Editorial Tuesday June 24, 2014

Peter Jackson, editor, The Northland Age

THOSE who strive to improve the lot of the tens of thousands of children who supposedly live in poverty in this country do their cause no favours by gilding the lily. Child poverty, whatever that means (the official definition is wordy in the extreme, although fundamentally it comes down to those who live in households with an income below a certain proportion of the mean, which suggests, somewhat discouragingly, that however wealthy this country becomes some will always be poor), is a complex issue. It cannot be measured purely in terms of income, and for that reason the 'solution' goes far beyond simply increasing a family's material wealth.

The risk run by those who work so hard to prick the national conscience is basically twofold - they aggravate those who live in straitened circumstances but work very hard, and successfully, to raise their children well, to feed, clothe and educate them, while others don't, and secondly, their often perceived exaggeration of the insurmountability of the problems faced by some families encourages the view that those whose children are suffering the effects of poverty are basically selfish or lazy.

That is patently not universally true, but crying wolf too often and too loudly can be counter-productive. And no one has cried wolf more spectacularly in recent times than Professor Jonathan Boston, co-author of the book Child Poverty in New Zealand. The book, released last week, would reportedly have us believe that the poorest children in this country are no better off than some of those who live in the slums of India. Even without expert knowledge on the subject, one can be reasonably confident in rejecting that as a nonsense.

Professor Boston, whose expertise in this field apparently stems from a month he spent in Delhi slums late last year, claims that the Indian government provides school lunches to 130 million children. He says he saw very few seriously malnourished children in the Delhi slums, most of those children attending school and enjoying access to health services. A high proportion of their parents were working, albeit for low wages. That, one assumes, was why they were living in slums. (The word slum, incidentally, is defined as a densely populated, usually urban area marked by run-down housing, poverty and social disorganisation. It would be safe to say that however hard some people are doing it here, New Zealand does not have such a thing as slums).

Meanwhile, back in God's Own Country, Professor Boston sees children living in unheated homes, in caravans that don't have running water, and families that don't have enough food "of the right kind" every day. How that equates to a Delhi slum is not immediately apparent. He is unlikely to have seen children in this country picking over rubbish dumps for food or anything else that might be of value, or children whose parents have deliberately crippled them to improve their chances of making a living as beggars - until they become to old to evoke the required level of sympathy, and simply become unemployable cripples.

Perhaps he can explain how it is that India, which by his experience does such a great job of catering for the basic needs of its poorest children, had, as of 2012, a life expectancy of 66 years, while in New Zealand it was 80.7 years. But leaving that aside, he might like to quantify the odds of a child from a Delhi slum escaping the poverty he was born into. The important thing is not poverty, which is always relative, but opportunities to escape it.

This newspaper has in the past referred to the view of a local man who spent much of his working life building infrastructure in the Third World, and will do so again. Ross Wallace reckoned that in all his experience, no other country in the world could hold a candle to New Zealand in terms of the opportunities that were open to every child, no matter its ethnicity, wealth, or the social standing into which it was born. A child born at Te Hapua, he said, had exactly the same opportunities as one born in Remuera.

Opportunities vary, of course, depending upon the likes of intellect and family support, but the point remains that New Zealand children have access to a world that is beyond the reach of your average Delhi slum dweller, and that's where Professor Boston goes wrong.

Free school lunches and access to health care - it would be interesting to see details of those - will never make up for a New Zealand child's birthright - a potential future beyond the wildest imaginings of many of the children in this world, including, according to Ross Wallace, many born into societies wealthier than ours.

The writer holidayed in Vanuatu some years ago, and was struck by the poverty there, and the islanders' attitude to it. Outside the resorts, conditions for many could probably be described as Third World. Everyone seemed to have a cell phone, but even those who were employed within the tourism industry were poor, at least by New Zealand standards. The difference was that it really didn't seem to bother them, even though there appeared to be no escape.

A very polished, personable waiter at one of the resorts was earning about $NZ90 a week. That would just about have bought a tank of gas for a small car (if he could have afforded to own one, which he patently couldn't), but would not have funded a quick trip to a small grocery store that had seen better times for cheese, crackers, juice and some local fruit.

Commodities, especially those imported from New Zealand or Australia, were extremely expensive, and it seemed highly unlikely that any of the locals could ever plan to work hard and 'better' their lot. Their lack of prospects, for want of a better word, is unheard of in this country, where people can work hard and achieve goals, whether that be owning a house or establishing a career that promises wealth and/or personal fulfilment. It is doubtful that any child born in an Indian slum would aspire to such goals, however nourishing their school lunch might be.

Yet we have politicians, generally dwelling somewhere to the left of rational, exhorting electors to 'give a tick' for children on September 20. The general idea seems to be to support policies that will further extend social welfare to deliver thousands of children from grinding poverty. The cost of that will presumably be met by the wealthy among us, the selfish superannuants, rich farmers, the small business owners and wage earners who are rolling in it.

What we actually need are policies that will generate employment for these kids' parents, that being the only thing that will improve their financial lot long-term. And we could start looking at life in Godzone from the glass half-full perspective. We have so much in this country that many people would cut off their right arm for, yet we are constantly bombarded with the message that life for some children here is a constant battle against starvation, with only an uneducated, unemployed adult future to look forward to.

Maybe some who are hawking that view should spend some time in a Delhi slum to see what real deprivation and lack of opportunity are like. Or they could go to Vanuatu and see people who don't have much by our standards but are happy with their lot.