The lies we tell to get by

I have a boyfriend (please leave me alone)

Yes I am totally mentally distraught about this pregnancy and would get lots worse if I had to continue (please give me an abortion)

No extra flatmates (please give me enough resources to support my whanau)

It's not you, it's me (please let me go)

I'm driving tonight (please don't spike my drink)

Maybe, I'm not sure, but perhaps we could do it this way? (please listen to my excellent idea)

No I don't mind you asking me if I'm having more kids, it's okay (please don't get angry with me)

Sure I can work late (please see my worth)

Oh yes, baby is a great sleeper (please think I'm a good parent)

Thanks, you look great too (please stop talking about my appearance)

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We live in a society where women often need to lie to get by.  Honesty is often the preserve of those who have a high level of safety and comfort.  May we live in a world where we don't need to lie to get by.  We don't live there yet.

Off with their benefits

I have to admit to falling prey to despair in the face of the latest example of incredible idiocy from those in charge of what is ironically known as "welfare". This month a blanket regime for "jobless" beneficiaries (including the ones already working extremely hard looking after people who have to be looked after) came into force.

Now we're seeing exactly how stupid this regime is. Grandparents - especially grandmothers - who have stepped in to take care of children bereft of their parents' care through death, illness or dereliction are being hounded to enrol in jobseeker courses, work out their "long-term career goals" and hunt for non-existent jobs. NO job could be more important or useful not just to their grandkids but to the rest of us as well, or save taxpayers more money, than the job they're currently doing - and for which they have in many cases already sacrificed their own earnings and any prospect of retirement.

But none of that seems to mean anything to those running the new regime. Today's Dominion Post reported.on the case of Denise Herman of Dannevirke, who has "single-handedly raised three of her grandchildren, and another foster daughter, for more than a decade." 

"Along the way, she has sacrificed her business, relationship and house to keep them out of foster care. She rescued her grandchildren from their parents after a Child, Youth and Family intervention. She said the parents struggled with drug addiction and spent time in prison. 'Without me, the kids would have been in foster care.'She has been able to care for them with the help of the domestic purposes and unsupported child benefits. She describes it as a fulltime occupation. On Monday, she will turn 64, and in a year she will be eligible for superannuation.But that has not stopped Work and Income telling her last month that she needed to look for a job or face having her support cut. She was enrolled in a six-month job-training course and asked to describe her skills, the last school she attended and her long-term career goals.'My long-term goal is to finally have some peace and rest,' she said. 'What a waste of money paying some training provider.'The Ministry of Social Development would not comment without a privacy waiver, which could not be obtained before publication."

This is pure lunacy, the work of a one-eyed concentration on just one thing: forcing down benefit numbers, regardless of the consequences. And because women are so much more likely than men to be on a benefit not because they are not working, but because they are doing vital unpaid work, it's likely to be women who get caught in this crazy catch-22 merry-go-round masquerading as social policy. 

Grandparents are not the only victims, they're just the most obvious example of a never generous but once more-or-less effective system of support that has been deliberately broken, and then broken again. I wonder if they're already hounding widowed Pike River mothers out to work too.

The problem is violent greed

Not for the first time, the genius of Jacky Fleming shows how skewed our world becomes when we focus on the wrong end of power and oppression:

Since coming into power, this National government has been near obsessed with blaming beneficiaries and the poor in general for all manner of wrong-doing.  Apparently cutting benefits is the "kick in the pants" some need to take responsibility for ​other taxpayers ​ (my emphasis). Paula Bennett has been quick to tell people claiming benefits - even ones she previously accessed herself - that "the dream is over."  If you have to visit a food bank to have enough to feed yourself and your family, it's because you've made "poor choices."

And step out of line if you dare, because Paula Bennett will release your personal details to the media as “a bit of a lesson for what happens if you go out there and put your story,” even if that does breach Privacy Commission ideas of fair practise to the tune of $15,000.  Nope, it's beneficiary bashing all the way, thanks.

You could be forgiven for assuming beneficiaries and the poor are sucking up resources unfairly, completely to blame for our economy stalling and many New Zealanders feeling frightened and even so hungry they eat pig scraps.

But what happens if we focus on the wealthy?

Firstly, they are doing pretty well under National, as this handy graphic from the Green Party shows:



And they are doing pretty well at the expense of everyone else.  Just 9% of New Zealanders are in the top tax bracket, so those tax cuts really were just for a few of us.  And while our median income is falling, our average income is increasing, which is just maths geekery for saying rich people are getting richer even in these belt-tightening times.

We don't spend enough time talking about greed in this country, because National has us bashing people with very little.  It is greedy to make sure those with lots of resources have the chance to create more and more and more, without thinking of ​other taxpayers ​(my emphasis).

If we focussed more on stopping those determined to create unnecessary wealth at the expense of everyone and everything else - the greedy 1% - and less on judging and punishing those with very little, our world would be a very different place.

Now I just need Jacky Fleming to write a cartoon about it.  Oh look, she has.

Vaccinations and Beneficiary Bashing

And now the government is considering penalising beneficiaries who don't immunise their children.

Just as I believe access to free contraception is a good thing, I think vaccination is a good thing. I believe parents should adhere to the regular vaccinations schedules, except in rare and specific cases.

This has nothing to do with vaccinations.

If the goal was to make sure all children were vaccinated, as well as making it easier for parents and dispelling some of the myths, the government could consider a policy like that in some regions of the US where children are unable to attend school if unvaccinated. I have significant concerns about such a policy. But what it would do is (a) put pressure on parents (all parents) to have their children vaccinated, and for those who didn't limit the potential for communication of diseases to other students. That would be the more sensible policy for a government concerned about vaccination rates.

This has nothing to do with vaccinations.

But it is quite clever. On the one hand, it's the usual beneficiary bashing, introduction of nasty punitive measures, and the implied slur that beneficiaries are irresponsible, illogical people who don't care about the health of their children (just like they're apparently all sluts who are popping out one child after another to play the taxpayer, or something).

But I think there's something else going on. There's been an outbreak of whooping cough in my low-income suburb. Obviously lack of vaccination is a significant contributor, as is sheer chance, but it also thrives in crowded conditions. There's a reason it happens in places like this rather than wealthy suburbs, and it ain't because parents are stupid.

Rheumatic fever - for which there is no vaccination - affects young Maori people at vastly disproportionate rates. Preventative measures, however, are well known and documented, including less overcrowding and better quality housing. And that's not even touching asthma rates and severity, depression and repeated contraction of minor illnesses.

But rather than tackling these, the focus seems to be not just on the beneficiary bashing, but on the framing of health issues amongst beneficiaries as issues of personal irresponsibility and ignorance, rather than a public health issue which needs to be tackled on a structural level. And facilitates both the bashing and the sticking-one's-head-in-the-sand.

So yes, parents, it's generally a good idea to vaccinate your children. But to the government, what would be a good idea for you to do is to stop screwing people over, quit the beneficiary bashing and start tackling the fact that (poor, Maori and Pacific Island in particular) families are living in shitty, cold, uninsulated, overcrowded housing, and it's doing no-one's health any good.

A response to the Can't Feed Don't Breed Brigade

On Monday the NZ Herald started a week-long series looking at the gap between rich and poor in Auckland.  On the first day they examined two families - one well-off and one struggling.  The first had two kids, 10 and 13, the second three children, all aged 3 and under.

The article was widely shared online by leftie progressive types I follow and I was startled by some of the responses, particularly on the issue of the struggling family including three children.

Comments such as these were made:

"Agree though that life is all about choices and looking at the big picture of deciding to have 3 kids (and another from a prior relationship) to support when not in a strong enough financial position points to perhaps the wrong choices being made along the way."

"I agree that an average worker should expect to be able to support a family on average pay, but three or more kids I think is pushing it. You shouldn't enter into a situation you can't afford to maintain, that's irresponsible in my view."

When did we decide that having three kids constitutes a large family?

In the whole of human history there has been a massive period of time with average family sizes of more than 3 children born to one couple.  In many countries in the world now women are likely to have more than two children over the course of their fertile years, indeed the world average fertility rate is a bit over 2.5 on all three measures Wikipedia lists.   Why is it unreasonable to expect to be able to have three children and be able to get by in Aotearoa New Zealand, a comparatively well-off place to live?

What also bugs me is how, like with so many issues that come up through a feminist prism, this is about pretending that you know more about someone else's life than they know about it themselves.  Second guessing the life choices of others is a game I'd rather not play.  There could be many reasons why people have 2< children (or indeed any children, one child, no children).  Maybe there was a contraceptive failure, or cultural pressure to have a big family, or a desire to have children of different sexes, or they had the financial resources at the time of conception, or any range of other reasons that are theirs and not yours, or mine.

And what's are the assumptions made by those saying the equivalent of "you shouldn't breed more mouths than you can feed"?  

• People's financial situations don't change over time - or at least they don't get worse.
• Someone can totally foresee how much more each child will add to their outgoings.
• Contraception is fool-proof and freely available and widely used and not socially, religiously or culturally discouraged for anyone.
• Abortion for economic reasons is legal and accessible.

None of these is an accurate assumption.  Taken together they in fact look quite ludicrous, and the last one in particular I find quite chilling.  Those advocating for the termination of pregnancies which are going to put financial pressure on a parent, based on projected income, well, there's a name for that.  

And if you don't take it that far, if you merely encourage people who are on tight incomes to end pregnancies, then you are actually asking them to break to law, because, as we frequently discuss on this blog, an abortion for reasons other than the physical or mental health of the pregnant person is illegal in this country.  While personally I'll be working to change that law, it isn't likely that abortions on economic grounds will be allowable in the near future.

So if the "Can't Feed Don't Breed" brigade don't want to force poor people to have abortions, or even encourage them to break the law, then what's the next thing?  Use contraception?  Not 100% effective, so no guarantee of children resulting to impoverish their siblings and parents.  Oh wait I know, don't have consensual heterosexual sex!  At least not during the fertile years - so that's never for men and not until post-menopause for women.  This would certainly be good for that Homosexual Recruitment Drive we've all heard so much about.  

Let's not lose sight of the original point of discussion that the Herald article was about - the widening income disparity in Auckland.  How about we actually look at the real problem, rather than getting distracted.  The issue here is not too many children but too little money; low incomes, whether it be from paid employment or social welfare or a combination of both.

It's not that long ago that most people in this country could expect a reasonable standard of living for their family based on the income of one full time worker, even with three or more children in the household.  The area I represent at Auckland Council, Puketapapa, had the 18th lowest median income in the Herald's stats, despite having a lower percentage of people on benefits (10.5%) than many of the suburbs higher up.  I live here, in one of the poorer suburbs, and I work all over this part of town.  This gap is not about the choices of individuals, it is about a system that distributes wealth in a way that is all wrong.  We simply must lift incomes.  And we do that not by bagging people for having kids but by investing in education, in infrastructure, in social welfare, in job creation, in innovation, in pay equity and, in the public sector, in actual pay to public servants of all hues.  Focusing on procreation is a distraction, not a solution.

Quickie: National's welfare policy

Many thanks to GG for the link to the speech notes from John Key's launch of National election welfare policy earlier this afternoon.

The only thing I've heard so far (and haven't had time to read the speech yet) is that there is a 50% cut to benefits for people who don't find a job within a specified time.  And that those who have an additional child while already on the DPB will only have the obligation to find work waived until that additional child is 1 year old.

Please consider this an open thread for discussion of it.

UPDATE:  Further to Deborah's comment below, here is a quote from the current Work & Income policy on sanctions:

Sole parents on Domestic Purposes Benefit may face part-time work obligations depending on the age of their children. This means, if they don’t meet the requirements to be actively looking, or preparing, for part-time work of at least 15 hours or more, their benefit may be reduced or stopped.

Partners of beneficiaries face full-time or part-time work obligations depending on the ages of any children they have in their care.

People on Unemployment Benefit face full-time work obligations. This means, if they don’t meet the requirements to be actively looking, or preparing, for full-time work, their benefit may be reduced or stopped.

People receiving Sickness Benefit who have been assessed as able to work at least 15 hours a week may also face part-time work obligations.

Invalid's Beneficiaries, Widow's Beneficiaries, and people receiving Domestic Purposes Benefit - Care of Sick and Infirm and Domestic Purposes Benefit - Women Alone, don’t face work obligations.

If you have work obligations, you’ll face the following sanctions:

• a 50% reduction in your benefit payment the first time you don’t meet your obligations (currently people face a 100% suspension)
• a 100% suspension the second time you don’t meet your obligations, as is currently the case, and
• a 100% cancellation for the third time, as is currently the case.

Sole parents and couples with dependent children face a maximum 50% reduction, suspension, or cancellation of their main benefit.

What appears to be changing in National's policy is that there will now be three benefits,divided on different lines from previously, and with increased work expectations:

• Jobseeker (current UB, Sickness, DPB Women Alone, DPB & Widows with children over 14) - full time work expectation as default, part time or temporary exemption if you make a case for it
• Sole Parent Support (current DPB & Widows children aged 0-13) - part time work expectation
• Supported Living Payment (current DPB Care of Sick & Infirm, Invalids') - no work expectation

Does that make sense? Have I understood it properly?  Comments clarifying welcome.

The other Welfare Forum

You may have noticed that a conference on Welfare and Social Sector Policy and Reform is due to be held in Wellington on 20-21 June. The discounted advance payment cost to attend is $895. So I won't be going to it.

Instead I'll be going to the Welfare Forum being run by the Alternative Welfare Working Group on 20 June. It costs $8.95, or a koha. Beneficiaries can come for free.

The $8.95 Welfare Forum
Monday 20 June 2011, 2.00 – 5.00 pm
St John’s Centre, Willis St, Wellington.
Speakers include Mike O’Brien, Paul Dalziel, Sue Bradford, Wendi Wicks, Māmari Stephens, Kay Brereton.

To find out more or say you're coming, please email lisa@caritas.org.nz or phone 04-496-1765. To see the reports already put out by the Alternative Welfare Working Group, after they held public meetings from Whangarei to Invercargill in the second half of 2010, go to

http://welfarejustice.org.nz/

Why yes, Mr Key, beneficiaries do make lifestyle choices

Something interesting is happening out there in medialand. After scores of examples of people rushing into the comments pages to trash beneficiaries in general and sole mothers in particular, John Key's comments on Wednesday about beneficiaries finally seem to have stirred up lots of angry accusations that as a well-paid millionaire, he is completely out of touch with the realities of life even on low wages, let alone a benefit.

Asked about the large increases in demand for food parcels and the Salvation Army's report showing that "food poverty" was at nearly double the level of four years ago, Key said that "anyone on a benefit actually has a lifestyle choice. If one budgets properly, one can pay one's bills....the bulk of New Zealanders on a benefit do actually pay for food, their rent and other things. Now some make poor choices and they don't have money left."

As many comments have shown, beneficiaries certainly do make choices. Faced with the need to choose between buying healthy food and going to the doctor, or buying children's shoes versus paying the phone bill, I wonder what Mr Key would consider to be the "poor" choice.

Meanwhile over at Scoop, Gordon Campbell injects a much needed dose of accurate facts, as well as excellent amalysis, into the looming "welfare reform" debate (I hate that Americanism, "welfare" - its proper name is social security.)