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Lindsay Mitchell: On child poverty, racism and colonisation

A just-published Listener article asks, "Why doesn't middle-class NZ care about child poverty?" It gathers views from half a dozen people including a principal, a teacher, an advocate against child poverty, a charity head, a Māori provider chair and Pasifika social worker. Apparently, they told the Listener that the middle-class has become indifferent to child poverty. Yet a careful reading of the piece finds it is primarily the Child Poverty Action Group advancing the idea that, "For middle white New Zealand, poverty is equated with being brown. This is where the indifference comes from." The Chief Executive of the Auckland City Mission goes further claiming active hostility to solo mothers, especially Māori: "As a society, the narrative is 'how dare you raise a child alone? We are going to make it as hard for you as we can - we will punish you.' And secondly, in our country, poverty has a colour. It is about racism and colonisation."


In fact, there are more NZ European children in material hardship than all other ethnicities put together. The table below shows there are 53,000 NZ European compared to a total of 47,000 combined other ethnicities (these are the most recent data reported in June 2021):





So poverty doesn’t have a colour. Saying poverty has a colour is a convenience for those who want to blame racism and colonisation.


The next thing of note from the above chart is that Asian children have relatively low rates of material hardship. Is this due to higher incomes? No.


The following chart shows that the percentage of Asian children in the poorest households is on par with Māori at 15%:





So low household income does not have a direct relationship with material hardship. How money is budgeted and what it is spent on matters. Asian families are also more likely to derive their income from work. The Ministry of Social Development long ago established that, “Standard of living data show that poor children reliant on government transfers are more likely to be subject to restrictions in key items of consumption than are poor children in families with market income.”


And yet both the head of the Auckland City Mission and convenor for the Child Poverty Action Group call for more government transfers. The former wants anyone raising children to receive in-work tax credits and the latter wants more tax from the “richest ten percent” to fund a universal child benefit (oddly missing that a universal child benefit would go to the children of the richest ten percent.)


The social worker from South Auckland would like to see the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group established four years ago implemented. Either he or the writer of the piece claims a review “found that the Government had made no progress on implementing the report’s 42 key objectives.”


That is totally incorrect. For instance, sanctions for not naming the other parent were removed; the ‘subsequent child work obligation’ was abolished: the child support pass-on is implemented; benefits and abatement thresholds were increased; benefits were indexed to wage inflation and accommodation supplements were raised. (This is not an exhaustive list.)


The social worker who wants the recommendations implemented then goes on to argue that “Accommodation supplements hide the fact that rents are too high, so essentially the government is pouring money into private rentals.” High rents are at least partially a result of the government imposing unrealistic housing standards and scrapping tax deductibility, policies he would doubtless approve of.


This disconnect with economic reality characterises suggestions made when those “who see deprivation up close on a daily basis” are asked for their solutions to child poverty. Despite decades of redistributing wealth, the problem persists. Perhaps the prescription is wrong.


If the diagnosis is wrong, it probably is.


If the Chief Executive of the Auckland City Mission stopped for a moment blaming “society” for the poverty of sole parent children and instead reflected on where their fathers are, and why they are absent, a real remedy might reveal itself. Perhaps replacing fathers with the DPB all those years ago wasn’t such a good idea after all?


If the Māori provider chair stopped insisting that child poverty is the “product of colonisation” and reflected on why the children of low-income Asian parents do not suffer disproportionate material deprivation, a real remedy might reveal itself. Perhaps the strong work ethic that typifies immigrants to this country could be celebrated and emulated?


And if indeed the middle-class has become “indifferent to child poverty” perhaps it is because they can see through the many excuses for why it exists.


Lindsay Mitchell blogs here.

 
 
 

40 comentários


Esse comentário foi excluído.
Tukairangi Ball
20 de set. de 2022
Respondendo a

You are smack on the money with your thoughts. 70 billion in the scamdemic alone and still pumping cash into the spin. They are trying to bankrupt us to sell us out to the bankers, NWO, WEF. Like JB, they are a clown show deliberately achieving their desired outcomes, while the media are complicit traitors. All the while most Kiwis sleep on and get drawn into their lies, BS and distractions.

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Esse comentário foi excluído.
Membro desconhecido
24 de set. de 2022
Respondendo a

Dead right JEL, it's always been a conscious choice.

Men??? Wrap the bloody thing.

Women?? The pill.

I'm not your go to for cash when you can't think for yourself.


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Stuart Kemp
Stuart Kemp
19 de set. de 2022

Theres an old saying ....

Don’t pay for what you don’t want more of

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Tukairangi Ball
19 de set. de 2022

20 odd years ago when I was closely associated with then government iniatives, I held the view that benefits are like heroine. You hook people in, especially Maori, and you have them dependant for life. Our and other construction companies desperately need labour. There are heaps of jobs. But we cannot find even poor labour. Why? Because the benefits haave created, what an old Australian Managing Director of mine used to refer to as, FDAFH. This government is committed to the WEF and their NWO agenda, which is a guise for totalitarianism (yes, communism) and transhumanism. As Jackboot Aderns mentor Klaus Scwab says, "You will have nothing. You will be happy". So everyone will be Fat Dumb And F***ing Happy.…

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Membro desconhecido
19 de set. de 2022

If you pay people, to provide for themselves, and pay them, to produce nought , then you reap what you sow. An underclass, that relies on handouts, after fucking handouts, created by the evil, destructive macavellian mess we know as socialism.

This is pretty simple. Pay people to do nothing, and, employ an army of socialist University educated deadbeats to reinforce the narrative that the reason why the population won't work is because of some malady, mainly colonialism, that's upset their little applecart

Right.

I'm on a roll.

Bring in the immigrants. They want to work. And kick all the lazy , and self entitled fuckwit maggots out. Fuck off. You've had your chance. Fuck off. Being born here doesn…


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Membro desconhecido
19 de set. de 2022
Respondendo a

This nation has tried to grow talent. 35 years in the trade, I know it. Instead, we pay people to do nothing. The incentives are there.

But new Zealand has become tied to a beneficiaries banquet lifestyle. New Zealand business tries like hell to employ locals. I'm telling you, this is why we employ immigrants. For far to long, in New Zealand, we've been cuddling a socialist idealism that doing nothing and not being productive brings prosperity. Well, sorry to burst your bubble. It doesn't.

The opportunity for new Zealand citizens to learn has always been here, , and I'm sick to fucking death of the excuses for those that choose not to work, being given credence.

That's why my…


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