Fight poverty, not the poor

Remember, state pensions are not “targeted” either. The rich and the poor receive them equally.

Dostoevsky wrote his seminal novel, Crime and Punishment, in 1866 but his observations about poverty and crime are just as insightful and relevant today as they were then. Reading the book, it becomes clear that the most damaging aspects of poverty are humiliation and alienation.

I wonder what Dostoevsky would have said about our new Government’s attitude toward the poor and its disturbing obsession with punishment as a policy tool.

Take the newly introduced benefit sanctions. The welfare experts say there is little evidence in support of using sanctions to change behaviour; rather “there is research indicating that they compound social harm and disconnectedness”.

The new Social Development Minister, Louise Upston, says 12% of the current individual beneficiaries are likely to have all their benefits removed, but is unable to say who will feed and house these individuals.

In Crime and Punishment, poverty played a role in driving the main character to commit murder, as did hatred for the greed and nastiness of the pawnbroker (the victim).

I seriously worry about the level of anger and division this lunch-snatching, beneficiary-bashing, Māori-alienating coalition Government is creating in our society.

On a recent trip to Wellington, I met two artist friends who rely on their resourcefulness to survive financially while producing creative work. They talked about the precarious housing situation many of their young friends were forced into and the deep suffering caused by addiction and mental health issues in their communities.

Kids and young adults are the future of this country and their health and wellbeing should be the focus of policy making. I find it unbelievable that the current Government can even contemplate cancelling or reducing the current Ka Ora, Ka Ako, Healthy School Lunches.

Around one in five children in New Zealand live in households that struggle to put enough good-quality food on the table.

Schools, teachers and health experts say the programme is a game-changer, but the Associate Minister of Education, David Seymour, wants to cut the programme by 50% because he says “it has to be bettertargeted”. (He initially wanted to scrap the programme in its entirety, but was forced into accepting a compromise).

Remember, state pensions are not “targeted” either. The rich and the poor receive them equally. So why isn’t Seymour making a song and dance about introducing a more “efficient” pension system?

The answer is that trying to deliver these services in a more targeted manner introduces a level of complexity that would make the whole system even more costly. Cutting funding for school lunches is not about avoiding “wastage”, it is about finding money to fund the promised tax cuts for the rich and mega landlords.

The new Government is acting as a reverse Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. What it should be doing is to extend school lunches and ensure no child ever suffers the stigma of receiving school lunches.

A couple of years ago a friend told me a true story that, to me, was more revelatory about poverty than anything written by Dostoevsky.

The story is close to 40 years old and is about a schoolboy in one of the most deprived villages in my home country of Iran. Almost all the children in this village, at one point or another, grappled with hunger and so assumed it to be the normal course of life. But one fateful day, this perception changed for a little boy whose name was announced in front of the whole school as the chosen recipient of a cheque from the government.

The cheque, everyone knew, was given to the most destitute child in the school. Before then, the little boy had no idea he was that child.

The violence of the humiliation he suffered showed itself when he got home.

He threw the cheque at his mother before hitting her in a fit of anger, all the while crying hysterically. What had caused the anger was the realisation of how he was perceived by the others.

The hurt from indignities of poverty can be long-lasting and sometimes irreversible. This is why poverty is measured in relative, not absolute terms.

The job of the Government is to close the inequality gap and reduce its social harms. As a society we have a choice. We can either aspire to be more like Denmark or the United States.

Both these countries have a similar per capita national income, but they have very different political systems. As a result, the United States’ average child poverty rate is more than double Denmark’s rate, which is the lowest in the world.

Don’t let this Government tell you poverty is about personal choices – it is not. Poverty is about policy.

What our Government should be doing is fighting poverty, rather than the poor.

Donna Miles is an Iranian-Kiwi columnist and writer based in Christchurch, and a regular opinion contributor.