Ditch those Trumpisms, you’re better than that Bill
When the Prime Minister attacks Kiwi jobseekers, he’s following the US President’s precedent for embellishing reality.
WHENhumans look back on today, they’ll hopefully see that we didn’t do too much damage.
Ideally, Earth won’t be a smouldering ruin, and students of history will view the Trump era with curiosity and amazement.
One of the things these future students will be sure to study will be Trumpisms: the president’s moves and strategies that may seem random but are actually cleverly placed and highly effective barbs designed to be an integral part of his political armoury. Things like repeating untruths as if they were facts, or using anecdotal incidents as proof of troublesome larger issues, or generalising about a stereotype to justify policy.
This past week, our prime minister, Southland’s finest, Bill English proved that he wasn’t above employing such tactics when he described Kiwi jobseekers as struggling to find work because they can’t pass a drug test. English has form for this type of generalisation: this time last year he called job-seekers ‘‘pretty damned hopeless’’
adding that stories from ‘‘dozens of employers’’ showed there was a ‘‘cohort of Kiwis now’’ who didn’t turn up to work or didn’t stay on when offered a job.
When LabourMP Iain LeesGalloway called English’s generalisations a disgrace, the then deputy PMshot back it was a ‘‘realistic of what we are dealing with’’ and branded LeesGalloway as ‘‘out of touch’’. Ouch. If this election was that 2000 classic film Bring It On, we’re up to the bit where the leader of the Clovers cheer squad just tore up the cheque that Kirsten Dunst’s character gave her.
Now, perhaps it’s true that some jobseekers in this country could be viewed by judgmental people as ‘‘pretty damned hopeless’’. Others might well fail drug tests. And perhaps many Kiwis will admit that they too actually know someone who would sometimes struggle to turn up to work.
But there’s a difference between one of us saying things like that in a debate at the pub, and the prime minister of the country saying it as though it’s fact.
When you have at your disposal the tools of government – from the statistics department, to the Ministry of Social Development’s data, to the GCSB – to give you any accurate information you need, there really isn’t an excuse to use generalisations or quote stories from ‘‘dozens of employers’’.
Indeed, when it comes to Kiwis failing drug tests, the Government’s own figures do not back up the Prime Minister’s comments.
And when it comes to handing out criticism, why punch down? Why put the blame on those at the bottom of the system? There may be a time in life when any of us GETTY IMAGES could go through a phase where we could be judged as ‘‘pretty damned hopeless’’.
For many, a phase like this can be quite normal. I can remember being both unemployed, and at times, struggling to turn up to work... especially, if it was a job that I didn’t want, and so, struggled to do.
Of course, feeling like that is something you have to get over if you’re desperate and many people manage to do just that every day – but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. So please Bill, enough judging of your fellow Kiwis and enough of the Trumpisms.