Honesty in Politics

(This post has started life as a comment on Doug Noakes post on Facebook, in answer to Benni Jones, in the US.)

As a financial member of The Green Party Of Āotearoa, I am privileged to have met several honest MPs, all people who are honest, intelligent, and who all have integrity. I am proud to know them. Honesty and Integrity can get in the way sometimes as we are finding out especially, in this Election Campaign 2017. I wish it were over. I am scared of the result when it is over. Apologies up front, this "comment" may turn into a bit of a dissertation.

The Green Party in New Zealand started life as the Values Party on the seventies. It became the Green Party Of Āotearoa in the nineteen nineties. This last Election Cycle we have had fourteen MPs in Parliament. It is a part of our kaupapa that we always have two co-leaders, this last cycle they have been Metiria Turei and James Shaw. James became a co-leader during the cycle when Russell Norman stood down to become CEO of Greenpeace NZ.

In August Metiria Turei and James Shaw, (during the Greens AGM) launched two major policy platforms for the Greens Campaign. James launched policy over the environment, Metiria's policy platform was on Ending Poverty in New Zealand, a policy from her heart, because unlike many other people, she understands what it is to be a single mother on a benefit in New Zealand, especially during the nineteen-nineties after the then National Party government had cut benefits to 20% below what was needed to live on. I was on the same journey back then, so you get that I have strong empathy with this story. Since then poverty has become more and more obvious in New Zealand, we now have families living in cars, people living under bridges or sleeping under shop verandahs, children lacking shoes, coats, or school lunches, people in despair. This was not part of the Āotearoa/NZ that I grew up in, where we believed in community or equality of opportunity. Today's New Zealand is driven by classism, racism, and money, and sheer nastiness, it seems to me, and Metiria's story has become the graphic example of that nastiness, that wilful ignorance aimed at keeping the status quo.

Because, as a part of that Ending Poverty launch, Metiria revealed how she had 'lied' to Work and Income (WINZ) about flatmates in her home which would have effected her accommodation supplement on her single parent benefit. Filling out her annual forms to WINZ, she had neglected to mention that she had two flatmates in her home at he time; this because she didn't want to lose money, back then this was about survival, this was about putting food in her baby's mouth, and keeping a roof over her and the baby's heads. Remember, the benefits had had that major cut. In fact, pedantically, I would say she withheld information rather than outright lying, and further, had her flatmates been framed as boarders, people on the Domestic Purpose Benefit were allowed two boarders in their home. Boarders were not seen as income in the same way. Metiria told this story in an effort to get people to understand how bad poverty is in New Zealand, to get them to understand how difficult poverty is, that people are forced to scrimp and to lie in order to survive. which is true. I know this also. Incidentally the amount of money would be miniscule, but every little bit counts when you simply do not have enough money.

Anyhow, when I saw that launch on the TV, that Sunday night my heart dropped into my stomach. I was terrified. I was so afraid at what might happen, in fact what did happen.

Because all the nasties came out. Those well-off, sleek, white men, in designer suits with designer shirts and designer ties, the Mike Hoskings, the Patrick Gowers, the David Seymours, et al., the men (and some women) who are milking it from today's classism and racism, today's inequalities, today's housing market, where investors make millions, and low-waged people struggle to put food on the table or pay rents, even if they are working 2 or 3 jobs. Those media men led by ACT Party's David Seymour, they came out guns blazing, screeching about Benefit Fraud, the word fraud probably never having crossed their lips, nor their pens, nor their keyboards a few months earlier when the now Prime Minister, Bill English, ex-farmer, had been found out to have lied (oops, sorry dear, just made a wee mistake even) when he had claimed for accommodation supplements he was not entitled too, as part of his being an MP, to the tune of some $33,000! And I see little of that nasty, scathing rhetoric from those white men in suits over Winston Peter's (NZ First party leader) little mistake in claiming for more superannuation than he was entitled to, to the tune of some $18,000. Neither of those men had owned up as Metiria had done, both had been found out. But oddly, these little, maybe even deliberate mistakes are considered not fraud, rather they are technically legal? Really?

See, I think, that when Metiria told her story, the whole juggernaut of class, of gender, of racism, of the hatred that rich and well-off Pākēhā have for the unemployed, and the poor, and single mothers not kowtowing to some man somewhere, all that hatred and viciousness was brought out, and we in New Zealand got to see the true ugliness that surges underneath. The Green Party and Metiria lost control of the message which was, of course, to highlight poverty and the shifts that people have to go to in order to survive, and to launch this grand and wonderful policy to END POVERTY and Mending The Safety Net in New Zealand.

For the record, the policy was and still is :The Green Party will repair the holes in the social safety net by Increasing all benefits by 20%. They will increase the amount people can earn before their benefit is cut. Increase the value of Working for Families for All Families. Create a Working for Families Children's Credit of $72 per week. Introduce a new Top Tax Rate of 40% on income over $150,000 per annum, and Raise the Minimum Wage to $17.75 per hour in the first year and keep raising it until it reaches 66% of the average wage. These changes are to bring people out of poverty and provide independence, dignity and real choices.

Now, as we still carry on through the Election campaigning (till 23rd September), I wish that Metiria had not told that story. I understand why she did. She explained that she had been trying for 15 years in politics to get the message about poverty across, to get the message across about how it stunts growth, how it traumatises people, and how it turns good people into liars despite their normal inclinations. Because nobody can sit and look at an empty table at dinner time and their hungry kids if there is something they can do about it, especially when it is, to all intent and purpose, a victimless crime. Nobody is saying its ok to hold up the nearest dairy or bank here, ok. But in all these years nobody had listened, media had not given a jot, and Paula Bennett, Anne Tolley, and the National Party government have continued to reduce beneficiaries into frightened, ground-down people. At least that is the intent. So she used her own story in order to explain. While she knew that some would villify, I believe she thought that most of us would get it, that people would get on board and vote for this policy. We see stories about the homeless so frequently on TV now, that we would respond to this new Green Policy with open arms. It is what you would think if you still believe that most people care.

Even two of our own MPs did not understand, Kennedy Graham and David Clendon; they were so focused on the Fraud, that they wound up resigning from the party.

The trouble is, that in telling the story, Metiria Turei, instead of the Mana of being an MP and leading the Green Party, was put down and villified as a single Māori mother, a beneficiary like myself and many others, seen as a drag on the economy, shiftless, scum, all those things that are said to reflect the so-called underclass who live precarious lives, hoping like hell that the washing machine won't break down, that the school won't decide to take the kids on an unaffordable field trip that your kids can't go to. I remember one of my sons wouldn't even tell me about field trips, you know, because he knew I couldn't afford it, or would do without myself in order for him to go. And If I did find our, he would just insist that he really didn't want to go anyway. Anyway that nasty upperclass set went on and on about Benefit Fraud, night after night on the TV news, in all the papers, in articles online, on The Project and Seven Sharp, night after night and day after day of relentless shitraising about Benefit Fraud, and they sent out teams of people to Investigate Metiria Turei and her life in the nineteen-nineties to see if they could find more evidence of Bad Things she might have done back then when she was a Solo Mother on The Benefit. And any little scrap they found they published with glee. What do you think, New Zealand, do you think this woman ought to be an MP, they would sneer and they dragged in whanau (family) so that in the end Metiria had enough and resigned from being our Leader, and being on our party list.

And now the Green Party who were polling at 15% at the outset of the campaign are now polling at 5,2%, 5%, 4.9%. If we don't win an electorate or cross that 5% threshold, The Green Party will not be in Parliament at all.

Note: Metiria Stanton Turei is still standing as an Electorate Candidate in the Te Tai Tonga Electorate. Voters can get her back into Parliament by electorate voting in Te Tai Tonga.