Guest Post: Saving incentives

Many thanks to Rebecca Fraser, manager of a community organisation that works with single parents, for this post.

The Budget released this week described an almost immediate end to the Kiwisaver $1000 kick-start incentive.  We know that inequality is growing within our current system and unless we start to look at things very differently, it will continue to grow. However, even within the system, sometimes there are mechanisms that work against unfairness. The Kiwisaver $1000 kick-start incentive was one of these. Income based retirement schemes like Kiwisaver tend to perpetuate inequality, because they don’t level out the playing field for people. The disappearance of the kick-start incentive makes the system worse.

Who is disadvantaged by the disappearance of the $1000 kick-start? They don't collect ethnicity stats about Kiwisaver take-up so we don't have any data about which ethnicities are enjoying the extra $1000. My reflection of this is based purely on what people I know have told me, when I asked them. Almost always I have heard from working Pākehā that they are enrolled in Kiwisaver and from working Māori that they are not, and I have noticed this trend amongst people I have employed. It might be different in different workplaces and sectors - I hope.

Because why would you save for a retirement when you're more likely to die before you get there? Māori are expected to live 7.3 years less than non-Māori. The gap is reducing, but not quickly. Having money in one's retirement inevitably prolongs life where lack of money shortens it but due to lifetime employment and income patterns, women are more likely to live in poverty in retirement than men, and Māori more than European. People who might not make it to retirement are not naturally incentivised to join a retirement savings scheme.

People who do not expect to own their own home are not naturally incentivised to join a scheme that can help them with the deposit on their first home. With Māori home ownership rates at 28.2% vs. European at 56.8%, people’s expectations that Kiwisaver would prove useful might understandably be different.

 And people who are struggling to make ends meet right now are not naturally incentivised to join a retirement savings scheme. Fair enough too, a bun in the hand is worth more than a loaf in the trees, as it were. According to the indicators about inequality for Māori and Pacific people put forward by the Victoria Business School, Māori end up with $96 a week less than European, on average. And this is only one small measurement of the current inequalities of our system.

 All the little inequalities add up. The tricky little fact that children who are not earning any money could sign up to Kiwisaver and gain the $1000 incentive was, in my experience, a piece of information shared across monied connections. A mortgage consultant looked at my daughter when I brought her into the bank and handed me a sheaf of forms that required signatures and proof of ID from both parents to sign her up for Kiwisaver. But people who don't have regular discussions with bank managers, people whose negotiation with the other parent of their child can barely cope with whose turn it is to drop them at school, let alone which Kiwisaver scheme to opt the kid into, people whose daily existence is in the 'Let’s get through it' mode rather than 'Let’s think about what happens when you're 70' mode - these people could all have done with the $1000 kick-start that isn’t available any more.

People who might not have natural incentives to join a retirement savings scheme is anyone for whom life is not an orderly procession from school to university to a job to marriage... home ownership, a couple of kids, a regular holiday in Fiji, the eventual divorce, the delighted remarriage, honeymoon in Europe and a peaceful retirement.

People who, in other words, distrust that the system will work for them, with good reason.

And they *are* perfectly good reasons not to take up Kiwisaver. But 'perfectly good reasons why not' are EXACTLY why incentives need to be in place. Incentives like the $1000 kick-start. I am gutted for us. I watched John Key on TV last night dismiss concerns by saying something to the effect of 'Well, it has been around for ages and they've had the chance, so if they haven't done it by now then they were never going to.'  He is wrong.  Incentives are not in place for the people who can get over the finish line first, but to encourage the people who feel like they’re not even in the race to begin with.

I bet his retirement still feels pretty cosy.

Heavyweight Sunday: Torchwood

Star Wars was my first movie, a metaphor for tolerance if not celebration of difference if ever there was one.  I’ve explored ideas about social structures through science fiction ever since.

So when Torchwood began it was a no-brainer I’d be watching.

Aliens.  Gadgetry.  Explicit and regular examination of gender and power.  Probably the hottest sex scenes, with all manner of couplings, I’ve seen on a mainstream television show, because desire is explicit by everyone participating.  Set in Wales, so able to gently critique England as the centre of the universe, and using that as a plot mechanism, repeatedly, to explore issues of class.  Every single main character exploring attraction at one point or another to the same and different genders.

Season 3 is remarkable.  Brutally stripped back plot spoiler: Aliens want to take 10% of Earth’s children as recreational drugs.  They will release fatal viruses if Earth’s leaders don’t agree.  They can do this; they have the technology.

What makes it remarkable is for the first time, Torchwood turns their beam on the machinations of the state responding to the crisis, in particular, the British government.  A kinda sci-fi imagining of how western governments might react to such a dilemma.

We don’t come out well.  The UK government had authorised, in 1965, a gift of 12 children to the same aliens, from a children’s home because “no one will miss them.”

The theme is extended to present day.  First British ministers offer asylum seeking children in detention centres.  When this isn’t enough for the aliens, the British state decides they cannot risk the children who will work in our hospitals and our schools, run our country.  But the Deputy Prime Minister says some children matter less:

“If we can’t identify the lowest achieving 10% of this country’s children, then what are the school league tables for?”

So the army rounds up children at school.  Many, many parents keep their children home.  The army rolls into working class areas, into council estates, and pulls children away from screaming parents.

The British Ministers don’t like what they are doing.  There is no joy.  But there is the ability to decide that some people are worth less than others.  That some people matter less.  And therefore, the ability to sanction the unspeakable.

This series was almost unwatchable.  As with all good sci-fi, the issues it was exploring were only human.  How do we decide worth?  What is the power of the state for?  When it comes down to it, where do you stand?

One of the many scenes which made me cry featured unarmed men on one council estate running at soldiers kitted out with batons, guns and riot gear, to try and buy their children time to run away.  And one police officer, watching in horror, taking off his uniform to fight with the men he knew, rather than stay safe with the state.

Fantastical?  Not so much.  Can we really say, in Aotearoa today, that all of our children matter the same to the state?

The most obvious parallel is New Zealand armed police rolling into Tuhoe, treating the children of Ruatoki with absolute disdain.  Police boarding schools buses, terrifying kids, detaining them illegally.  It’s hard to imagine similar actions being signed off for buses headed to private schools in predominantly Pakeha areas.

But there are other parallels too, where the state might not be clad in riot gear.  About 270,000 New Zealand children live in poverty, according to the Children’s Commissioner.  These levels go up and down, depending on the state’s actions:

 

That’s a lot of our children, living in poverty, in families where their caregivers earn too little or the state allowances for looking after children are insufficient.

When the state rolls up to reduce real access to state allowances for those parenting, or introduce new measures to allow employers to pay less than a living wage for parents, or sells off state assets meaning essential services like power cost more, what we are really doing is treating some children as less important than other children.

It’s got a prettier face than Torchwood.  But the psychological process is the same, make no mistake.  Distance.  Othering.  Outright denial.  Killing off empathy.

In Torchwood, the British government start using “units” to describe the children they are sending to the aliens as living happy pills.  At Ruatoki, we talked about “terrorists” to justify that school bus being boarded.  And the language and images we use to describe the poor?  Subjective cartoon, anyone?

The motto of Torchwood Season One is: “The twenty-first century is when everything changes. And you’ve got to be ready.”  Prescient?  Or cheesy beyond compare, allowing those of us that way inclined another chance to gasp admiringly at John Barrowman? Not for the first time, I’m going to choose both.

C.L.I.T.festing

I've spent a big chunk of the weekend at CLITfest in Wellington, and now I feel fed, not just by the incredible presentations - though I didn't go to one session which didn't stretch my thinking in one way or another - but by the time and space to explore ideas between sessions with other people interested in talking and thinking about oppression and social change.

It's been a long time since I've been to a conference so thought-provoking.  The organisers did a wonderful job of creating a safe place to explore complex, difficult issues, which no doubt were uncomfortable at times for many/most/all of us attending, without that feeling, in my experience at least, overwhelming.  I want to give them a huge thank you, because I know how much work it is to try and create that kind of space.

So this is kinda going to function as a review as well as a pat on the back, for those of you who couldn't get there and were interested.  Bearing in mind I missed some sessions because of other life stuff, so there are holes.

Indigenous feminisms and social movements featured Marama Davidson, Shasha Ali, and Erina Okeroa.  Erina spoke first, examining Māori women's connections to Black feminisms internationally, through kaupapa Māori research and interviews.  Marama presented on the centrality of Māori women to caring for the Earth and kaitiakitanga, given how poor a job we're doing now.  Shasha talked about connecting indigenous struggles from different places, and the disconnect this created when you were not indigenous to where you were living, but identified as indigenous in another colonised land.

Takataapui, Pasifika ways and beyond queer theory included Fetu-ole-moana Tamapeau of BOX events, Maihi Makiha from NZAF and Kim Mcbreen of He Hoaka.  It's hard for me to give a favourite, but if I absolutely had to, it would be this one.  Fetu and Kim focussed on the disruptions colonisation created for Pasifika and Tangata Whenua understandings of sexuality and gender, and why queer theory cannot undo colonisation because it still comes from western understandings.  I've thought a bit before about how good English is at categorising - so lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex - and judging differences.  Disconnecting, some might call it.  And I've noticed that takataapui appears to do the opposite, appears just to connect non-heterosexual people, but Fetu's metaphor of queer being the island, and Pasifika understandings of sexuality being of the ocean is still rocking my wee Pākeha brain.  Work in progress.

Intimate partner violence in queer and gender diverse relationships, hosted by Te Whare Rokiroki Māori Women's Refuge and Wellington Women's Refuge with support from the extraordinary Mani Mitchell was something I was involved in, so can't really "review".  It was amazing to see between 40 and 50 people in the room, and important to think about how this work can progress, given international research is showing lesbians and gay men are experiencing rates of intimate partner and sexual violence comparable to straight women and men; bisexual people are experiencing much higher rates; and intersex and trans* peeps rates, from early indications, are much higher still.

Body politics: food, health, fat, disability, class and moral virtue featured Cat Pause, Ali Nissenbaum, Robyn Kenealy, Esther Woodbury and Grace Millar.  Between them, they took apart body politics and put them back together again, dismantling neo-liberal pushes for individualising responsibility for bodies while they pointed out some of the things the western world at least holds dear just may not be true.  Probably the comment that made me saddest was about needing to not be around women when recovering from anorexia, because of the extraordinary amount of social time women spend policing one another's - and our own - food intake and bodies.  It just rings very true to me, and is something I struggle, constantly, to know how to respond to respectfully.  I'm slimmish, and love food, and constantly deal with people telling me how "lucky" I am I can eat so much.  I haven't yet found a way through that misogynist mess.

The Underclass panel was incredible, Nic Dorward, Ruth Amato, and Hana Plant sharing their own personal experiences of class and marginalisation, tied in with colonisation and racism, gender inequalities, class oppression making us unwell, and social institutions responsible for "caring" for vulnerable people being both inadequate and chock-full of classist assumptions about families and people. 

And finally (for me) desire as social currency and how desire is constructed around stigmatised and non-normative bodies focusing on trans* experiences. Dee Dewitt and Wai Ho talked about how difficult it might be to separate personal preferences from socially constructed desires, and the painful fetishising that creates for non-normative bodies.  Beautiful and brave.

Hoping there's another CLITfest on the horizon. And a nod too, to the beautiful artwork on the flier, which is now decorating my room.

Women's work