My old mate Derek Fox has a few interesting observations from afar (Rarotonga) on the election results. He sums up pretty succinctly the reasons why I have put the alleviation of child poverty at the top of my political bucket list: So how has it panned out – Derek Fox comments on the shape of the new New Zealand parliament and what that might mean. Well despite the crowing noises coming from New Zealand, the election last weekend was a close run thing as I predicted. National won about 48% of the votes cast, 52% voted for someone else. The 48% entitled National to about 57 seats in a 121 seat Parliament. But in a quirk of MMP, the votes cast for the Conservatives and Internet-Mana and a few other tiny parties like the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, which didn’t result in those parties getting anyone into the House – are distributed amongst the successful parties and that gave National the boost to win 61 seats; the slimmest margin possible. Again as I predicted about a million people who were on the roll didn’t vote – in fact the same number of people who voted for National – didn’t make the trip to the polling booth. That’s the equivalent of about 100-times the population of the Cook Islands. What do we know about those people? Well yesterday a New Zealand political scientist told us that the people who don’t vote tend to be ‘brown’ –although he couldn’t bring himself to say brown, he used the term ‘not-white’ – they are also poor and young. That’s not exactly the profile of a National Party supporter, but I guess we can only speculate at what the shape of the New Zealand Parliament might be if they had taken the time to vote. What we do know is that like most captains John Key will ‘take the win’, however slight or ugly it may be. Key will almost certainly shore up his parliamentary support by including the one ACT MP- David Seymour – who won the Epsom seat by National voters giving their party vote to National but their electorate vote to him; Peter Dunne who has won the Ohariu seat near Wellington under one banner or another for the past 30 years – although this time with a greatly reduced majority, and what looks like two Maori Party MPs. Te Ururoa Flavell who held his Waiariki seat, and brand new MP and first time candidate Marama Fox, who in a stroke of luck will go down in history as the Maori Party’s first list MP. Up until now Maori Party MPs have always won their electorate seats and because the party’s share of the party vote has been lower than the number of seats it’s won, they haven’t been eligible for someone off the list. It’s probably a safe bet that Dunne and Flavell will get jobs as ministers. Dunne has had minor ministerial appointments before in both National and Labour led governments Flavell will be a newbie. Key may feel obliged to give Seymour a junior role in the executive, but then again he may not. As an ACT party staffer Seymour developed policy around the so-called ‘charter schools’ in New Zealand and a role may be created there. It’s likely Flavell will be appointed Minister of Maori Affairs in charge of the Maori ministry that is currently undergoing drastic changes. A further role could be Minister for Whanau Ora, Tariana Turia’s legacy programme. Flavell also has an education background and because of the Ministry of Educations poor record teaching Maori and Pacifica kids, he could end up as an associate Minister of Education too. By being in coalition with National those minor parties will have the opportunity to put forward one or two pet projects for consideration for passing into law or funding. But with an absolute majority – albeit wafer thin – National will decide whether or not they will go ahead. On the other hand again because of that majority National can push through whatever it really wants to. In a column a couple of weeks before the election I offered the view that the biggest challenge ahead of whoever won would be dealing with the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. Like a cracked record I have pointed out that there are 260-thousand children living in poverty in New Zealand – overwhelmingly they are brown. National hasn’t done anything that has reduced that figure in the last six years. Key’s view is that ‘when’ we make conditions right for business, jobs will be created and the poor can get work. Unstated is the fact that ‘til that happens your kids and your families keep on starving, living in crap housing or cars, keep enjoying poor health – suffering illnesses long since eradicated in ‘civilised’ countries- don’t learn at school so aren’t fit for decent work, get into trouble and keep the police and the justice system occupied putting you in prison. I can’t spot any force for change in this regard in the new government. There is a new class of people in New Zealand called ‘the working poor’; people in work but whose wages or hours of work are so low that they simply can’t make ends meet. But they are at least eligible for something called ‘family support’ introduced by the last Labour government, which is a system of tax credits available to working families. But it doesn’t apply to families who aren’t in work; and while the number of people in the general population out of work is about 6% of the workforce, the percentage for Maori and Pacifica people is three times that. So we are very firmly at the bottom of the heap. For a brief moment in the election campaign when the parties and media weren’t completely mesmerised by ‘dirty politics’ and Dotcom and his antics, a list was published of the publics biggest concerns. Top of that list was poverty and inequality, 18% of those polled said so; but when asked if they were prepared to pay more tax to alleviate that inequality, the answer was ‘NO’. In 1965 in the poor black district of Watts in Los Angeles rioting broke out. The Watts riots or rebellion as it was also called, lasted six days and nights. Thirty-four people were killed, 1032 were injured and 3,438 were arrested. There was property damage to the value of about 100-million New Zealand dollars. In the wake of the riots the then Prime Minister Jim Bolger was asked if he thought similar riots could occur in New Zealand. He very confidently replied, ’No, for that to happen we would have to have an under-class of poor underprivileged people of the same race -----“, his voice tapered off as he spoke. National could well do with some of Bolger’s wisdom in this next term.
Posted on: Sun, 21 Sep 2014 22:02:36 +0000
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