The Economic Cyclones that batter Aotearoa - Hone Harawira

Electricity bills are skyrocketing, food prices increasing, house prices are at the highest level they have ever been, and petrol prices are sitting at record levels – so telling us that Vote Social Development has gone up a miserly 4.6% will bring no comfort to those people in my electorate who are struggling to survive the recent thunder storms in places like Te Häpua, Panguru, Käeo, Moerewa, Waitangi, Whangarei, and Pouto, and the ongoing economic cyclones that continue to batter our region.
And when visits to the doctor or the dentist, or buying warm clothes, or fixing the washing machine, or getting the car registered, become luxuries - then you start to get a picture of the level of poverty that many of my people have to deal with.

And when last month, five community organisations are forced to meet in Whangarei to deal with:
the growing levels of desperate need,
the fact that food bank use in Whangarei has doubled this year, and
the worsening status of child poverty, including how kids from poor families are getting sick three times more often than kids from families on higher incomes,
- then you just know, that something is seriously wrong with the priorities this government has, for running the country.
And even though the Social Services Committee report, says that:
“the appropriation for the unemployment benefit is less than last year”;
“we expect the number of sickness beneficiaries to decrease by 5%”;
but that “the number of people seeking budgetary advice is increasing”

- it’s not too hard to work out that if there are less benefits available, but more people struggling with debt, then we’ve got a national scandal on our hands.

And let’s get one thing straight – just because many Maori people are forced by economic circumstance and racism to survive on benefits, does not mean the Maori Party supports the kind of inter-generational dependency on benefits that Labour uses to control Maori people, because we don’t.
In fact, we hate the way in which benefits have been used to reduce Maoridom to a level of subservience which bleeds the soul, sucks hope out of people, destroys community initiative, and devastates our people’s future, and when we get the chance, we will put in place the economic programmes that will allow our people to contribute fully to our country, and, on a decent living wage.

But Madame Chair, you judge a nation by the way in which you treat its most vulnerable citizens, and Catholic Communications puts it pretty clearly in their ‘Poverty In An Affluent Society’, report which describes poverty as: “an evil when it is forced on people through oppression or disadvantage”.
They also go on to say that: “When a section of our society is allowed to fall into poverty and hardship, everyone is at risk from the symptoms of economic violence. The diseases that thrive in conditions of poverty threaten the health of everyone; the violence that accompanies economic stress, does not confine itself to the poorest suburbs, and the uncertainty of those living with insecure work, is exposed in mental illness and suicide rates”.
So again, although the estimates report says that “the Ministry aims to achieve further productivity and efficiency improvements”:
I also note that Grey Power is saying that 75,000 old people are living in poverty; and another 230,000 are living just above the poverty line,
and the Child Poverty Action Group is telling us that 230,000 kids are denied benefits, simply because their parents cannot get a job,
and you and I know that productivity and efficiency improvements will neither feed nor clothe, nor pay the power bill, for those sectors of our society whose needs are greatest.

I ask this simple question Madame Chair –
How it is that the Ministry of Social Development can talk so blandly about it’s role in detecting, snooping, preventing, and investigating benefit fraud, and achieving “further productivity and efficiency improvements” – while our nation’s most vulnerable citizens continue to suffer?
Madame Chair, the Ministry can prattle on about the confidence it has in falling benefit numbers, but our interest is not in crystal-ball gazing; our interest is in the right for all people in this land to lead a positive and dignified life, and not just a life in which simple survival is the primary focus.
The Maori Party wants to see communities where neighbours care for each other, where the immediate needs of hardship are addressed immediately; and where the State plays its proper role in ensuring fairness, justice and equity, for all of its citizens.