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Middle-class New Zealand has become indifferent to child poverty, say the people who are dealing with the damage. By Colleen Brown.
Child poverty – the words should have a chilling effect on every New Zealander. About 20 per cent of children in this country live below the poverty line, with another 13 per cent struggling in what the Child Poverty Action Group calls “extreme poverty”. According to the Government’s Child Poverty Monitor figures, one in five children lives in a household that sometimes runs out of food – and this data was collected before the current spike in living costs.
The effects are significantly worse for Māori and Pasifika. While 25 per cent of children live in homes that have dampness problems, for instance, that figure is 35 per cent for Māori children and 37 per cent for Pasifika children.
Yet the people who see this deprivation up close on a daily basis believe that too many New Zealanders have become immune to the debate. We’re indifferent to the numbers and oblivious to the long-term effects. The Listener asked six of them to describe the situation as they see it and offer ideas that would bring about meaningful change. They had some uncomfortable questions and tough insights for us all.
For 35 years, Shirley Maihi has been the principal of Finlayson Park School in Manurewa, a low socioeconomic area with high Māori and Pasifika populations. She has seen it all. Maihi is a no-nonsense woman with a huge heart for her community and believes the Covid pandemic has knocked the stuffing out of it.
“Parents are at the bottom of their ebb. Even though they know we will feed and educate their children, they simply do not have the energy and urgency to get their children to school,” Maihi says.
Absenteeism is chronic, she says. “In term one this year, we averaged 60 per cent attendance. This term it has dropped away again. Distance or hybrid learning doesn’t work for us. There has to be a routine to learning. If, as a parent, you are working a number of jobs, you can’t be there all the time to see if your child is engaged with their schoolwork. We have children who have not been at school for over two and a half years. Children who are now seven years old have to learn all the five-year-old processes.”
The school funds a community hub with many wraparound services for families. Trusted professionals support families in health, budgeting, spirituality, counselling, disability and adult learning. A new need is emerging. Although food has been supplied for some time, it is the recent need for clothing that has shocked Maihi.
“In all my years at this school, I have never received pleas for warm clothing and underwear like I have this year. By the time the rent is paid, food and petrol bought, there is nothing left.”
The school is trying to connect with families to find every missing student. But with many families placed in emergency housing or with whānau across Auckland and beyond, tracking all of them down is almost impossible.
Education, Maihi believes, needs the focus of a dedicated minister who has no other portfolios. (The current Minister of Education, Chris Hipkins, is also Minister of Police and of the Public Service, and Leaders of the House.) “School lunches are wonderful; but with 98 per cent of the school community being Māori or Pasifika, they need food they recognise. Cucumber dip with fennel doesn’t cut it. We know our children; let us decide what they will eat.”
The Ministry of Education is also too prescriptive in what it wants from schools like Finlayson that apply for funding, she says. “Trust us. We will be accountable, but trust us.”
Jacqui Davis is a senior teacher at Finlayson Park School. She sees the families living in garages, the clusters of cars in the driveway, the explosion of people squeezed into a three-bedroom house. She knows children are scared of the things they and their families have no control over.
“They hear the discussion around vaccines, they know about whānau getting sick, parents losing work. The constant interruptions to their little lives have hit them hard.”
Teachers are happy to have students back in their classrooms. But staff also know that some students are frustrated, distracted or disengaged due to the things happening in their lives. “We need to address the social and emotional needs of our tamariki more now than ever before.”
Davis is implementing mindfulness courses for the entire school with short videos and guided meditation for participating students, to learn calming techniques, and strategies for when they are anxious or angry.
And getting them back to school is a major challenge.
When asked who is looking after their own needs, Maihi and Davis share a startled look. They look for the moments of joy in their lives, like seeing a child return to school, teachers being open about their concerns, sharing morning teas, connecting with each other and just checking in. They need to stay strong because they can’t let hope die.
Alan Johnson is a South Auckland-based social policy analyst and convener for the Child Poverty Action Group. He sees “a poverty of love and kindness in this country”.
“If we really loved our children, we would not allow them to be poor.”
Too many New Zealanders see poverty as someone else’s problem, he says. “The concept of ‘otherness’ is divisive, and we use it to pigeon-hole people we don’t understand or think of as inferior – we simply don’t care about them.
“For middle white New Zealand, poverty is equated with being brown. This is where their indifference comes from. The narrative is that middle New Zealand is owed more than they have, and poor people need to work harder.”
Johnson argues that as a country, we need to work on our prejudices. “Public education can help us do this. Our kids who embrace multiculturalism can lead the way. We have to understand that social justice and historical injustice run together but that needs to be addressed through separate mechanisms.”
One initiative that would help is for top income earners to pay more tax, he believes. “You can’t address poverty without addressing inequality. We need to tax money from the richest 10 per cent, not the middle-income earners, and redistribute it to those at the bottom.”
Changes also need to be made to the welfare system, including a universal child benefit, he says. “It is tough to get someone off a benefit and into a job. We need to get people into work where this is appropriate because it expands their social networks and improves their mental wellbeing.”
He would also like to see a 20-year plan developed, with community involvement, for reducing housing costs. “Many people need substantial assistance from the state in order to get decent, affordable housing which the market will not provide,” he says. “The whole of society benefits from a wider pool of talented, self-determining, productive people.”
In the South Auckland suburb of Ōtāhuhu, William Pua is the social worker team leader for Fonua Ola, a Pasifika social service organisation. He, too, is appalled at the acceptance of poverty by mainstream New Zealand.
“We are desensitised to child poverty. Is 20 per cent of all children in this country living in poverty acceptable?”
Poverty, he explains, is about more than a lack of resources. It is about feeling frustrated, powerless and marginalised, that your feelings and thoughts don’t matter. Even connecting with a government agency can be traumatic for families, he says.
The media bears some responsibility for widespread misperceptions about poverty, he argues.
“The media is great at writing stories about different aspects of poverty. At Christmas time, we get stories about food parcels, presents for poor children; in winter, the focus shifts to homelessness. But the personal devastation from poverty is not examined in depth,” Pua says.
“We cannot go quietly into the dark, to tacitly accept the meagre media offerings of quaint soundbites about poverty, and dupe ourselves into thinking that this treatment isn’t dangerous. It further marginalises the poor. Māori, Pasifika, disabled and other impoverished people are dependent on us standing up for and beside them.”
Like many others, Pua would like to see the Government implement the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group, established four years ago to advise the Crown on options for reforming New Zealand’s welfare system. The group called for a major overhaul of how welfare is delivered in New Zealand. However, a review last December found that the Government had made no progress on implementing the report’s 42 key objectives.
“We desperately need social change,” Pua says.
“Seeing the percentage points on the child poverty indicators improving slowly means nothing to those struggling families who in reality have not seen any changes in their own circumstances.”
But he questions whether political leaders have the appetite to tackle housing costs.
“All people should be able to own a home, not just the rich and elite. Accommodation supplements hide the fact that rents are too high, so essentially the Government is pouring money into private rentals. The real problem is that benefits are too low, rents are too high, and subsequent governments have underfunded social housing for many years.”
And the pandemic has only exacerbated existing inequities. “Covid has more than one ‘long tail’. It isn’t just people’s health that will be affected long-term, it is their economic and spiritual wellbeing.”
Many people in tough circumstances are still worried about Covid, he says. “They may have returned to work, but they are scared of sending their children to school. Pasifika have suffered through poor messaging about Covid. The postcode game does exist. Your understanding of poverty is absolutely related to the postcode you live in.”
He would like to see the Government give marginalised people a voice in shaping social policy and services. “Those around the decision-making table are often so far away from the reality of poverty. We need ‘planters’ – people who have their hands in the soil – those who understand our lives, our aspirations; people who live and breathe our community.”
Society has lost its way, he believes. “We must redefine who we are to each other. Can we love someone from a different postcode enough to want to see that their children should be fed, raised in a warm house, have a good education, be able to get a good job? There is a poverty of spirit towards those who are seen as different. We need to be the change we want to see, so that all children have the opportunity to live their best lives.”
Hurimoana Dennis chairs the Te Puea Memorial Marae in Māngere, as well as Taumata Kōrero, a collective of Tāmaki Makaurau Māori providers.
At Te Puea Marae, there are five kaupapa (principles) affecting the housing issue: overcrowding, eviction policies, people below the poverty line, bureaucracy, and poor decision-making, Dennis says.
He noticed significant changes around 2017 when the new Labour-led government, via Kāinga Ora, outlawed evictions, except for the use of meth and assault. “As an issue indicating poverty, overcrowding keeps being a given. The numbers under the poverty line are consistent across the board, and on top of that, agencies have not given the support required. The product of colonisation is well researched and has a very long tail.
“Successive governments, lawyers, clergy, and others reinterpreting and damaging the mana of the Treaty [of Waitangi], have led us here. Child poverty is a product of that failure.”
For Dennis, it is about whānau poverty. “Moko belong to the whānau, they are innocent victims of poverty. They eat five-minute noodles for months on end, wear tatty clothes, often have no lunch – all these things are not unusual. On top of that, some whānau can keep making the wrong decisions, regardless of the help they might get.
“I told a 38-year-old mother with four children who had defaulted on her bills to a number of power companies that if we helped her, we would become responsible for her debts. So, before that happened, she had to take responsibility. She had to go to each of the power companies and make peace with them. After that, we would set her up. I asked her when she was going to grow up and be a mother.”
At Te Puea, it’s always a balancing act, he says: contracts to sort out, funding to secure and the challenge of dealing with bureaucrats, who can become defensive.
“We’ve found it better to collaborate with other Māori providers,” he says, referring to Taumata Kōrero. “We can facilitate a strong Māori agenda. Together we can support over 26,000 households across Auckland for food and vaccinations. We have the attention of Wellington; we can plan for the future and have collective buying power. We have to provide leadership, as the Crown cannot keep doing what it is doing right now.”
However, Dennis is sometimes cynical about attempts at collaboration. “Often the outcome of a hui is already decided before you meet. There’s no room for honest feedback. That has to change. Get Parliament here in Auckland. Wellington has to get a dose of reality and see what is really happening.”
It goes without saying that he’s not proud of the situation many of his own people find themselves in.
“We have to bring our people through this. There are all these boards and policies set up by Government and Auckland Council – what do they achieve? What has changed? They are just writing more ‘stuff’.”
Auckland City Mission chief executive Helen Robinson wants all children to be able to access resources that meet their basic needs and allow them to realise their potential. “Children need to belong and have a deep understanding of who they are; that they are culturally valued and can be safe, physically and psychologically,” she says. “We need to have a dream for all of our children.”
Robinson agrees with the Government’s child poverty targets, but notes there are now 200,000 children who are not guaranteed the basics in food, health, school attendance and an appropriate home.
“We have as a society constructed this reality that some ‘have’ and some ‘do not have’. Now we need to construct a new reality where every child flourishes and ask ourselves, ‘What would that look like and how do we get there?'”
There is a “deep shadow” regarding poverty that has two key components: gender and colour, she believes. “It is women that carry the burden of poverty, especially single women and single women raising children. 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.”
The Auckland City Mission sees this every day, Robinson says. “Overwhelmingly, it is women who are coming to get support for kai for their children; single women raising children alone; Māori and Pacific women. We know people experience a deep sense of shame coming here. And often they go without food, or a meal, or even the best parts of the meal, like the meat and vegetables, so their children don’t have to.”
New Zealand has sufficient resources to make the necessary changes, she believes. “In short, we need to raise benefit levels, be creative about the current housing costs and affordability for families.”
Robinson would like to see the Working for Families scheme extended to allow anyone raising children to receive in-work tax credits, and the same tax-credit formula applied to beneficiaries with children. “It would cost the Government very little in the overall scheme of things, whilst at the same time awarding a more disposable income to those who need it.”
She believes single parents are still treated harshly by the system. “There is a financial reality which condemns women raising children alone to being poor. I do not want to be part of a society that treats people like that. Raising children is difficult work. Let’s be brave enough to look at what is going on here and recognise it for what it is.
“As a nation, we need to think, ‘What are our collective values and what is it that we need to do?’ We need to dare to have this conversation as a country.”
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