Shane Te Pou – As backdrop to this column, here’s a statistic worth thinking about…

As backdrop to this column, here’s a statistic worth thinking about because it’s real its us our neighbours our Whanau our community .

44 percent of New Zealanders say they have no emergency fund. That’s not a savings problem, that’s a surviving problem. Paying the bills is real. Just getting by is real.

Sure, you can tell people to save. But an emergency fund isn’t really an emergency fund if you’re already dipping into it just to make it through the month — and plenty of hard Working people are doing exactly that.

And yes, if you own your house, you’ve technically got an asset. But a house isn’t a gingerbread man. You can’t nibble off a corner of it to pay for groceries. You still have to eat, power Bill uniforms all the things that most kids have to fork out for on a regular basis

So have a read about this and have a good think about this.

One of the reasons I’ve decided to take a break from Aotearoa and carry on as a digital nomad is that I’ve had a fair bit of loss over the years. What I’ve learned is you can’t outrun grief. But stepping away from your normal routines can give you the time to grieve, to reflect, and eventually to heal.

People close to me have died after serious illness, and it’s made me think hard about what happens when someone becomes seriously unwell and can no longer work or care for themselves the way they once did. I’m talking about people who’ve worked their whole lives and then find themselves needing help just as they’re facing the toughest medical stretch of it — or the end of it altogether.

The people close to me were organised not sorted like our Prime Minister but yeah hard working Kiwis that made sure they had a little bit of runway.

They had savings, whānau around them, and people who could carry them through. That simply isn’t the reality for a huge number of people in Aotearoa. That’s why I’ve become a strong supporter of social insurance.

I know it’s not on Labour’s agenda this election. I think it should be. In fact, I think the left needs to have a much more serious conversation about it.

At its core, social insurance is about a simple truth: sometimes life knocks people over through no fault of their own. Serious illness, disability, a sudden inability to work — it can happen to any of us. When it does, people shouldn’t have to fight their way through a maze of a welfare system just to hold onto some basic dignity. There are a lot of genuinely vulnerable people who need this kind of support.

Done properly, social insurance isn’t just a payment to keep people alive. It’s real income people can use for the ordinary costs of living. We already understand this through ACC — someone gets injured, can’t work, and ACC helps cover rent, power, kai, transport, the everyday stuff. Social insurance can work the same way. It gives people security, but it also gives them control and dignity

Someone living with a serious illness or disability knows better than any government agency what their household actually needs. For one person that’s the mortgage. For another, it’s transport or childcare or treatment costs. Not everything fits neatly into a government-approved box, and the scheme should be flexible enough to reflect that.

There’s a longer-term financial case too. A social insurance scheme doesn’t just collect money and hand it straight back out — over time it builds an investment fund, and that fund earns returns which help sustain the scheme. ACC has done exactly this, building a substantial portfolio over the years. I’m not saying that money should be treated as some kind of government slush fund. I’m saying a well-designed scheme gets financially stronger over time because the money set aside is also out there working. Over the long run, investment income could end up covering a lot more of the cost than people assume when they first see the price tag. That’s worth remembering before anyone writes it off as unaffordable.

We should stop treating social insurance as just another government expense and start treating it as a long-term social investment. The left has always understood that a decent society runs on more than individual responsibility — it runs on collective responsibility, on knowing that we all put in, and that at different points in our lives, we might all need to draw on that support.

Look at what happens when we get that balance right: universal healthcare, universal education, ACC, KiwiSaver. Every one of those was once dismissed as too expensive, too radical, unnecessary. Given good design and real commitment, they became part of the fabric of the country. That’s the opportunity in front of us with social insurance.

I’m not asking for a blank cheque. I’m asking the left to take another look — go through the evidence, work through the costs, get the design right, build in the safeguards, make sure it’s fair and sustainable. But don’t write it off just because it isn’t on this election’s agenda.

The people who’d need social insurance aren’t some abstract group out there. They’re our whānau. Our neighbours. Our mates. And one day, they could be us. If you were mate of mine there’s a high chance on your late 50s early 60s or perhaps a little bit older. The reality is this could well be us.

Get it right — the right safeguards, a sustainable funding model — and social insurance could become a permanent part of how we look after each other in Aotearoa. Sometimes the job of the left isn’t just defending the gains of the past. It’s looking at who’s falling through the cracks today and having the guts to build something better. For me, this is one of those fights worth having. It’s about manaakitanga, dignity, and security — making sure that when life takes an unexpected turn, no one in this country has to face it alone.