Marilyn Waring keeps popping up on the back of her new book.
I was speaking at a conference, my topic being the US Welfare Reforms and what NZ could learn from them. Just a couple of minutes into my presentation Marilyn Waring put her hand up. I had to stop. She said, "This isn't working for me." I can't remember how I responded. Probably just barreled on. Later she had another go and I remember now what it was about.
Here's a post I wrote in 2013.
Well.
After years of trying to tell people that sole parents spend many, many years on benefit I see MSD has just released a statement containing this:
"...sole parents spend an average 15.8 years on benefit with a lifetime cost of $234,000."
I have repeatedly talked about Professor Bob Gregory's Australian research which found sole parents spend an average of 12 years on welfare not including benefits they may move to when they no longer had dependent children.
People have derided me for it in public forums. For instance Marilyn Waring sneeringly telling an audience I had included time spent on Super. Time and again politicians, welfare advocates, bloggers etc have sought to convince the population that the average time spent on the DPB is, most commonly, only about 3 years. They look at the available data but don't understand it.
Waring was a Professor of Public Policy at the time. Essentially it was her way or the highway and she plenty of fellow travellers. Their strategy then was to shut down by discrediting what they didn't like. And it continues today. My opposition to the DPB would possibly be classified as hate speech by some.
But I shake my head when I hear Marilyn Waring talking about the bullying she took. She knew how to dish it out.
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2 comments:
My only contact with her was when she was asked to summarise an economic conference years agoshe. She was lazy and just gave a stock speech of hers about GDP not measuring household production.
Lindsay, may I suggest your encounter with Obersturmbannfuhrer Waring was, in Alpha male terminology, nothing more than an old fashioned "Pissing contest' undertaken by someone who perhaps felt threatened in a way which may have had more to do with gender politics than Political Social philosophy. I suspect when Ms Waring, a very intelligent Alpha Butch Feminist, met an intelligent and very feminine straight lady, claws were unsheathed. You did well not to yield to the "Bully" in the room.
In today's "Newspeak" I have probably lurched into the realm of forbidden language and made myself liable to being lashed with wet flax for my sins. I've got goosebumps just thinking about it.
As an aside and in keeping with the theme of "bullying" I remember many years ago when I once watched the television news, i saw a clip of a Rob Muldoon National Party Caucus meeting. The camera was focused on the caucus table, around which were seated several National Party members of the day, specifically Paul East.As Muldoon strode into the room, Paul East immediately had a look of shear terror on his face and he instantly averted his gaze from Muldoon, who was looking in his direction. Ms Waring deserves respect for standing up to the vitriol Muldoon would have thrown at her. But then somone suggested it was a bit like "Godzilla meets The Incredible Hulk".
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