KEY POINTS:
Church leaders invariably lead with their chins in political debate. We have not heard from them for some time on poverty, in fact not since the last National Government was in office. They implicitly conceded this on Friday when they declared: "Our primary concern since the 'Hikoi of Hope' held 10 years ago has remained constant."
They could have fooled us. Their hope may have been constant but not their action. This is all the more strange because they have seen no progress on poverty since. As the clerics observe, Labour has left National's benefit levels largely intact after inflation adjustments. Now the collective social conscience of the Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Salvation Army leadership will be mobilised in a "call to action" for the restoration of benefit rates that were cut in 1991.
That would be ludicrous. Much has changed in the past 17 years, not least the level of unemployment in an economy that has enjoyed constant growth for the past decade. What point, other than a political one, would be served by restoring any facet of the economy to a position it was in 17 years ago? And why now? The church leaders surely have not been waiting nine years for the Labour-led Governments to heed the hikoi staged in National's last term. It is hard to escape the suspicion they have recovered their energy this year in anticipation of National's return.
They say they, "know from the work of our social service arms" that many are still suffering the effects of "economic policies put in place by successive Governments in previous decades and that lacked a sufficiently strong social conscience".
New Zealand had two economic policies over those decades, the first tried to protect the country from global competition and resulted in an economy of excessive costs, high inflation, declining employment and rising public debt. It was a recipe for general poverty by global comparisons, as opposed to the poverty at the margins of a competitive economy.
Maybe the church leaders find the earlier economy more in tune with their social conscience, and might invoke Christian authority for that view. They hold that all public policy "must be measured in terms of the quality of life of the most vulnerable in our society". That sounds like the parable of the Good Shepherd, which they perhaps take too literally.
Certainly the most vulnerable members of society should be helped to ensure that they have a reasonable standard of living and social participation. But to gear the economy to their circumstances, as the church leaders seem to be suggesting, would be good neither for them nor anybody else. The 20th century saw experiments with severely egalitarian economies in the form of communism. They were not pleasant societies, let alone well-provisioned economies.
If churches have resources to put to work on political advocacy it is a pity they do not use them better. There are social problems that could be assisted by the application of some of the personal ethics the churches uphold. Greater responsibility in marriage, family formation and parenting would go a long way to reducing the incidence of poverty and hardship, particularly for children.
The churches have been silent on these social issues for too long, and now they have been silent on their preferred political solutions for too long - the duration of Labour's policy leadership. Their return to the fray at this stage can be taken only as an attempt to keep Labour in power and, should that fail, to prepare for a renewed campaign against a National government.
