Buckle up for 12 months of punching down

Don’t look now, but we’re at most a year from an election. We’re less than two months from being in an election year.

This is the reason I think a three-year parliamentary term is too short. You barely have a chance for a result to bed in before you’re being forced to think about the next one. The Aussies have it too, but often can’t keep a government together for three years. Over here, that’s usually not as much of a problem.

But it is what it is. A year from now, we’ll be digesting the outcome, or in the final run-in to election day. And the last fortnight will have given even casual observers an early inkling of the tenor of the debate. In a word, divisive.

Not that that’s unexpected, and it shouldn’t pass unacknowledged that on Thursday night our Parliament passed the Zero Carbon Bill by a margin of 119 votes to the unrecorded opposition of the absent David Seymour. The watering down of the Bill notwithstanding, it represents a rare bipartisan recognition of a crisis that affects us all, regardless of political stripe.

But I’ve seen a clear indication of what we can expect between now and election day, and it makes me fearful for relations generally, and particularly for the effect on our most vulnerable, because what I see is plenty of punching down, ‘‘othering’’, pigeon-holing of minority groups.

Pessimistic much? No, reading the signs. And a big one is the phrase ‘‘everyday New Zealanders’’ filtering into debate courtesy of Opposition leader Simon Bridges. He’s already used it since voting for the Zero Carbon Bill, promising changes and ‘‘to make sure everyday Kiwis aren’t punished in the process’’.

It sounds like a focus-grouped variation on the ‘‘mainstream New Zealand’’ catchphrase of National’s 2005 election campaign, Orewa, Exclusive Brethren, Don Brash and all. Ah yes, Don Brash, still hanging around and, via Hobson’s Pledge’s leaflet drops, helping inject a touch of racist rhetoric to the recent local government elections.

It’s already become clear from the social services discussion document that National rolled out last week that they plan to apply the blowtorch to beneficiaries, as well as put the heat on gang members. I know, gangs are not a desirable element in society, but how far have our politicians ever gone down the road of examining the societal alienation that makes people ripe for recruitment? Has anyone looked closely at the reasons for the bond that emerged between them and another of our society’s hitherto ‘‘othered’’ groups, our Muslim community, after the atrocities of March 15?

Talk of cracking down on beneficiaries and pretty soon people are thinking about the ‘‘undeserving poor’’. This is punching down writ large, a subtle narrative that springs from entitlement. It encourages people to look down, to become fearful for and protective of their own position in society, to judge those with less, to think of society’s safety net, the benefit, as ‘‘our money that they’re taking’’.

The subtly promoted idea that people who are struggling are there due to their own poor choices is a malign, Murdochesque mantra that will only ever increase division.

Yes, a small minority of people rort the benefit system, and are punished if caught, but the perception that somehow there are a plethora of beneficiaries who actually want to be there because it’s easier than real life is dangerous and wrong. I’ve read it at least once this week, and it’s a perspective that takes no account of the shame many who have to deal with Work and Income suffer.

I haven’t had to do it, I’m lucky, but I know many people who have been beneficiaries at some point – many as single mothers – and I don’t know one who didn’t find it a chastening, soul-destroying experience.

But sure, let entitled middleclass Kiwis who’ve never had to worry where their children’s next meal was coming from throw around terms like ‘‘featherbedding’’ in relation to welfare. That’s guaranteed to make it easier for people to survive it. And just quietly, our biggest group of beneficiaries is superannuitants.

The narrative of the undeserving poor implies a counter-narrative of the deserving rich. Yet how many of them got wealthy by stepping over others, by running companies that didn’t pay staff the living wage? I can’t read a story about the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, without thinking of what I’ve read about the poor pay and austere working conditions at Amazon distribution centres.

It’s not possible to talk about punching down this week without talking about Shane Jones’ boofheaded comments about the Indian community and the effect of a directive to immigration officials to adopt a hardline approach to partnership visa requirements for couples to have lived together for 12 months. This has led to frustration for the Indian community because of its effect on arranged marriages, though there are other groups where couples don’t live together before marriage who are similarly affected.

Protests from an angered Indian community after Jones said those who didn’t like the policy were welcome to get on the next plane have left him unmoved. I think he underestimates the anger and hurt his comments have caused.

There may never have been a more Jonesian line than his comment this week in relation to this story that ‘‘I’m a proud retail politician’’. That’s exactly what he’s doing, isn’t it, trying to hock off a populist policy to his minor party’s base with an eye on next year. I couldn’t imagine a better outcome than his party not being in the mix after the dust settles.

It seems unlikely the tone already set by these two parties will change, especially in the current toxic global political climate. Which means there’s a big job ahead to keep the value of unity, diversity and everyone mattering front and centre. Buckle up.