TEARS ARE NOT ENOUGH

While Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spills tears for the victims of the Whakaari White Island eruption, little compassion is in evidence for the country's growing number of struggling New Zealanders. According to Ardern, the cupboard is bare...

THE TELEVISION cameras were trained on the Prime Minister yesterday  as she shed tears for the victims of last year's  Whakaari White Island volcano eruption. Once again Jacinda Ardern could be seen wearing her heart on her sleeve for a nationwide audience and in living rooms around the country  her followers were reaffirming their allegiance to her. Such a compassionate leader. Aren't we lucky to have her? Indeed  we have a Prime Minister whose empathy is 'almost supernatural' according to fan boy Martyn Bradbury of The Daily Blog. Who knew Bradbury believes in 'the other side'?

Of course there would be few of us who did not express sadness, perhaps shed a tear or two, for the victims of the eruption, just as we did for the Christchurch victims of a deranged gunman. But as Prime Minister you apparently get extra kudos for displaying grief in public-  and this is especially so when the 'empathy bar' has been set to a new low by scoundrels like Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro.

But while the Prime Minister might be able to display her compassion for the victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks, it is in short supply when it comes to the victims of an economic system she oversees and protects. Her celebrated 'empathy' is missing in action. She behaves exactly  like the mean spirited John Key or Paula Bennett, the difference being she is exempt from the kind of heated critical salvoes that were fired in the direction of Ardern's National Party predecessors by Labour supporters.

The statistics are all readily available on the net, and I'm not going to rehearse them all here again, but Covid 19 has only accelerated the country's already chronic level of poverty and inequality. 

In every city and every country there are poor parts and, in the past, New Zealand's poverty has largely been hidden - and easier to be forgotten about by the political class. But as we head into 2021 poverty has become more visibly confronting with long queues outside food banks and more homeless on the streets. We even have various city council's discussing how they can get the homeless out of the central city because its 'not a good look'.

Yet Jacinda Ardern has flatly rejected the widespread community call for a substantial increase in core welfare benefits  even though its what own welfare working group recommended. Yet, at the same time, property investors and developers are raking in the cash because the Labour Government will not act to cool a red hot housing market. Indeed, according to Ardern, extortionate house prices are here to stay. She told the media that 'sustained moderation' is the best we can hope for from her Government when it comes to housing prices because people 'expect' the value of their property or properties to keep rising.

As business commentator Bernard Hickey observed on Twitter : 'It's official. Aotearoa's housing market is too big to fail. Guaranteed now that prices will always go up. Govt policy. RBNZ policy. No suggestion there is any moral hazard in these guarantees. Not even an acknowledgement of the social costs. Just immutable fact of life it seems.'

Its little wonder that a frontline organisation like Auckland Action Against Poverty is angry as it watches Ardern pander to her middle class base - and her new ex-National party supporters- while kicking the working poor and beneficiaries where it hurts the most. In a press statement  AAAP coordinator Brooke Stanley Pao commented:

'We are tired of hearing how they believe they’re (Labour) making a material difference in the lives of families with the initiatives they’ve implemented because we’ve been saying it’s still not enough. The need here in New Zealand is so great at the moment, and has been for some time due to successive governments neglecting welfare reform. Anything short of bold transformational policies isn’t going to cut it. We need liveable incomes as well as a commitment and acquiring of state housing to help alleviate the hardship people are facing in our communities. It’s not good enough to believe you’re doing enough when the organisations on the frontline are saying otherwise. At this point it’s a whole bunch of gaslighting and virtue signalling, and we’re over it.'

AAAP was joined in its attack on government policy by the new Green MP Ricardo Menendez. In his maiden speech to Parliament Menendez, who previously worked for AAAP, said.

'While, for some politicians, the discussion about low wages, the rights of migrants, benefit levels, having enough water to drink, climate change, and public housing is abstract stuff to be debated in the House, for some of us, it's clear that we are not solely theoretical when we talk about why having liveable incomes is so urgent. We talk about increasing incomes and public housing for all because we know what it is like to count your dollars before the next pay cheque. We fight for overhauling the welfare system because we know what it is like to be sitting for hours at Work and Income, having every single receipt scrutinised in order to get a measly food grant, while corporates easily accessed millions of dollars of subsidies during the pandemic in a high-trust model. It's not abstract because it is a fight for the survival of the communities we serve and we belong to.' 

The message to Jacinda Ardern is clear and unequivocal: tears are not enough.