Posted on 27-11-2002
Don't
Forget The Workers
by Chris Troter, The Dominion Post 22 November 2002
It is disturbing to witness both the Left and the Right seizing
upon the
plight of young New Zealanders to advance their respective agendas.
For the Left, the rather curious concept of child poverty (aren't
all
children poor?) not only allows them to take up residence on
the high moral
ground, but it also gets them off the hook when confronted with
the problem
of poor families. For the Right, it's the other way around.
The deprived
condition of so many children allows them to reiterate the importance
of
traditional family values in the raising of healthy and productive
young
citizens. This serves as a welcome distraction from the wealth
of evidence
identifying the Right's own neo-liberal policies as the prime
causes of
child poverty in the first place.
Into this highly politicised arena the Innocenti Research Centre
of Unicef
has tossed When the invisible hand rocks the cradle: New Zealand
children
in a time of change, an investigation into the effects of New
Zealand's
neo-liberal reforms on the health and welfare of New Zealand's
children.
The title of the study, with its ironic reference to Adam Smith's
famous
metaphor (in which the self-interested individual is allegedly
"led by an
invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention")
betrays the ideological leanings of its authors. But even allowing
for the
left-wing sympathies of its New Zealand research team, the report
has
amassed a depressingly large amount of evidence about the negative
impact
of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia on Kiwi kids. But did New Zealand
children
take the biggest hit? According to the report, "From 1984 to
the mid-1990s,
change was "rapid and radical. The reforms restructured the
economy, the
welfare state and the public sector."
It is surely indisputable that the effects of these changes
were felt most
directly by unskilled and semi-skilled male workers -many of
them Maori and
Pacific Islanders - for whom full-time, well-paid employment
opportunities
shrank dramatically. The massive downsizing of the freezing
industry and
the corporatisation of the railways, the forest service, the
postal service
and the ministry of works cast tens of thousands of able-bodied
men adrift.
Overnight they found themselves in a world that no longer needed
or valued
their labour. Unfortunately, the social effects of what amounted
to the
mass psychological emasculation of thousands of Kiwi men were
not deemed
worthy of investigation.
But is it reasonable to suggest that the adverse effects of
neo-liberalism
on children and young persons can somehow be abstracted from
the fate of
their fathers? Unemployed males are prime candidates for depression,
alcohol and drug abuse and domestic violence. All of which have
a profound
impact upon their immediate and extended families. Stripped
of the dignity
of work. men who were used to being the breadwinners suddenly
found
themselves unable to contribute to the household economy or,
even worse (at
least from the perspective of the tough masculine culture of
manual
labour), dependent on the earnings of their wives or partners.
The age-old
New Zealand tradition of 'shooting through'. was one solution
and topping
yourself was another. Small wonder that the Unicef report shows
a doubling
of the male youth suicide rate between 1985 and 1989.
Regardless of whether husbands and fathers became violent, committed
suicide or "shot through", the effect upon their families was
the same.
Single-parent households, the product of historically high levels
of male
unemployment, were much more likely to experience poverty and
all the
illnesses and behavioural problems that accompanied it.
The Left -still bedevilled by the legacy of anti-male feminist
prejudice
has turned a blind eye to the appalling experience of working-class
men. It
is so much safer to restrict the discussion of poverty and its
effects to
children. And no matter how loudly United First leader Peter
Dunne and his
colleagues trumpet the need for a return to traditional family
structures,
the Right will never eliminate the downward pressure on wages
exerted by
mass female participation in the labour force (New Zealand women
still earn
only 83 per cent of average male earnings) by restoring the
concept of the
family wage".
The stubborn fact remains, however, that the curse of poverty
afflicts New
Zealanders of all ages and they deserve a very visible hand.
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