Kiwis shouldn’t starve to heat

The rise of the working poor has added another layer to the picture of winter woes.

It’s an issue that comes into sharp focus like clockwork every year, as the bitter cold begins to bite; as much a feature of a Kiwi winter as skiing and snowboarding. What changes is the specifics, and this year they include a concerning focus seen in numerous other stories about deprivation: the rise in New Zealand of the so-called ‘‘working poor’’. In winter, that often means people forced to choose between eating and heating because their incomes aren’t sufficient to cover both.

The increasing presence of such hapless workers seems to be evidence of wage growth in some sectors not having kept pace with inflation, of the good ship ‘‘rock star’’ economy, where unemployment is relatively low, carrying an increasing number of passengers in the crowded budget cabins.

Time was when the bulk of stories in the media during the coldest months were about some superannuitants struggling to ward off the cold on their fixed incomes – for instance, climbing into bed early to try to keep warm, rather than face costs their National Super wouldn’t enable them to meet.

Naturally there were regular stories about beneficiaries struggling in houses without adequate insulation, with damp and mould causing health issues, sometimes repeat hospital admissions.

Those were concerning enough, but the rise of the working poor has added another layer to the picture of winter woes. A survey of more than 1000 New Zealanders by the Salvation Army reveals ‘‘not just beneficiaries but people in our community who are working are still not making ends meet and are being forced to choose’’, according to welfare services manager Jono Bell. The survey found 45 per cent of respondents had gone without heating in the last year, and some were resorting to measures such as leaving the oven door open to stay warm, a bleak picture indeed for a First World country.

The Labour-led Government’s new Families Package aims to address such needs. In the case of working Kiwis, it may give them extra cash in hand through changes to Working For Families; for beneficiaries and superannuitants, a new Winter Energy Payment, paying single people $20.46 a week, and couples $31.82, runs from July 1 the end of September. Next year it starts on May 1.

These measures are timely. It should be anathema to all New Zealanders that some of us are forced to freeze to eat, or starve to heat.

But in the case of the energy payment, there are understandably questions about its universality for superannuitants, when there are Kiwis working fulltime who won’t get it, and realistically need it. Means-testing is a dirty term to many, including Acting Prime Minister Winston Peters, who says he will take the payment, paid to superannuitants unless they opt out.

Means-testing conjures up visions of a punitive welfare framework, which would be regrettable in this context. But those aged 65 and over have, as a group, the highest median net worth in New Zealand, and some who automatically get that payment patently don’t need it.

The situation cries out for an innovative way to target the payment more effectively towards genuine need.