORE a nurse or a pharmacist, WORKING FULL TIME, would earn in a year.
Good comment Doug, but you missed out the word "MORE" before "than" given the $100k is after tax. And "8 brats", as Barend cites, what's the bet there's also a dog or other pets, and some tatts thrown in for good measure? Why is it the taxpayers' problem and why should we put up with such irresponsibility? No wonder our cupboard's bare.
You are perfectly correct, jonesboy!
Today, for a few hours, stuff and nz herald websites led with queer ex tvnz weather reader whinging how he and ‘his wife’s’ flight to participate in a marathon was blighted by strong winds.
Then nz herald’s latest Tom Phillips story by senior reporter Neil Reid dropped in it was A pointless exercise in clickbait journalism:
Private Schoolboy to Monster? NZ Herald’s Prospectus Journalism
Four days after Tom Phillips died in a shootout with police, the NZ Herald has finally cracked the case: it wasn’t four years of hiding children in a damp bush camp that turned him into an outlaw, it was his Year 10 outdoor programme at St Paul’s Collegiate. “Private schoolboy to ‘monster’,” declares the headline, as if kayaking and a wood stove in 2002 were the gateway drugs to gunfire in 2025.
Neil Reid’s article is essentially a school prospectus repackaged as a crime exclusive. Tuition fees, kit lists, sleeping bag ratings, a ban on deodorant sprays — all lovingly reproduced from the St Paul’s website. One lonely sentence mentions Phillips actually attended. Then it’s back to brochure copy about resilience and teamwork. This is not investigative journalism. It’s SEO gruel with a villain’s face photoshopped onto it.
The framing is pure envy theatre: wealthy farming parents send their boy to an “elite” school; he learns bushcraft; ergo, blame the school and parents for his later crimes. In urban New Zealand’s morality play, farmers are the convenient whipping boys and private schools the devil’s forge. The implication: if only Tom had stayed home playing PlayStation, he’d never have learned to light a fire or, heaven forbid, pick up a rifle.
Of course the real driver here isn’t public service — it’s clicks. Phillips stories have been rocket fuel for every newsroom this week. With no new police revelations and no court documents, you rummage for the “angles”: childhood, hobbies, former schools. It’s the oldest content-mill trick: milk the tragedy until even the horse is asking for a restraining order.
The Herald treats it as a shocking revelation: “firearms and range shooting” at Tihoi Venture School. But any kid who’s been to Scouts or a rural high school camp has had more exposure to firearms safety than that. Turning it into a sinister origin story is absurd. It’s like blaming a swimming certificate for a future bank robber’s escape by ferry.
This is what happens when newspapers lose the plot. Real reporting about why Phillips evaded capture for so long, or why social agencies failed his children, is expensive and uncomfortable. Copy-pasting a school website and framing it as “Private schoolboy to monster” is cheap and outrage-friendly. It makes for easy clicks, easy moral superiority, and zero new information.
Next week perhaps we’ll get “Exclusive: the lunchbox that shaped a fugitive” or “How a rogue peanut butter sandwich sparked the Marokopa manhunt.”
Until then, let’s call this what it is: filler journalism masquerading as insight, shaming the wrong people, and telling the public nothing it actually needs to know.
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