Social and Economic issues

This is just prior to the election, but I wonder if the election is just a sideshow. Regardless of whether we change the government, changing our mindsets will be more difficult. We have had so many years of conditioning, that it will be an incredible uphill battle to get back to some of the values we have too readily surrendered.

Economists have seduced us into thinking that the tangible economic goals of low inflation, stronger GDP growth, better trade figures and so on are actually important. Seldom do we ask of economists, what is it for?

If you ask the why question you are lead inevitably to the answer 'to make things better for people'. Thus economy is not an end in itself. Anne Else expresses it well in False Economy:

In my view the most critical issue facing this nation is that we have lost the power to protect our children. Unless we can retrieve that it is unlikely that the malaise that grips this country can be turned around.

I have been trawling through party political statements to see how children are visualised in the various policy platforms. Mostly, policies in this election have little focus on how children are affected. But there are some exceptions and I think it is clear that children's lobby groups such as the Children's Agenda is having a clear impact on some of the opposition parties policies-at least this side of the election.

The lack of focus is not the politician's fault. We have all been conditioned to ignore children as people. Once you start to look for a recognition of children you begin to see that problem of their invisibility. For example, take the recent media hype over cases of beneficiaries whose income have been purported to be very large. Immediately comparisons are drawn with the average wage and how well-off this beneficiary must be. Thus Richard Prebble in his latest mailout (a chapter from his book 'I've been writing') - raises that case of the beneficiary with an income of $87,000 before tax. This is then claimed to be more than twice the average wage and is described by Muriel Newman as a 'kick in the guts for working New Zealanders.'

So implicitly we compare a single childless person on the average wage with this beneficiary. It turns out much of her 'income' is grossed up child payments. We learn there are ten children some of whom are disabled. After paying rent this family of 11 has under $5000 per person to live on for the whole year. That is for school costs, power, phone, clothing, food, medical care, travel, special needs of the disabled children and so on. Is there any one else in New Zealand asked to do with so little?

This blindness to see that there are children with real needs is not surprising. We see it in the Matrimonial Property Act decisions, in Child Support legislation, in social security changes to work test those on benefits. Children's real needs should be central to social policy making. But there has been an almost complete loss of a people focus in public policy making of all kinds in the past decade. It has come to be a sign of weakness to look at case studies to inform policy development.

New Zealand is lagging other developed countries with respect to its treatment of children and young people. Our system has emphasised targeting without regard to its complexity and unevenness in delivery. It might seem logical when resources are short to concentrate assistance on the truly poor and to some extent we will always have to do this. But we have got in a moral lather over including anyone but the poor in coverage of any social provision by the state. In doing this we have lost sight of the need for all of us to be involved and included in at least some of the provisions made through us all, by taxation.

Moreover we have not served the poor at all well by the emphasis on complex targeted provisions as the statistics on child health would attest.

The social welfare system is antiquated and unfair. The level of the benefits is so low that few can exist on it without some supplementary form of income. When a sole parent on a benefit earns an extra $80, after tax and loss of $20 of Accommodation Supplement only $43 dollars remains. For someone on the community wage anything over that first $80 a week is treated so punitively there is no incentive at all to earn it. To not declare extra income turns beneficiaries into fraudsters, yet in order to survive many must do just that. Children and young persons are the major losers.

Recently we have heard a great deal about the millionaires whose children under 6 now see the GP free. The question is asked 'Why should working people be taxed to pay for this?' Universal measures have come to be regarded as bizarre, out dated and a complete waste of money. Yet there is little careful analysis of the costs of targeting only to the poor. There are few official estimates of how many families do not know how to access the community services card provisions. Only the pharmacist knows the extent to which families are choosing which prescribed medicines to pick up and which to leave on the shelf. Only the pharmacists know how many families try the proprietary brands of medicine at great cost hoping to save on the inevitable trip to the doctor.

If the millionaire's family is paying tax- then their children are just as entitled as those from any other family and that is one of the strengths not weaknesses of the policy. But it is all too easy to put up stereotypes. There would not, after all, be many millionaires with children under six. We need to think of the benefits to the majority not make policy based on the odd cases round the edges.

A real downside to targeting is that it appears some wealthy families do deliberately try to arrange their affairs to become eligible for various state subsidies. This creates a climate of resentment leading eventually to cutbacks in programmes, gain to the detriment of those who truly need them.

And then there is the minimum wage which particularly affects the young. It is hopelessly low. We hear so much about the costs to business of putting this up to something more approaching a living wage. There is little emphasis on the benefits for those on very low wages. A rise in the very low minimum wage might mean a significant number of the young on low wages can exist rather than merely subsist.

The truth is in New Zealand we are less generous to all children from all families than almost every other developed country. It is the extremeness of policies that aim only to alleviate destitution that is contributing to the unravelling of the social fabric. Perhaps the way to raise awareness of the crazy short-sighted view in policy making is to appeal to self interest. The ageing of the population will force us eventually to see that the most important way we can prepare for the large older population next century is to invest in the health and security of today's children and those yet to be born.

Child Poverty Action has been exploring ways of putting children at the centre of policy development. This means the focus is not trade, not exports, not inflation, not growth. If we reflect on the past decade, the monster that was inflation has be slain, but we are even less happy if that were possible than in the days of double digit inflation. Should we attain the golden rate of growth of GDP next year, will that make us happy? I venture no.

To this end, CPA have compiled a set of policy initiatives setting children at the centre. It has been said many times but we say again- None of the policies will be worthwhile unless the first fundamental one of affordable, safe secure housing is resolved.

• Rents must not be so high that parents face choices between paying rent and food. Tenure must not be in doubt. Housing is not about giving families a choice between types of tenure, as National suggest. Here is what they say 'The Accommodation Supplement is there to help with accommodation costs regardless of whether the landlord is paying off a mortgage. This means people have a choice about where they live'. Choice must be secondary to the goal of ensuring that every child can have a stable and secure home.
   
• No child should be discriminated against on the basis that one or other parent is judged to be dependent on the state. Almost without comment we have allowed the re-introduction of the 19^th century principle of the 'deserving and undeserving poor'. It is highly confusing, but only part of the per child per week payment for children of low income families paid through the tax system goes to all children. Families on the same income, may receive different amounts depending on whether they qualify as 'independent from the state'. The government talks about tax credits for 'working families'. Their definition of a working family excludes a wide range of families, not only those where one parent or both is on a standard benefit. It also excludes cases where an older parent is retired and receiving a state pension, or one parent is disabled and on ACC for more than 3 months, or receiving a student allowance. Thus it is highly discriminatory. A child focused policy would immediately see that the needs of the child are no different just because family income is from the state in part rather than all from the market. All family tax credits must be extended to all children on the same basis. This includes the $15 per week child tax credit and the new parental tax credit for new babies. No political party seems willing to address this issue.
   
• Children who are sick must have access to the best health care New Zealand can afford. The community card fails to ensure this for low income families. Many miss out because it is too complex. Dental and medical care for all dependent children must be rationed by the health professional's judgement of health status, not the financial state of the parents. The under sixes free GP visits and prescription medicines is a step in the right direction but it is under threat due to aversion to universal policies.
   
• Too many of the young are currently given the feeling their contributions to New Zealand have no value. One obvious reason because of the iniquitous student loans scheme. CPA believes it is fair to tax people who earn high salaries after they are employed rather than charge enormous fees before their training and before they have a job. While no party seems willing to state explicitly that progressive taxation is fairer than the student loans scheme, Alliance promises that if elected all interest on student loans will cease immediately, a universal student allowance will be introduced, and student fees and loans will be progressively phased out. But young people are often trapped in debt of all kinds. Hire purchase, credit cards, banks to eager to lend have also mired too many of the young.
   
• Foodbanks should not be an integral part of the welfare system- entrenched by a low benefits/lack of work situation. School children must not go to school hungry. Few parties seem to address this issue. The recent report ' Hidden Hunger- food and low income in NZ 1999 is quite clear:

We are so used to not putting children in the picture that no party stands out as the one with a clear vision. The party that gets in will require continual lobbying and hard work to convince of the urgency of these issues.