KEY POINTS:
Bill English's very successful opposition campaign against the Electoral Finance Bill, with the very public support of the New Zealand Herald and editorial writers of many other daily newspapers, clearly has the Government on the back foot.
The impression now cemented in most people's mind is that Labour
- supported by the Greens, New Zealand First and United Future - has forced through a partisan law for next year's election to give them electoral advantage over National.
An opinion poll a week ago showed a dramatic drop in support for Labour and the Greens in Auckland. Nationally, the Greens dropped by well under 5 per cent and in Auckland less than 1 per cent. I wondered whether the result had anything to do with the relentless front-page campaign by the Herald over the Electoral Finance Bill.
This is only one poll and it's difficult to draw any informed conclusion at this point. But clearly, the onslaught has rattled Labour. The behaviour of senior ministers such as Michael Cullen and Trevor Mallard in the debating chamber exposes the stress the Government is feeling.
Mallard explained his punch-up fiasco with Tau Henare and subsequent humiliation in the dock on Monday as a reaction to stress. Astonishingly, his actions last week show he has learned nothing.
I've no doubt Mallard and senior Ministry of Environment officials feel Erin Leigh was bogus when claiming she resigned from her job because of the appointment of a Labour Party stalwart. It's obvious Mallard was told she wasn't up to the job. But deciding, contrary to advice from the Prime Minister's department, to go into the debating chamber and denounce Leigh's motivations and work competency is just stupid politics. Mallard's instincts are to attack anyone who upsets him when he is under stress. Even after Hugh Logan, the ministry's boss, said Leigh's work was of a high standard, Mallard refused to apologise for his behaviour. This must call into question his capacity to be a leading minister.
More surprising was Cullen's shouting at John Key: "Scumbag! Scumbag! Scumbag!" Key's implied slur about Helen Clark's childlessness set Cullen off. In less stressful times Cullen wouldn't have reacted like this. Key probably deserved the retort but it shows the childish behaviour in Parliament at the moment.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a serious report was published by the Paediatric Society on the health of New Zealand's children which should have got our politicians' attention far more than the Electoral Finance Bill.
In spite of the economic bonanza we have apparently enjoyed over the past decade, this report shows the proportion of children in severe or significant hardship rose from 18 per cent to 26 per cent. Unsurprisingly, poverty remains highest among sole parents, beneficiaries and their children, who number more than 200,000. It reports that 43 per cent of children in sole-parent families and 15 per cent of children in two-parent families live below the poverty line.
Ruth Richardson, when she was Finance Minister in 1991, slashed welfare benefits and these cuts were never restored. Before Rogernomics and Ruthanasia, the core benefit for a sole parent with two children was 92 per cent of the average wage. By 1999, it was 62 per cent and is now 58 per cent. So much for the trickle-down theory espoused by our leaders that the free market will make us all rich.
The purpose of the benefit was to get parents and their children out of poverty. We have now a benefit regime that traps the children of sole parents in poverty. It is no surprise that nearly half of the children of sole parents live in the most deprived areas. The much-heralded Working for Families package doesn't apply to beneficiaries and their children. The notion of topping-up wages for parents in low-paid jobs to a liveable income but not for children whose parents are unable to work is unfair. Effectively that means the policy is not about helping poor families but is in fact state subsidies to employers who pay low wages.
The effect of the State keeping beneficiaries and their children in poverty has permanent consequences. For example, the report says 40 per cent of families defined as living in severe hardship have more than one child to a bed. Little wonder then that the health of the children of the poor is deteriorating and overcrowding has led to a disturbing increase in hospital admissions of children with serious bacterial infections. Charles Dickens wrote stories about this sort of deprivation.
Last year, 40 per cent of all births were in the most deprived areas of our community. This is in spite of a decade of so-called economic prosperity and heavily increased spending on health care. It seems that, rather than address our behaviour to children, our politicians wallow in childish behaviour such as name-calling, throwing tantrums and bullying in the parliamentary playpen.
And what attention did we give this report? Our state-owned television channel invited the authors and officials on to Close Up. But the producers canned the story and replaced it with Nicky Watson's plea for help over her lost dog, Cricket. It seems the deteriorating health of 200,000 children and parents isn't as newsworthy as a lost chihuahua.
