EDITORIAL - Tuesday May 15, 2012

No need for hunger

"Surely it is time to assess the entire welfare system for affordability, need and effectiveness, to encourage those who can stand on their own two feet to do so"

It is good to see Kaitaia GP Lance O'Sullivan gaining some traction with his pleas on behalf of those at the very bottom of the socio-economic heap in the Far North, but capturing the attention of the Commissioner for Children's office is the easy bit.

Official responses to evidence, anecdotal as much of it might be, of the grim reality of child poverty are a dime a dozen, and no one who believes we can do better will be taking heart from the response of deputy commissioner Jo Cribb.

Child poverty, she said, was a top priority for the commission. What she didn't say was that it had been a priority for years, and the horror stories just keep coming. Nothing has changed, it seems, over all the years of hand-wringing, and nothing will change this time unless someone decides to do something different.

Jo Cribb does not seem inclined to do something different. She said last week that national experts in housing, welfare, business, employment and education had been charged with coming up with a solution to put to the government by August. It would not pay to hold one's breath.

How many reports into child poverty have we had, and how much difference have any of them made? All these 'experts' will do is quantify the problems, once again, of families living on incomes that cannot and do not meet their most basic needs, of families living in sub-standard homes, of families who can't afford to seek medical treatment, of children whose futures are blighted before they begin by truancy from school, and of the crushing impact on families of inter-generational unemployment in communities where real jobs are a fantasy.

The government will examine this report, point out that it can't afford to spend more than the millions of dollars it is already spending every hour on social welfare, and life will go on. The children Dr O'Sullivan says he saw scavenging amongst pig scraps will continue to scavenge. Nothing will change for them or for anyone else.

We need another report like these children need credit cards. What we do need is a paradigm shift in the way welfare is administered, in the way help is given to those who who really need it, and in the way some parents regard their responsibilities.

The first step must be to rationalise the plethora of support services, government and community, that are working to support the disadvantaged. There are far too many, and far too much duplication with far too little effectiveness. If children are scavenging pig scraps someone isn't doing the job they are paid to do or which they have taken upon themselves.

Duplication, which is not only expensive but tends to be counter-productive, is a problem in all sorts of fields, from social welfare to raising funds for medical research, and needs to be addressed. Less really can be more, and the danger, not least within the broad scope of social welfare, that too many cooks spoil the broth is all too apparent, and has been for a long time. The more support agencies the greater the chance that some who need help won't get it, a point that hardly needs emphasising if children really are resorting to scavenging.

Secondly, it's time for a comprehensive re-assessment of state social welfare, to ensure that the enormous sums of money being spent are going where they need to go. It hardly needs saying that if children are scavenging they and/or their families are not receiving the support they should be getting.

Children displaying this level of need will inevitably be the victims of all sorts of adult issues, many of which will be complex and not easily resolved. It cannot be taken as a given, however, that a welfare system that has grown like Topsy over 40-odd years works as well as it should, or could. It isn't necessarily a matter of lifting welfare spending, but of ensuring that every dollar is well spent, by the taxpayer and by the recipient.

Dr O'Sullivan may well have another good point in the case he has made for a two-tier primary health cost structure, which would see those who can least afford access to a family doctor pay less than those for whom cost is not an issue, although the latter might well argue that they are already paying a substantial subsidy for their poorer neighbours via their taxes, and should not be called upon to pay more.

This proposal raises the broader issue, however, of just how much welfare, in all its forms, has become part of our way of life. Social welfare is not the sole preserve of the unemployed, the sick and single parents. Every New Zealander benefits to some degree from welfare spending, whether it be in the form of subsidised doctor visits or Working for Families.

Surely it is time to assess the entire welfare system for affordability, need and effectiveness, to encourage those who can stand on their own two feet to do so, thereby enabling the system to properly provide for those who really need help.

It is also time to impress upon parents that the prime responsibility for their children rests with them. There have been small but encouraging signs that this philosophy is gaining some ground after a generation or more where it has been abandoned. (To wit the Coroner who, earlier this month, rejected calls for a council park to be fenced after a child drowned, saying it would be impractical for every point of access to water be fenced, and that at the end of the day it was a parent's responsibility to supervise children).

Many New Zealanders need reminding that their children's needs must come before their own. Dr O'Sullivan has conceded some families are afflicted by irresponsible spending, and he's right. For many children that will be the key issue. Parents who do not put their children first are unlikely to see their children's lives improved simply by way of higher welfare payments, even if they were affordable.

This newspaper has been told of a home in Kaitaia where a toddler was found in a filthy nappy, carrying a bottle of congealed milk. There was no food in the house, and no furniture, apart from an entertainment centre with an estimated value of $15,000. Another home in Kaitaia reportedly has an interior wall made of Steinlager boxes.

It is easy, and wrong, to generalise about people who are struggling, and there is no intention to do that here. But these two homes exist/existed without apparent intervention by any of the numerous government and community welfare organisations working in Kaitaia, and their children might well have resorted to desperate behaviour that any rational, compassionate New Zealander would find abhorrent. It seems clear that 'the system' was failing those families, and those parents were failing their children.

At the end of the day we need to target welfare spending and effort much more accurately than we have been, and demand a return to acceptance that parents are primarily responsible for their children.

Every New Zealander should have access to support they genuinely need, but that does not relieve them of their fundamental responsibilities, to themselves or their children. If they are not getting the help they need, that needs to be fixed. If they are not doing their bit, that too needs to be fixed.