There is a change in moral
discourse that TV3's The Nation is encouraging,
which is to vilify retirees and blame them for child poverty by taking too much
in “tight financial times”. In
interviews with Dr Jonathan Boston and Dr Russell Wills on 14 June 2014, interviewer
Lisa Owen asked such questions as, “Do we treat children as well as we treat
retired people?”, “Do we need to take from retirees and redirect some of that
money to poor children?” and “Is it time for our seniors to take a hit for the
good of the younger generation?”. While
the good doctors refused to contribute to that particular angle, it is clear
that The Nation is narrowing the
debate to a simple issue of taking from one class of beneficiaries and giving
to another.
This echoes Social Welfare’s
reversal of attitude towards unemployment benefit recipients, from being
victims of capitalism’s need for a flexible staffing resource, to being the
cause of their own misfortune.
The Nation
has created a straw man argument instead of examining the wider causes and
cures. The financial position of
retirees hasn’t changed since the Superannuation Scheme was introduced in 1977.
Since that time there has been a massive shift in ownership of public resources
into private hands, tax reductions for the wealthy and none for the poor, and
punitive taxes such as GST affecting the poor disproportionately. Instead of
examining issues such as the tax base, rural unemployment, or alternative
economic redistribution The Nation is
urging segments of society dependent on benefits to fight each other like rats
on an electrified floor. The “tight
financial times” spoken of is a contrived situation maintained by dissembling. A real current affairs programme should be
capable of exposing its fallacy.
Ms Owen’s core assumption was
that the amount of money available for beneficiaries is fixed and only the
proportions can be changed, but this is clearly false. It is a subject of government policy. She did not ask what policies needed to
change to aid New Zealand’s poorest. She
never raised questions of changing tax policies such as reducing GST by
taxing a wider range of transactions.
The Nation
considers raising the age of eligibility of superannuation as an unavoidable
necessity, without considering its obvious concomitant, that of reduced job
availability. Why isn’t The Nation advocating the moral
obligation of retirement at 65 to release occupations to younger people as a
means of reducing poverty?
I have no issue with The Nation taking a crusading line, but
its producers need greater breadth and depth of vision, not to mention
historical insight, before articulating it.
