Is the National Government being swayed by the increasing debate and concern about poverty and inequality? An illustration that this might indeed be the case can be seen in what appears to be a major U-turn - the Government might take up the proposal to introduce a comprehensive food-in-schools programme - see Simon Collins' Govt signals it will feed hungry kids. Added to this, Deborah Hill-Cone writes in the Herald today about the increasing inequality between CEOs and their workers - see: What tosh is spoken about CEOs' pay - and surprisingly she says that she has herself done a U-turn on the rightwing justifications for that gap, and now challenges the concept that the rich get paid what they're worth. Such examples illustrate the extent that the issues of poverty and inequality have suddenly emerged onto the political agenda in recent times, and how they are challenging the until-now enduring consensus of the status quo. But that's not to say that there is any kind of new consensus on the existence of poverty and inequality - nor about how to solve it. Quite the opposite, this is an area that is highly contentious with a variety of different views and approaches.
It's child poverty that is at the forefront of the current concern about inequality and poverty. Focus is currently on the Children's Commission's report into child poverty, written by its Expert Advisory Group - public submissions close on it this week. For an overview of the report's 'big ideas', their pros and cons, and the political response to them, see Andrew Laxon's Six of the best ideas for change. And the co-chair of the Expert Advisory Group, Jonathan Boston, also has a very good feature in the Herald in which he refutes the Three myths about child poverty.
For more on the question of 'what poverty means' in New Zealand, see Simon Collins and Catherine Masters' in-depth feature, Searching for a way out. They discuss some of the drivers of poverty in New Zealand (such as divorce and unemployment) as well its impact - and they cite one piece of research that suggests 'the resulting lost productivity and higher state spending costs New Zealand about $8 billion a year, or 4.5 per cent of our economic output'.
Of course poverty and inequality have many policy relations - and housing is a key one. Some critics say that 'New Zealand's response to homelessness lags behind other developed countries: there are no official numbers, there is no legislation, there is no national strategy and there is no funding' - see Trevor Quinn's Homeless problem demands attention. Similarly, education is obviously closely related - and Radio New Zealand's John Gerritsen produced an interesting Insight documentary in the weekend that explored 'why poverty is so closely linked in NZ to poor grades' and why tackling income inequality is the biggest single factor in beating under-achievement at school' - listen here. Or else, read the RNZ item, More money for poor families urged. Also in the weekend, Kim Hill interviewed journalist Max Rashbrooke on his upcoming book about the increasing divide between rich and poor in New Zealand - listen to: Max Rashbrooke - social inequality and boarding houses.
So is poverty and inequality the responsibility of the government? Matt McCarten says so in his column, No need to starve yourself, just give poor some more. He argues that the cause of poverty is the 'fact that our political leaders run an economy where there are more than 100,000 fewer jobs than there should be, and that many of the existing jobs are low-paid, casual and part-time, is not addressed'. He also has some scathing comments about do-gooding celebrities and politicians that participated in the recent Unicef 'Live Below the Line' campaign.
