SOMETIMES IT'S THE TINIEST SPARK THAT LIGHTS THE BIGGEST FIRES.

The denial of tea and toast to new mothers has prompted wider criticism of the Government's austerity agenda.

 

THERE WAS much outrage expressed in the social media over the weekend after it was revealed that tea and toast had been taken off the menu in the maternity wards of Wellington's hospitals. Hospital services general manager Shane King said that 'in the current fiscal environment' tea and toast was no longer on the menu for new mothers.  RNZ reported that a new father posted on Facebook he had to go out at 3am to buy food for his partner after she had given birth. Yes, folks, it has come to this.

A midwife told RNZ the removal of bread from the wards was 'miserly, cheap and mean cost-cutting'.

But the outrage has quickly grown into angry criticism of a Government pursuing an austerity agenda that has only exacerbated New Zealand's already chronic levels of poverty and inequality.

It is incidences like this that spark wider social unrest. In 2019, for example, a transit fare hike in the Chilean capital of Santiago, rapidly grew into nationwide protests against austerity and the rising cost of living. The right wing Chilean government reacted by imposing a state of emergency in Santiago.

Could something similar happen in New Zealand? There will be some who will predictably scoff at the very idea of such spontaneous unrest. But, nevertheless, it is true that outbursts of resistance often come as a surprise and outstrip the expectations of apparently clever opinion writers and academic theorists, who never see them coming. 

Sometimes it's the tiniest spark that lights the biggest fires.