95bFM Academic: New move-on orders 'never intended to make sense'
6 March, 2026
Interview by Vihan Dalal, adapted by Marlo Schorr-Kon
The Government has introduced new move-on orders for rough sleepers across the country. The new orders give police the authority to ask rough sleepers to relocate from an area for 24 hours, and will leave it up to the police to provide support for them. If rough sleepers fail to comply with these orders, they are liable to pay a $2000 fine.
Professional Teaching Fellow at the University of Auckland's School of Social Sciences, Dr Emmy Rākete, told 95bFM’s The Wire that the use of the phrase ‘move on’ is “really misleading in a quite dangerous way.”
“They give the impression that if someone is homeless, begging for change in public, that a police officer will come along and tell them, well, you know, move along.”
Rākete says the issue is a lack of social housing for people to live in.
“We don't have enough emergency housing, certainly, to house people. We don't have overnight homeless shelters for people to sleep in.”
There is also a lack of medical support for the homeless.
“We don't have enough social workers to be doing community outreach services. We don't have mental health clinicians, doctors, or nurses in hospitals. So when people are being told to move on, what they're being told is [to] vanish.”
“And when they can't vanish, they'll be fined, they'll be arrested, and they'll be sent to prison. That's exactly what these laws will achieve. The brutalisation of the poor to zero positive social outcome.”
“This policy was never intended to make sense,” Rākete says. “This is an earnest attempt to fix a social problem.”
“They're charging a fine to people for the crime of begging for loose change in public. What do they think is going to happen?”
Rākete says the government is responsible for homelessness due to the cuts to social housing, welfare, and social services.
“This government has aggressively disinvested from social services. They have been closing open positions for mental health clinicians, for doctors, and for nurses.”
Rākete says the government has “chosen a very clear side. It's governing in the interests of the rich and of the rich alone, and the rest of us can rot. And if we rot in public, then a cop will come along, and tell us to vanish, and if we can't disappear, they'll send us to prison.”
While this government and previous governments have disinvested from society, Rākete points out that they've invested very heavily in punishment.
“There's never enough money for houses. There's never enough money for hospitals or schools or doctors or any of the stuff you and I need to live full, human, dignified lives, but there's infinite money for cops. There's infinite money for prison expansions, for maximum security units, for pepper spray, for handcuffs. There's always money to punish people, but there's never any money to actually help them.”
