There is a particular form of poverty which is the feeling of powerlessness. We are not powerless, and must not let ourselves think we are. But sometimes it feels like that. I offer you a dozen examples:

1. People can feel powerless when having to deal with government agencies in which the spirit of public service has been replaced by a corporate culture which many find bewildering and intimidating.
2. People can feel powerless when their access to "targeted assistance" is through agencies whose managers have been offered bonuses for making big savings. There have been recurring reports of people not being told of their entitlements.
3. How do people feel when the leaders who protest against mis-spending by tax-payer funded agencies are the same people who gave these agencies the kind of autonomy that has enabled them to avoid proper accountability?
4. People can feel powerless when they keep on hearing, against all the evidence, that getting the economy right will lead to getting everything else right. There are values, standards, an ethos of respect for others, a climate of neighbourliness and mutual support that do not come out of an unregulated market economy.
5. How does a community feel when it is told it should shoulder more responsibility but then finds itself disenfranchised? The community does accept its responsibilities and there were never more advocacy groups trying to help people in their dealings with the corporatised public service. But the funding of the community’s voluntary agencies has been "re-scheduled" to exclude specifically their work of research and advocacy.
6. People can feel powerless when vested interests keep telling them that the market economy creates its own levelling out and equity for all simply by responding to needs; all the while, they are busy creating people’s needs and shaping people’s spending preferences. The "unregulated" economy is in fact regulated by these elites.
7. People can feel powerless when those who sing loudest about a "knowledge economy" are the same ones who have squeezed the very things that in other countries have created a knowledge economy – viz education, research, the arts…. A creative economy needs creative people, not economic dependants.
8. People can feel frustrated when all the talk about "more spending power" comes from those who have allowed local industries to close so that the better off can spend more on imports, damaging our nation’s current account and credit rating. And for others, what does "more spending power" mean in an economy that’s loaded against them? Rents for the poorest families in NZ have risen at almost 10 times the rate of inflation since the government moved to market-related rents.
9. People can feel powereless when told that the economy is "picking up" by people who know very well that much of the increased wealth has come from the shuffling of money rather than from real productivity.
10. People begin to feel cynical when told that all New Zealanders benefit by the sale of national assets, long after it is evident that offshore owners take their profits offshore.
11. People can feel powerless when some leaders still don’t seem to notice that deficient social policies (health, housing, education and welfare) are not even good economics.
12. People can feel powerless when the "tax breaks" benefit mainly those who don’t need them, and when the willingness of New Zealanders to contribute more to meeting social needs is spurned.
13. People can feel powerless when economic policies continue to be based on the assumption that greater "efficiencies" will "trickle down" to the benefit of "all New Zealanders". 1/3^rd of all children in New Zealand now live in poverty, and children are almost twice as likely to be in poverty in the 90’s than they were in the late 80’s.

The alternative to feeling powerless and to this kind of poverty is through what the 1972 Royal Commission described as a fair society. Therefore, at this election let us look for those policies which truly enable people to participate, to contribute, and to feel they belong as that Commission urged.