Just home from attending a performance of The Battalion. It is being performed in the hall at St Bernards School in Brooklyn, Wellington by the Te Rakau Hua o te Wao Tapu Trust. It is on until Friday this week, and if you are in Wellington you should try to get along. It is stunning. Tickets can be ordered from bookings@stbernards.school.nz.
This is the trust set up by, among others, Jim Moriarty to work with “at risk” youth. It is a residential facility taking boys 12-17 with some very difficult backgrounds. They use theatre, music, dance and tikanga Maori to improve their life chances.
The performance put on by those young men is something quite brilliant to behold. It is professional, passionate, touching and enormously athletic. It is also a chance to see Moriarty perform again, and he is the force around which his young charges orbit. The play, written by Helen Pearse-Otene, for the trust has been around since 2006 and focuses on pair of brothers from a ‘one cow’ town who head off to war, and all that that brings.
Not only is this a great piece of theatre, it is a chance to see how much difference a programme of direct early intervention can make when it is backed by people with the passion and the vision behind Te Rakau.
Posted in Social Development, Music, Youth and Arts. |
The Dom Post reports this morning that National is looking at cancelling unemployment benefits after a year and forcing applicants to re-apply. This is in the wake of a story of notorious South Island family who look like they have been ripping off the system for years.
Ladies and Gentlemen welcome to the softening up phase of National’s welfare policy. Every New Zealander should be pi**ed off with the likes of the Harris family. If they have been ripping off the system in the way that has been described in the media then they are undermining our social assistance system, and effectively taking money from those who need it most. They have obviously intimidated Work and Income staff and some serious action is required.
But is their behaviour, and that of a small number of others, reason enough to slash and burn through the whole system? National want you to think so, and will drip these stories out there to soften the public up for cuts and tired old policies like work testing DPB parents and work for the dole. The reality is that the Harris’ of this world are a small minority and thousands of people legitimately need state support, only access it when they need it, and move off it in a reasonable timeframe.
Further, the headline announcement in this story- that people on the unemployment benefit will have to re-apply each year-is a deliberately misleading description of how the unemployment benefit operates. It is not a situation where you sign up and that is it for all of time. Nowadays people receiving the unemployment benefit are constantly followed up by Work and Income as to their progress with getting work. They are required to attend courses and training. The notion of re-applying is empty sloganeering, will achieve nothing and will really just be a bureaucratic burden.
By all means lets look at how we can help move people from welfare to work where that is possible. Lets crack down on those who abuse the system and let’s have more training and budget advice for those who need it. But sadly for National that is not really what this is about. It is quite simply about stirring up people against beneficiaries, and softening up the voting public for their welfare agenda.
Posted in Social Development. |
