Chippy’s ‘Let them eat pie’: Bread and Butter but none for hungry children
The child poverty stats are in and the results are damning.
AAAP reports 120 000 kids are still living in homes who experience material hardship and CPAG once again point out that while they stats are damning, the truth is actually far worse…
“The trouble is, of the almost 9,000 households surveyed in this data, there was no inclusion of our most vulnerable families. Families living in motels and other emergency accommodation, as well as cars and other forms of homelessness were not included,” Prof Emeritus Asher said.
“The real picture is likely to be a lot more grim as anecdotal evidence suggests the numbers of families in these dire situations is on the increase.”
“We also know poverty is a driver of preventable hospitalisations, which is another reason to urgently address child poverty, for the sake of our overburdened health system.”
…the problem is that corporate consultants get in the ear of Governments and convince them to target welfare rather than provide left wing universalism because to fund left wing universalism you need to tax the rich.
Chippy needs boldness if he wants to go beyond Jacinda’s rhetoric.
He needs free lunch and breakfast in every school, he needs public transport, he needs 30% stake in Supermarkets, he needs to implement all the welfare reforms, he needs to implement CPAGs Working For Family Tax Credit, he needs to take GST off food while putting a sugar tax on, he needs the Green’s wealth tax and the Māori Party’s financial transaction tax but most of all he needs courage or else all his bread and butter policies will never be tasted by the poorest children.
If all Chippy is offering is ‘let them eat pie’, how different is that from National’s ‘Let them eat cake’?
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The problem here is systemic racism… Racism of the paternalistic kind that panders to our brown citizens, set a low bar for them, and makes endless excuses for their intergenerational failure.
Spot on countryboy – the free-marketeers & Ayn Rand fetishists realized in the late 1970s-early 1980s that they’d never turn National their way while Rob Muldoon had his hand on the wheel, so they figured “Why not turn Labour?” – with the added bonus that screwing the major party of the left would also seismically shift the centre of NZ politics their way too. (National will come around to it, whenever Muldoon falls).
It was brilliantly effective, until MMP threatened to upset the apple cart with Jim Anderton taking the opportunity to strike out with his vision of what a modern Labour Party could be (and he had that vision to the very end – he was talking about free dental care towards the end of his career, years before the headlines we now see!)
So it was time to introduce the public – and especially the left – to issues that don’t tackle the economic problem – identity politics, place names, change the flag campaigns, etc etc… yeah.. that should divert attention.
Common, get real already! Where is the budget? Last year verses this year. Tell us exactly – ins and outs. Tell us exactly who authorized such expenditures. Tell us.