Category: Social Issues
On the back of last month's budget, opposition politicians, academics and other advocates once again expressed outrage at the incidence of child poverty. The culprits routinely blamed are unemployment, high housing costs and insufficient benefit payments. But another factor is constantly overlooked - the rapid change in family structure.
The National Government has prioritised social reform. While addressing persistent social failure is a long-term process, their approach has been to use technological advancements to develop accountability measures and to provide open access to leading-edge information in an attempt to find genuine and long-lasting solutions.
Far too many tribal members are isolated from the mainstream and live on the fringes of society, where they are detached from education, suffer poor health, lack the skills needed to get a good job – and are burdened with a permanent sense of grievance.
It’s not at all empowering to be dependent on the state for your income but far worse would be dependency on a tribal leadership lacking democratic check and clear rules.
Child abuse is never far from the headlines in New Zealand. We like to think of ourselves as a great country in which to live, work and raise our families. While that is true for the vast majority of New Zealanders, for a vulnerable minority of children living in violent families, life falls well short of these ideals.
Listening to Paul Henry interview Social Development Minister, Anne Tolley about the latest condemnatory report into Child, Youth and Family was very dissatisfying. There was no discussion about getting to the real core of the problem.
No matter what structural changes to the child protection agency are introduced, nor what new processes are brought in, the problems of abused and damaged children will continue until the government stops paying women who are not in loving and stable relationships to have babies.
Lots of people survive courtesy of a benefit. They do so because they are too sick to work, can't find a job, have children who need feeding with no other source of income, and so on. There are a myriad of reasons why people receive welfare. Most of these people - 300,000 or thereabouts - are not violent. The same can be said of the general population.
Last Thursday, the Governor of the Reserve Bank Graeme Wheeler lowered the Official Cash Rate by 25 base points from 3.5 percent to 3.25 percent. With New Zealand’s inflation rate running close to zero, factors influencing his decision included a 55 percent decline in the oil price from June last year, and a 55 percent drop in dairy prices.
Immigration is in the news all over these days: the US, Canada, Italy, the UK, and now in NZ, with our net immigration running at over 50,000 a year. True, many are Kiwis returning from Australia where employment prospects have diminished in the wake of the mining downturn.
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