Lindsay Mitchell: On child poverty, racism and colonisation

A table in an article posted on Bassett, Brash & Hide shows there are 53,000 NZ European compared to a total of 47,000 combined other ethnicities (using the most recent data reported in June 2021).   

Poverty, plainly, has no colour.  There are more New Zealand European children in material hardship than all other ethnicities put together. 

Social commentator LINDSAY MITCHELL – the author of the article  – writes:  

A just-published Listener article asks, “Why doesn’t middle-class NZ care about child poverty?” It gathers views from half a dozen people including a principal, a teacher, an advocate against child poverty, a charity head, a Māori provider chair and Pasifika social worker. Apparently, they told the Listener that the middle-class has become indifferent to child poverty.

Yet a careful reading of the piece finds it is primarily the Child Poverty Action Group advancing the idea that,

“For middle white New Zealand, poverty is equated with being brown. This is where the indifference comes from.”

The Chief Executive of the Auckland City Mission goes further claiming active hostility to solo mothers, especially Māori:

“As a society, the narrative is ‘how dare you raise a child alone? We are going to make it as hard for you as we can – we will punish you.’ And secondly, in our country, poverty has a colour. It is about racism and colonisation.”

In fact, there are more NZ European children in material hardship than all other ethnicities put together.

The table below shows there are 53,000 NZ European compared to a total of 47,000 combined other ethnicities (these are the most recent data reported in June 2021):

It seems more welfare costs will be heaped on taxpayers but Sepuloni is stingy when asked for details

Social Welfare Minister Carmel Sepuloni was far from generous with details, when questioned in Parliament yesterday about her government’s policy intentions regarding solo parents and the burden they heap on taxpayers.

We are not much clearer – as a consequence – about what further changes are likely based on proposals from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group. Or how much more taxpayers will be expected to cough up to care for the children of welfare beneficiaries

But the suggestion that the government should do something to discourage solo-parent beneficiaries from bringing more children into the world was treated with disdain.

In response to a report from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, the Government in May announced it will remove the benefit sanction which penalised solo mothers by up to $28 a week if they would not name their child’s father.

The amount that beneficiaries can earn through employment before their benefits were cut was increased at the same time.

A Green dilemma – trying to square govt support for families with the degrading environmental consequences

With Green Party support, the Government will remove a disincentive to the population growth that experts reckon is the number one contributor to the degradation of the global environment.

Social Development Minister Carmel Sepuloni announced the removal of the disincentive among changes to the country’s welfare system (but just a few, for now) in response to the report from the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.

The government will remove the benefit sanction which penalised solo mothers who did not name their child’s father, the fellow who should be picking up the tab for raising the child – or his fair share of it – that resulted from a procreative romp in the hay.

Taxpayers – lucky us – will take over this responsibility.