Marlborough Express - Weekend Express
Government lacking in poverty push
TALKING POLITICS
The problems with eliminating poverty begin with the struggle to define it. Should it to be viewed as an objective level of income, as half the median income before housing costs, or as a sense of relative deprivation? Other labels don’t help much.
Viewing poverty through the lens of ‘‘rising social inequality’’ can sound sterile, and ideologically loaded. Meanwhile, there will always be people willing to blame the poor for the sin of being poor.
No wonder, then, that politicians and bureaucrats prefer to talk about ‘‘child poverty’’. The term combines social misfortune with innocence. It puts the political focus on caring, rather than on tackling systemic injustice.
Not surprisingly then, last week’s research into poverty by Statistics NZ used children as the main marker of progress. On the evidence, the nation’s less privileged children have taken only tiny steps out of poverty during the periods under scrutiny.
The report contains flickerings of good news. As of June 2020, one in seven New Zealand children were living in households with inadequate incomes. One in six were in that situation beforehand. Hold the champagne. These households were going without more than six of the 17 basic things that most people would regard as essentials.
This index of deprivation includes ‘‘serious restriction on eating fresh fruit or vegetables, putting off a visit to the doctor because of a lack of money, or not being able to pay the gas or electricity bill on time’’.
Since the ratio of households suffering from the two main ‘‘material hardship’’ measures has decreased slightly, it means that the material conditions have improved for 24,000 children overall, including 11,000 tamariki Ma¯ ori. Better than nothing.
But only small steps, given that more than 200,000 children reside to households living in poverty. Moreover, as the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) said last week, very low income households are still being left behind. Ma¯ ori, Pasifika and the disabled also continue to suffer disproportionately from the disadvantages that poverty brings in its wake:
In short, the progress in combating poverty has significant gaps, and comes nowhere near the transformational change expected of the Ardern government, given how much political support it has won from claiming to care.
The major recommendations of the Government’s own Welfare Expert Advisory Group are still sitting on the shelf. Unfortunately, Labour policy continues to make a damaging distinction between the beneficiary poor, and the poor in paid employment.
Overnight, Labour could scrap this pernicious distinction, expand access to Working for Families and use that programme as a delivery system to those most in need.
Overnight, it could also raise benefit levels significantly, as its panel of experts strongly recommended two years ago. After all, voters have given
Labour a mandate to pursue sweeping solutions for this country’s pressing problems.
Evidently, incremental change won’t be enough. As CPAG’s Professor Innes Asher commented : ‘‘The Government needs to change its policy so that all low-income families with children are allowed to access all family assistance.. Currently, our children in severest poverty are denied full access to key family assistance because their caregivers receive a benefit.’’
But is the Government listening? It does not appear to be.