Responding to Russel

Excerpt from Russel Norman's maiden speech;

The first item on the agenda of Savage’s first cabinet meeting in December 1935 was a Christmas bonus for the unemployed. This was not popular amongst the bankers in London – it was an act of compassion.

When was the last time we did that for beneficiaries? We punish the children of the poorest by refusing them the in-work payment of $60 per week. The truth is that we have yet to restore Jenny Shipley’s benefit cuts of 1991.

There is another memorial in Auckland. One dedicated to those who turned their backs on ordinary New Zealanders. In the Auckland CBD there is a memorial to Roger Douglas and Ruth Richardson, it is a casino in the shape of a syringe. They created a society in which desperate people’s only hopes are pokies and drugs.

You’re gonna reap just what ya sow. And we are reaping in South Auckland and Bridge Pa.

Last month the Child Poverty Action Group said New Zealand had the fastest growth in income and wealth inequality in the OECD. And I’ll repeat that, because I didn’t say fastest GDP growth. I said that New Zealand had the fastest growth in income and wealth inequality. We are becoming more divided.

The latest figures show about 150,000 children in benefit families in significant or severe hardship.

These 150 000 are the children of the poor that have been forgotten. These are the children of the poor Michael Cullen’s last nine Budgets should have focussed on. These are the children of the poor John Key should stop posing with and start telling us how he’s going to offer hope to - assuming he wants to be more than a breathing replacement to a struggling Government.

And these may well become the teenagers and young adults who feature on our TV screens at 6 o’clock in a decade’s time.

We’re gonna reap what we sow.

I fear that the people in this room have forgotten their history. Is this the future Micky Savage had in mind? Is this his ‘applied Christianity’?

Dear Russel,

The benefits instigated in 1938 were paid for by a dedicated social security tax, not general taxation, and included unemployment, sickness and invalid benefits.

Mickey Savage did not give us the DPB. The children you refer to are almost entirely from single parent homes. I doubt very much that Savage's vision for New Zealand included mass separation, unpartnered childbrith and kids having kids.

The only answer your party has to this problem is greater transfer of wealth and more collective responsibility whereas the only real and lasting solution will be for people to take individual responsibility for their lives and those of any children they create. People will not make good decisions, people will continue to act in self-destructive ways, as long as society picks up after them.

Your brand of 'compassion' can only cause more harm to future generations of children. Children of beneficiaries are not being punished by Labour refusing them the In Work payment. They are being punished by a system that encourages their parents to live apart; that encourages entitlement and victimhood mentalities; and that makes meal tickets of them.

The 'last time' we did something for beneficiaries was when we eased abatement rates and introduced the In Work payment which allows them to earn more from work than from income support. You would turn that on its head.

And we would end up reaping what you have sown. More benefit dependence and more discontent on all sides. Widespread welfarism hasn't brought members of society together. It has divided them. Look a little deeper than mere income levels. The greatest inequalities lie in degrees of personal commitment, conscientiousness and caring. You cannot bridge those gaps with benefit money.

Lindsay Mitchell