Society judged on its treatment of the marginalised
So the election result is not what many of us expected. Oh the rants and raves. Oh the prophecies of economic doom and gloom. Well, we shall see.
There is a class in every society who sees themselves as the natural rulers. In New Zealand this is largely the middle and wealthy National Party cohort. They often think that their class interests are the interests of the state as a whole. It’s no coincidence it calls itself the National Party as if only it could represent the nation. Similarly Labour sees itself as championing workers; NZ First, the Greens, the Maori Party and so on each claim a natural cohort.
Time will tell whether Jacinda Ardern can hold together what the three partner parties have in common. What emerged from the process was a considerable commonalty on priorities, though differences of degree, and a willingness to engage in an appropriate process over elements without agreement such as the Kermadec marine sanctuary. There were fewer dead rats for these parties to follow to work together than the alternative coalitions, National with NZ First or Greens etc.
We Christians will, I trust, pray for good government rather than carp about National’s leading party status. After all the new coalition represents more votes than National alone could. The threesome exercises checks and balances on each other’s more extreme planks of policy. That is what MMP is designed to do.
As some Christians ask themselves, on every occasion, what would Jesus do? Reflecting on this, the scriptures that came first to my mind were parts of the Magnificat, the song of Jesus’ mother Mary: He has put down the mighty from their seat and has exalted the humble and meek, he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away.
I firmly believe that any society is judged ultimately not by its millionaires or its GDP. Rather it is how the most marginalised are treated, also that the more we herald a global society the more we should be concerned for the world’s marginalised, not just our own. So what do I demand of the 40th Prime Minister? What do I want the loyal Opposition of National and Act to challenge if they fail?
That our greatest resource, our children should be fed and sheltered and educated to become valued and valuable members of our society. So I welcome moves towards a living wage, so that conscientious parents need not juggle four jobs to feed their family, unmotivated families may find a place for them to become valued members of society, young people can undertake training for the work they would love to do, and also the abandonment of a system of national (?) standards in education that told six-year-olds they were already failures.
To develop the skills of our own young people rather than import them readymade from elsewhere, while offering a place where refugees and migrants may find acceptance and a future, throughout the land,
Combining economic investment throughout the whole country to offer work to more people in more areas, and to build up economic resources for us to process and export a wider range of goods beyond dairy, raw logs and oil. Reforming the tax structure to reflect these goals of production and work, rewarding these activities ahead of juggling markets and money, e.g. to offset higher wages with a more sympathetic tax regime for small businesses. What would Jesus say? Inasmuch as you do it for the least of mine you do it to me.