OPINION I generally define myself as ‘a Socialist'. This may seem at odds with living in the most expensive suburb in NZ, dining out on a regular basis and treating Rarotonga as you might treat a bach.
OPINION
I generally define myself as ‘a Socialist’.
This may seem at odds with living in the most expensive suburb in New Zealand, having no mortgage or other indebtedness, dining out on a regular basis, treating Rarotonga as you might treat a bach and, in general, being what people euphemistically call ‘comfortably off’.
If I were a supporter of the National Party, I’d probably argue that being ‘comfortably off’ was the product of more than seven decades of application and hard work and that, if I could do it, every other able-bodied and averagely intelligent Kiwi should be able to do the same. We aren’t a Third World country after all.
That would be a dishonest argument because I’m one of the laziest people you could hope to meet, rarely apply myself to anything for long and have got through life largely on my wits, a unique ability to read other people and, according to the late lamented Rob Muldoon, ‘an intriguing Irish accent’.
I can’t claim responsibility for any of those characteristics. Heredity and environment combined to make me what I am. I’m what they call a ‘hard determinist’. But that’s another story. Except for this: you can’t be a hard determinist and judge other people as if they were the authors of their own misfortunes – or fortunes.
If this sounds a bit nutty, the science of genetics is very much on my side. On almost a daily basis we are discovering that this or that characteristic, trait, predisposition, behaviour is genetically determined. Even the psychopath has a defence – there’s an important bit missing from his brain.
I was kind of lucky.
My father was a drunk, wife-beater, embezzler and bigamist.
Despite this, his first wife told Judy and me she would have ‘walked over broken glass for him’. His second, my mother, also went on loving him despite everything, including the fact that he deserted both of us when I was two. He was a charming con man. I have that in my genes. It’s at war with my mother’s upright Protestant ethics. It turned out to be a surprisingly good combination.
I could claim too that my Socialist instincts arose from the fact that that we grew up poor.
To be the child of a solo mother was a rarer thing in those days. We lived for most of my childhood in lodgings and later in a council flat. But the truth is that, thanks to my mother’s industry and selflessness, I really lacked for nothing, except a dad.
What this background has produced is a showman - or ‘showbiz charlatan’ as a friend and broadcasting colleague once described me – who could quite easily have crossed the line into criminal behaviour, were it not for his mother’s voice in his head. . And it’s this “There, but for the grace of heredity and environment, go I” mentality that makes me reluctant to judge those who fall down in life or break the rules. You’ll find evidence of that reluctance throughout the columns on this site.
And the ‘Socialist’? Well, it comes down to this: I think I’m lucky to be ‘comfortably off’, lucky not to be at the bottom of the social heap and lucky not to be in prison. It has nothing to do with application, hard work or moral uprightness.
So I’m a believer in passing on that good fortune to those less lucky than me. In practical terms that means the re-distribution through progressive taxation of wealth from the rich and fortunate to the poor and less fortunate in order to ensure the availability of free education, health and social welfare services to every New Zealander. You can bring on a capital gains tax, including on housing speculation. I won’t complain.
All of this came to mind when I read this morning that the final stage of the National Government’s welfare reforms comes into force today. The Herald is running a three-part investigation into how the changes are affecting people’s lives, using Papakura as a litmus test of their effect.
A moving force in these ‘reforms’ has been former social welfare beneficiary Paula Bennett who, as a solo mother and university student, received state assistance to look after her daughter and to pursue a tertiary education. She entered Parliament in 2005 as a National Party list MP and has had a highly successful political career. She is currently Minister for Social Development, Employment and Youth Affairs.
The juxtaposition of Paula Bennett’s past and present lifestyles has inevitably invited criticism. The former beneficiary of government support now earns a base salary of $260,000 a year plus a range of perks and allowances amounting to tens of thousands of dollars more. ‘Comfortable’ would be an understatement of her position. She now lives a life of considerable privilege.
She deserves, I would argue, recognition and praise for what she has achieved.
Yet there is no-one in Parliament whom I hold in less regard.
Under the guise of reform in her portfolio areas, she has, in my submission, revealed herself as a punisher rather than a defender of those at the bottom of the social heap, of the very group to which she herself once belonged. The irony of her position is inescapable.
Someone told me that during the last general election, one of her billboards in Waitakere was defaced with the words ‘class traitor’. If the story is true, the words were ill judged. Bennett is, it seems to me, a traitor not to any class or social group but to her own past. And the damage which that inexplicable treachery has done, and continues to do to the lives and happiness of thousands of Kiwi men, women and children who have fallen down in life or broken the rules, is substantial, and will continue and get worse.
Pretty harsh judgement from someone who writes, “You can’t be a hard determinist and judge other people as if they were the authors of their own misfortunes – or fortunes.” I guess that ought to apply to the Honourable Paula Bennett as well. But I’m too angry to be completely rational on this topic. Sometimes you have to let your heart rule your intellect.
Call me a sentimental Socialist. I like that better than ‘Swimming Pool Socialist’ which National Party friends occasionally accuse me of being.
It’s unfair. We haven’t got a swimming pool.
Media trainer and commentator Dr Brian Edwards has retired from posting blogs at Brian Edwards Media.
