Te Radar: Time for grumpy New Zealand to accentuate the positive

I want to live in a house with sea views, and employ an aide-de-camp, appropriately liveried in navy blue, with gold epaulettes. That I do not suggests that I am clearly undergoing some form of hardship.

I mention this as yet another tiresome taxpayer-funded report was released this week that alleges that we, as a nation, have a rather disquieting poverty rate.

As expected, various talking heads wailed at the finding that 8 per cent of New Zealanders are reported to be living in conditions of severe hardship, rather than celebrating the fact that 92 per cent of us aren't.

In fact, 75 per cent of us report having a "fairly comfortable to very good" standard of living. Surely that is a cause for celebration?

According to the study, published by the Ministry of Social Development, severe hardship includes those who do not have their own washing machines, yet a whopping 97 per cent of us are reported as having them.

This must be bad news for people who own laundromats.

In fact we appear to be doing so well that 66 per cent of those of us who want to are able to holiday away from home each year, and 64 per cent of those who want it have pay TV. Luxury.

While these studies are no doubt well meaning, they are a little ambiguous. After all, when asked, who wouldn't state that they wished their lives were a little better?

One of the ministry's questions asked whether people had bought a cheaper cut of meat, or less meat than they wanted to, in order to keep costs down.

One has to wonder if the framers of these questions have been to a supermarket recently, to peer wide-eyed at the price of scotch fillet or roasts? Who wouldn't back away from paying those prices on occasion?

Another asked whether a person's income met their everyday needs for food, accommodation, clothing and necessities. Whose does? After all, the more you earn the more you want. Hardship, it seems, is relative.

What was most startling was that 26 per cent of all New Zealand children are apparently living in conditions of hardship. "Children are suffering!" screeched the well-intentioned. "Poverty should be eliminated!"

As well-meaning as these folk may be, it seems they may be sadly mistaken, as children living in poverty may indeed be happier than children who are not.

This was confirmed by another survey, which asserts that the world's wealthiest countries do poorly in the happiness stakes.

The UK-based New Economics Foundation's "Happy Planet Index" took a country's life expectancy, combined it with how content its inhabitants reported they were, divided it by their use of resources, and produced happiness quotients. (If this study proves anything, it is that some people have too much time on their hands.)

Anyway, New Zealand ranked 94th, well below Timor-Leste (48) or the Solomons (20). Perhaps these countries should be sending delegations here to assist us in our quest for satisfaction.