Prophetic issues-child poverty

By Ken Russell in All Sorts

observations on the political will needed to solve the problem of child poverty

So what are the prophetic - as against the self-serving, and prurient issues of the election campaign? Three clues from the current week . . .
1. Laura Black spoke at the Open Education evening in July. Some will remember she gave us a name to watch - another prophet of the social scene, Russell Wills, Childrens Commissioner and Hawke's Bay Paediatrician. It seems the NZ Listener made the same assessment. The current edition features an 8-page spread on a young man who divides his time as the official advocate for children, and one of three paediatricians at the coal face of childrens' ills and deprivation at Hawke's Bay Hospital. It's headed BORN POOR and prompts the question "How far should the State go to end child poverty?" Wills' answer is simple - as far as it takes. And while warning against a reckless throwing of money, his inference is clear that the need demands funding far beyond the present limits of government spending.
Wills watches every day as Kiwi kids take the brunt of chronic ineqality. He says there are 170,000 children living in identifiable poverty, the causes of which are both simple and complex - simple because of the ever-widening gap between rich and poor and complex because there are so many contributing factors, cold crowded housing, inadequate diet, poor parenting, domestic violence, gross neglect, and crippling unemployment among the unskilled. He remarks on the tragic irony that paediatricians come from the UK to his hospital to study diseases they've read about in books, but never seen at first hand - tuberculosis and rheumatic fever.
So what are the uncomfortable realities in NZ society that help to shape the drastic decline in the prospects of a growing number of our children? One is the tolerance too common on the political right that if a child is born poor, the accident of birth determines the child's lifetime prospects. The other is that among centre-left and female voters child poverty rates among the top elections issues, but business and centre- right voters rate it about seventh.
Both must change, and change quickly if the battle for better childrens' futures is to be won - and if Russell Wills has his way this election will result in childrens issues becoming the subject of a national conversation. And hopefully, I say, taken out of the arena of party politics and raised to a level of national priority. Nothing less.

2. On Tuesday night TV1 a programme fronted by Nigel Latta showed a surgeon at Nelson Hospital extracting 7 teeth from a 2 yr old child. The teeth were virtually rotted to the gums, and had become such a health risk to the child that only extraction could prevent toxemia, and if still untreated, possibly death. That particular hospital had scheduled several similar operations the same day, involving a full theatre staff - reckoning the cost to the taxpayer at $5000 per operation
The programme claimed, quite believably, that the cause of such massive and dangerous tooth decay was the child's consumption of sugary drinks. Indeed the child's mother had volunteered the information that she had mixed coca cola with milk in the child's bottle!
The Latta programme lifted the lid on the food industry's defense of sugary drinks and the appalling damage to child health. A bottle of coke, said to be the biggest seller in NZ supermarkets, sells for less than milk and less than bottled water - yet contains 48 teaspoons of sugar.
The programme compared the health and performance of kids attending schools where sugary drinks are allowed, and those where they are not, and the results were astounding. Yet amid the tumult and shouting of this election campaign, how much attention is being given to the voices calling for action to be taken against an enemy so close, so familiar, so all pervasive, it is killing our kids, stunting their growth and impairing their health. Can this nation possibly continue to tolerate the arguments of the food industry that it's OK to be left to consumer choice? It's an election issue - let's re-examine those policy statements before we vote.

3 Last night the leaders of the minor parties sat down to dinner on Campbell Live, and answered questions on their policies - an important discussion given that two or three or even four of them will feature in an MMP coalition with National or Labour. Two of these, Act and Conservative, openly advocate tax cuts - and will add their weight to the desire of some in National, if circumstances permit, to support cuts. Others, the Greens and Mana, make no apology for increasing tax rates for those who can afford to pay more.
I am no economist, unqualified to discuss issues of the economy with the sophistication that political commentators bring to bear. But my election question is simply this - can tax cuts possibly help kids caught in the mire of poverty?

Sometimes, important issues need to be taken out of the realm of political ideology and subjected to the simple logic of common sense. There are 170,000 plus kids whose futures cannot wait while right-wing politicians explore their theory that tax cuts will release opportunities for growth that will reward all sectors of the population - poor kids included. To this simple observer that's nothing but political spin to cover the inevitable outcome, that the rich will get richer still, and the poor poorer. Less tax for the rich? It's a no-brainer.
If I must plead guilty to over-simplification of complex political issues then I will. There is so much at stake in the coming election, and nothing more so than the future of our kids, far too many of whom have already been "born poor."
And if we need a text, how about this . . "an argument arose among them as to which was the greatest, but Jesus, aware of their inner thoughts, took a little child and put it by his side and said 'whoever welcomes this child in my name welcomes me'
Ken Russell