KEY POINTS:
Jane Stevens was just 23 when she implanted herself on the nation's conscience with a show-stopper speech at David Lange's 1984 economic summit.
He had just been elected Prime Minister of a new Government.
She was a passionate advocate for the 60,000 unemployed at the time, working mainly in the national unemployed and beneficiaries movement, Te Roopu Rawakore o Aotearoa.
Almost 25 years later, a new Prime Minister of another new Government is hosting his own summit.
And Ms Stevens has a message for those gathering next Friday to grapple with the effects of the recession: don't blame the individual and don't treat people like "units of production".
Back in 1984, there had been a strong culture of blaming the individual for unemployment in 1984, she said this week.
"And I don't think that has changed today - at all.
"Yes, we've got a problem and I don't have all the answers to it - none of us do - but at the end of the day it is about people. It is too easy to lose a sense of that."
She spoke 25 years ago about the indignity of poverty, the sense of having no say in her future and wanting a bigger share of the country's wealth. "I want you to feel guilty for allowing this to happen but I am not going to let you get away with just guilt," she told the bankers and employers there.
Ms Stevens has remained a strong activist for social justice and is now manager for community advisory services at Community Waikato. It is largely funded by Trust Waikato to work with about 500 voluntary and social services agencies in the region to build their own capacity to deliver services. Ironically, she said, the recession had impacted on the funding of the organisation when it would be most needed.
She has two sons, one has just finished university and one is at college, and her elderly parents have moved to Hamilton from Dunedin.
Her partner, anti-gambling campaigner Dave Macpherson, is in his fourth term on the Hamilton City Council. The couple live in Ngaruawahia where they helped to found a community house.
They moved north 11 years ago when they were made redundant from the Wairarapa Polytechnic.
Jane Stevens left school at the end of the fourth form with no qualifications. Now aged 48, she earned a diploma from University of Waikato in not-for-profit management.
She said she had not been asked to speak at next week's summit and was not sure if she would go if she were invited.
"It would depend on what they intended to do. I am not interested in anything that is just the captains of industry talking about how they might shift their businesses to India or the Philippines because it will be cheaper.
"I am only interested in things that are going to make things better for our people in this country and if they are prepared to sit down and look at different ways of doing things."
