Bill Capamagian: Some home truths about poverty in New Zealand

'We should reduce the handouts and feel-good legislation, and concentrate on giving a help-up to those that are prepared to change.' Photo / Mihailo Milovanovic, istock

OPINION

Kushlan Sugathapala’s article (NZ Herald, May 11), saying that New Zealand is fostering built-in poverty, may be right on a number of points - but his solutions will not work.

Complaining about predatory lenders, fast food, gambling, health, etc, and expecting the Government to fix such things through legislation misses the point that most such “victims” will simply get around the regulations.

A simple recent example is the massive vaping problem we have following the Government legalising vaping and having high taxes on cigarettes.

A large portion of our poor have not been taught or have ignored lessons on resilience and self-worth, to choose healthy foods, avoid gambling and excessive alcohol consumption, immunise children, and be wary of the hazards of loans.

We should reduce the handouts and feel-good legislation, and concentrate on giving a help-up to those prepared to change.

Instead of judges handing out discounts for poor upbringing, would it not be better to sentence them to several months of special training wherein they are educated in what it means to be a good citizen participating in our society?

Perhaps extend that further to sometimes sentencing their parents to a similar course contemporaneously?

We need to change the attitude to illegal drug-taking as being a health problem as opposed to a stupidity problem. The life of virtually every addict causes massive harm to their parents, siblings, friends, and - worst of all - their children.

If there is no demand for drugs then there will be no importation of drugs and their ingredients by those who succumb to the attraction of an easy dollar, who then must be pursued by the police and are then locked up for many years.

Bill Capamagian. Photo / John Borren

We can start by implementing citizenship training for our 12- to 14-year-olds, resulting in a certificate saying they have been trained. Those who later get into trouble with the law can be penalised by, say, a further citizenship course, as opposed to the soft penalties that are imposed these days.

More lately, we have had legalised drug testing at concerts and the like. Is it true that the drugs that fail are handed back to the person presenting them? (The Drug Foundation advises the tested sample cannot be returned as it may be contaminated but the person can keep the rest of their substance, regardless of the result.)

More likely they will sell the drugs to another sucker.

Fog cannons and bollards around shops? Yet we are told the number of offenders is small. It would be cheaper and safer for the community to lock them up for five years. In my younger days, borstal was a place to be avoided and bad alcoholics were locked away on Rotoroa Island.

It is disappointing that Sugathapala, as a researcher, falls for Labour’s announcement of an IRD report finding that the wealthiest New Zealanders pay only 9 per cent tax. The announcement failed to identify that it was not comparing like for like.

Let society help what I call the deserving poor along with the sick and disabled - and stop pandering to what I will call the ratbag poor. And don’t forget that the deserving poor suffer greatly from the ratbag poor, particularly when they are all in the same neighbourhood.

I appreciate that words “stupidity” and “ratbag” are not politically correct these days and that offenders in those terms must be encouraged in terms of self-worth in order to be able to pull themselves out of the mire.

My perception after many decades in this country is that New Zealand has gone downhill rapidly over the past three decades. We have too much tail wagging the dog in terms of how our society operates.

This is a result of the MMP voting system implemented about 30 years ago. It has meant that about one-third of our MPs are not directly accountable to constituent voters, only to their party.

Many of these MPs could never hold a constituent seat and have never had a real job.

They exist by telling the poor and other interest groups how hard they have been done by. Further, they, and MPs generally, have legislated us all into complicated lives of too many rules and regulations, leading to too many government employees (in the widest sense of the definition).

If we don’t make a radical change soon we will become a third-world country ruled by a quasi-dictatorship as we are now, leading to much worse.

Wake up all of you good people, particularly those aged under 45.

- BIll Capamagian is an observer of life, with a background in the shipping and transport industry and, in later decades, general business consultancy.