‘it is not easy for men to rise whose qualities are thwarted by poverty’
Juvenal (55 AD – 127 AD)

My home electorate is Christchurch East, the seventh poorest electorate in New Zealand. As I go about my business here (shopping for groceries at the local supermarket, attending community meetings, walking the streets putting leaflets in mail boxes and so on) it occasionally strikes me how few of the locals walk tall, heads held high. A greeting is usually offered as I pass people on the street but few make the eye contact I have been accustomed to in other areas. I wonder why this is.

There can be no doubt that a chasm exists between those who have and those who don’t. The New Zealand dream of the great egalitarian society has long faded (if it ever really existed at all). And yet most of us would like to think that we, as a society, have a duty to protect and nurture children. We strive to keep them safe from harm and to raise them to be useful, productive members of their communities. So an anomaly exists between sentiment and reality.

The reality for too many children is that their parents, despite any number of complex government support subsidies, are unable to provide the basic warmth, shelter and food formula, let alone any of the extras which others take for granted. How can this be? And in a wealthy, resource-rich, modern nation? Our own government’s research has found that 26% of our children suffer “severe and significant hardship” (i.e. live below the poverty line). And the UNICEF report released in February ranked New Zealand second last in child health and safety. How can those children be expected “to rise” when poverty denies them full access to basic necessities and to active participation in their communities? How can we possible expect their “qualities” to develop into valuable community assets? And why do we place so little value on the health, wellbeing and potential of 26% of our children?

Successive governments have attempted to address the issue of child poverty, yet the statistics continue to show that all orthodox attempts are, at worst, failing and at best, just keeping a lid on the numbers.

Democrats for social credit is a political party which stands for economic and social justice – you can’t have one without the other. We believe that economic justice delivers social justice. And for that to happen, a revolution is needed: nothing less than the transformation of the present, out-dated, debt-based financial system will deliver the tangible social justice to which all New Zealand children are entitled. Our children deserve nothing less than a social credit economy.

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