Integral to the debate around poverty was homelessness. It wasn’t this way even a decade or so ago. In 2004, American writer Jeffrey Masson told me that one of the reasons he decided to move here was that he saw so few homeless people on Auckland’s streets – unlike his home city of San Francisco. Now the difference between the two cities would be difficult to spot.

A pointed reminder of the problem early in the year was the shiny new state house on Auckland’s Queens Wharf designed by Michael Parekowhai and officially unveiled on February 9. It was a cheeky nod to what we have lost – an egalitarian society where the poor could always find shelter in the embrace of a benevolent state. Now, as the stock of state housing has diminished, a lot of people are forced to find shelter in cars or garages or outside shops under their awnings.

Poverty became a hot topic this year in part because Green co-leader Metiria Turei confessed in July that she had defrauded welfare agencies as a young mother by claiming more money on a sole parent’s benefit than she was due, to feed her baby. The topic became so contentious that Bill English suddenly announced during one of the leaders’ debates in September that, if re-elected, he would lift 100,000 children out of poverty by 2020.

He was late to embrace that subject. For a long time he had denied it was a problem, arguing that child poverty could not even be measured, but the realisation that far too many children in New Zealand are growing up without adequate food and shelter finally became unavoidable – especially after Amnesty International and Unicef both highlighted our unenviable record this year.

Turei’s confession and subsequent resignation as co-leader forced us to discuss poverty, but subsequent events revealed another unfortunate truth: while we cared very deeply about a politician lying about her living arrangements when she was a sole mother 20 years ago, we didn’t mind when Minister of Finance Steven Joyce invented an $11.7 billion hole in the Labour Party’s fiscal plans, or when Prime Minister Bill English bent the truth about Labour’s intention to cancel planned income tax cuts and instead insisted the party would raise them.

The difference may be partly to do with prejudice against a Maori woman, but the virulent reaction to her confession was perhaps mostly because Turei is a Green. In the popular imagination, as revealed on social media, Greens are watermelons – green on the outside but hiding a screaming red interior of socialism – and only too ready to take other people’s money via taxes.

Yet we discovered in mid-September (thanks to a collaborative investigation by the Financial Times and Newsroom) that the National Party actually has a list MP in Parliament who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party before he moved to New Zealand and that he had links to military intelligence. Blue-Reds is not what we normally associate with the National Party – and we have to assume that the farmer who held up a sign referring to Jacinda Ardern as a “pretty communist” during a protest in Morrinsville was unaware of Dr Jian Yang and his background.

Apparently, most New Zealanders don’t care too much about this, even though Dr Yang has never hidden his admiration for the repressive regime of his homeland and, in fact, has publicly extolled its virtues, including in his maiden speech in Parliament in 2012. He also sat on the foreign affairs, defence and trade committee until he was removed, without explanation, in March 2016. The SIS allegedly took an interest in him last year. He has denied being a spy, although he has admitted he taught English to spies.

Winston Peters called for an inquiry, and as part of the new coalition government he can make sure he gets one. So far media coverage of Yang’s background has been sparse, but even if New Zealanders aren’t worried about the ramifications of our close links with China, our allies may well be.

In October, the New York Times quoted Rodney Jones, a Beijing-based New Zealand economist who has worked in Asia for 30 years. He said that an “unrepentant” former member of the Communist Party should not be eligible to be a New Zealand lawmaker. He said Yang’s ascension showed that New Zealand had become a “tributary state” of China and that he should resign from Parliament.

Yang defended himself by calling the accusations a smear campaign and racist. Astonishingly, economist Michael Reddell recorded on his blog Croaking Cassandra that he was told in September by Chris Finlayson – the then Attorney-General, no less – that his questions in a public forum about Yang were racist.

When our most senior legal officer and a high-ranking National Party minister resorts to playing the racist card, it’s obvious that any analysis or criticism of who is allowed to settle or work in New Zealand – or even initiating a reasonable debate about the cultural composition of our society – is impossible.