‘Lonely, cold, hungry’: Pain even hits middle income schools in cost of living crisis
Principals in even middle-income schools are reporting unprecedented levels of need as the cost of living crisis bears down on some of the youngest New Zealanders.
They are speaking out now, under the condition of anonymity to protect their students, as schools and early childcare charity KidsCan, which helps schools feed and clothe children, launches its winter appeal amid dropping donations as donors react to their own living cost crisis by cutting back on charity.
A principal in a North Island school, which was decile 5 before the system was ditched, has her school on the KidsCan waiting list.
She last week found a young boy crying in the playground. When she asked him what was wrong, he said he was “lonely, cold and hungry”. She has another family sleeping in a tent in someone’s backyard and regularly brings in her own children’s clothes to keep her students warm.
There is a real danger in NZ Politics that when you attack policy as racist to Māori we play the ‘is it racist’ game where everyone screams it is or isn’t, everyone goes back to their polarised corners, nothing progresses.
We’ve done it with Police shootings, we’ve done it with Police taking photos of kids and we did it with the vaccination rates.
Back in November 2021 when we were chasing vaccination rates, there were 159, 810 Māori unvaccinated, 42, 183 Pasifika unvaccinated and a staggering 317, 544 Pakeha who are unvaccinated!
By constantly screaming vaccine hesitancy is a Māori and Pasifica problem, we let 317, 544 Pakeha off the hook!
I fear we’ve done the same thing with child poverty.
Last year there were 156,700 children in poverty, 53,600 identify as Maori, 72,600 identify as pakeha.
There are more white children in poverty than Māori children and that might be difficult to visualise because the focus is almost exclusively on Māori children.
Yes, proportionately these stats hit Māori hardest, but by allowing that to decide the entire focus of the debate we ignore the far larger numerical problem of those issues impacting poor White families and that allows an escape to scrutinize what’s really happening.
By constantly blaming Māori we can’t see that this is a failure of neoliberalism that cascades across race. Left universalism is the way we challenge these inequalities not targeted crumbs!
It’s not an identity issue, it’s a class issue exacerbated by a neoliberal economic hegemony that purposely rigs the system!
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It’s par for the course with Labour. Paint Maori as the worst of everything. Why? I don’t know but my educated guess is the Maori caucus tail that wags the lazy dumb Labour dog, likes it that way because much more money and importantly more control is surrendered by government but the destructive side effect meanwhile is pitting the races against each other. Another reason for Labour to be expunged from power, if we needed one.
If there’s anyone pitting races against each other it’s NatAct and a huge chunk of the 1ZB crowd. Half the pearl clutching over the surgery waiting list was based on complete bollocks and people not having a f’ing clue what they’re talking about. In fact 1ZB should stop pretending they are remotely interested in reporting actual facts and just say they are the campaigning for National.
A bit wet and whiney there wheel.
Exactly right Martyn! This whole exercise is divisive, racist and simply illogical.
There are maybe a million people out there doing just fine who could legitimately claim to be ‘Māori’ according to the current highly elastic yardstick. It’s just that they don’t brand themselves as such. The majority aren’t even on the Māori voter roll!
With the Māori population only about 13% and of those only maybe only 2% have more than 50% Māori ancestry, the self-applied Māori label has become an just excuse for failure.
The system is corrupted, neoliberal economic policy is but one tool, albeit a key tool of this broken system. Poverty is coming for us all if we don’t address our broken political system
Maori are over represented in road crash statistics.
It’s racist to tolerate a worse outcome.
Surely there has to be a lower speed limit for Maori to ensure equity.
Is this not exactly the same situation as the surgery wait lists?
Insane isn’t it.
Maybe the Maori road signs will help lower the road toll for Maori
Hallelujah – Now you are getting to why so many of us are against race based policies.
MPac have the highest % of poverty but the numbers in poverty numerically are ‘other NZers’. Almost the only thing, I agree with Luxon on is that a NZ defined by race is a NZ than cannot stand for long.
We need to stop wallowing in history and victimhood and get back to $’s and Sense (As in Common Sense). Where is the need? and how can we get the best bang for our Buck?
Have more democracy based on full equality, less focus on ‘special seats and special rights’ and much more focus on communities and the people.
We dont need elite controlled ‘transformational’ govt (which has brought us the disasters of neo liberalism and race based approaches) but one that is dominated by ‘the people’. Yes us, the great unwashed.
Why cant we have additional questions at election time? You turn up to vote and then additionally get to choose from say ten areas that need government time and money put into them.
I think this could work if the media had some good practice requirements around it as Bomber suggested yesterday The media’s job then becomes reporting on the issues, what the options are, how much they cost, metrics. Is the government advancing the priority areas etc? Keeping the govt honest.
Generally informing the debate in a robust way. Election year could then be more about priorities and policies than ad hominem or ideological attacks. Also about each parties plans for the future of the priority areas and a full accounting of current govt progress on them.
Brings out racist square head South African, mind meld, inhumain.
“Last year there were 156,700 children in poverty, 53,600 identify as Maori, 72,600 identify as pakeha.”
Tell us again how this is White Privilege and Tyranny Of The Majority and not economics. Child poverty is parents subject to a low-wage, high-rent economy.
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