For many, the notion of what constitutes poverty is something located in faraway countries. We see the images of starving, dying children in desperate situations and recognise this as poverty.
We give to organisations that work to improve the outcomes for these children but find it difficult to see parallels to this kind of poverty in our own country.
The second reason is this viewpoint suits the neoliberal agenda. It lets them off the political hook. Using the term poverty enables them to deflect inequity and disadvantage as some kind of mirage, an illusion that only exists in the minds of do-gooders.
The neoliberalists, together with others on the conservative political spectrum, believe that being poor is a personal deficit, an individual kind of failure to thrive, rather than a systemic structured social dysfunction. This allows them to sidestep any responsibility or requirement to address the underlining causes.
These two views, one based in context the other in political posturing, although widely different perceptions of poverty, share a common argument that poverty does not exist in New Zealand. In one sense this is correct.
We do not have absolute poverty such as it is experienced by people in other parts of the world but we do have relative poverty in New Zealand.
Our relative poverty is historical in its architecture. It has been constructed over time, built piece by piece on colonial foundations with various design elements added in an ad hoc fashion by successive governments as they tinker with the basic concepts of welfare and social justice.
Education, justice, health and welfare are now engaged in a desperate grappling match with social and income inequity and its consequences.
They collect statistics and count the cost. They know the burden falls hardest on children and that children born into inequality must struggle and fight for every little win in the race toward a better future. The hurdles can be racial discrimination, struggles with learning, maintaining attendance at school, families stumbling from crisis to crisis, recurring poor health such as respiratory problems created by inadequate housing, parents involved in crime or drug and alcohol dependence.
Some of the answers lie with economic manipulation such as introducing capital gains on property sales. This would remove the attraction of speculation in the market, reduce the rising costs of home ownership and the downstream cost of rental accommodation.
The revenue could be channelled into social housing. This, combined with requiring rentals to have a WOF-type certification as adequate healthy housing, would go some way to addressing inequities that weigh heavily on children in low income families. Meanwhile, as governments debate policy and funding for programmes, we as a society cannot wait.
We must become advocates for these children by demonstrating our willingness, as neighbourhoods and communities, to take greater social responsibility for their future by finding ways to demonstrate that we do care, inoculating them with sufficient resilience to carry them forward while putting the politicians under pressure to act in the interests of these children, rather than their own agendas.
-Terry Sarten is a writer, musician and social worker. Feedback: tsg@inspire.net.nz
