Inside child poverty revisited, Bryan Bruce

[Lilith7]

While there have been some improvements, they've happened at a snail's pace & haven't been applied everywhere. Perhaps changing our society to fairer one needs to happen at the same brutal pace that Neo Liberalism was imposed here.

It's shameful that there are kids going hungry, that there are parents going without to feed their kids, that we have homeless people - but what's far worse is that we have even now, some who think that's perfectly fine.
Christopher Luxon recently attempting to lay the blame solely on parents makes it very, very clear that there are some people who are well & truly out of touch & who do not want to see the reality if that means that it might disturb their comfortable lifestyle.

https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/undoc...ociety-all

"Children are bearing the brunt of entrenched inequality in New Zealand.

Bryan Bruce’s documentary’s Inside Child Poverty Revisited shown last night on TV3 shows that while there have been some improvements in the 11 years since his first documentary on the issue, little has been done to dismantle the system that enables child poverty says CPAG spokesperson, Susan St John.
The documentary showed that too many children are still going hungry, living in insecure, crowded accommodation and suffering the diseases of poverty. Meanwhile bank profits have soared, yet so too has the need for food banks.
Bruce accused New Zealanders of doubling down on the economics of selfishness despite claiming they wanted a fairer society. He was especially critical of tax policies that rewarded investors in the housing market and the discriminatory nature of child-tax credits for those on low incomes.
"It’s why we need urgent action on Working for Families (WFF)," says St John, interviewed in 2011 and again in 2022 about CPAG’s legal case challenging the harmful discrimination against the poorest children.

"WFF needs to be far more generous and given in full to all low-income families. Payments must be tied to wages and prices just as New Zealand Super is and low-income earners should not be penalized by severe abatements while trying to earn their way out of poverty."

 

https://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv...ocumentary

"Bruce, a television presenter and documentary maker who featured on Prime’s A Question Of Justice, mentions the Child Poverty Reduction Act – something which didn’t exist in 2011. This piece of legislation was passed in late 2018.

Bruce talks about the Act’s targets as set by the government.

“They (the government) may want to say that they’ve met the targets on all of the things that they’ve set,” he says.

“But if you’re like me and you go out and you meet people, and you visit people who are in motels and you meet people who have decided to go back to whenua and live basically in portacabins and basically dig toilets for themselves and things, you realise very soon that we haven’t made a lot of progress.”

On the flip side, some things have improved in the past 11 years. GP visits, for instance, are free for children aged 13 and under.

“Hopefully it will go to under 18s. But that’s (free GP visits for the under 14s) a good thing. We’ve done that,” says Bruce.

“Yes, we have warmed up some houses and we’ve done a few other things but the reality is housing and food are worse now than they were, in my view.

“Those are the two major things that affect the wellbeing of children the most.”

He mentions the property market.

“We have got a problem in that a lot of New Zealanders have got a vested interest in the value of their properties,” says Bruce.

“So, you know, there are millions of dollars of untaxed wealth. That could go into building houses and feeding our kids.”

“We have neoliberal economics which is the politics of selfishness, the economics of selfishness,” he says. “It isn’t the New Zealand I grew up in."

“I talked about my own family in the programme in that my mum was a factory worker and my dad was a postman and we arrived from the slums of Edinburgh in the early 50s.

“But within five years, my parents had bought a house in Spreydon (Christchurch) and they did it because the government controlled the mortgage market and lent the money to my parents and to the baby boom generation at three per cent for 40 years.

“So we all got a house and we all got fed.”

With child poverty an issue that doesn’t seem to be disappearing from the headlines, what would Bruce like to see changing? If he could wave a magic wand, what would he do?

“I would try to convince people that we should be a ‘we’ society and not a ‘me’ society,” he says."

[Zurdo]

“But within five years, my parents had bought a house in Spreydon (Christchurch) and they did it because the government controlled the mortgage market and lent the money to my parents and to the baby boom generation at three per cent for 40 years.

“So we all got a house and we all got fed.”

The Golden Goose that Ruth Richardson sold - not only did the Government supply rental housing, they also supplied mortgages to low income workers...which also supplied the Government with income for future housing development. All Governments have been going backwards on social housing ever since.

[Lilith7]

“But within five years, my parents had bought a house in Spreydon (Christchurch) and they did it because the government controlled the mortgage market and lent the money to my parents and to the baby boom generation at three per cent for 40 years.

“So we all got a house and we all got fed.”

The Golden Goose that Ruth Richardson sold - not only did the Government supply rental housing, they also supplied mortgages to low income workers...which also supplied the Government with income for future housing development. All Governments have been going backwards on social housing ever since.

I never could stand that woman; she seemed totally without empathy & compassion.

Maybe we need to change some things back to what they were - or closer to what they were. Whatever works best to make ours a fairer, less divided society. I remember reading about how they came to set up the state houses back in those times, & there was a quote from  the minister of housing at that time.

 Imagine if we all shared the view that this entire country couldn't expect to prosper or progress unless we all had decent housing, what a difference that might make, just as it did then.



http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/a...d=11346757

"Then Minister of Housing Walter Nash told New Zealand it could not prosper or progress with a population that "lack[s] the conditions necessary for a 'home' and 'home life', in the best and fullest meaning of those words". It was a popular sentiment at the time, but look how far we have since regressed."