Address to Single Women As Parents (SWAP)
Lianne Dalziel
MP for Christchurch East
Address to Single Women As Parents (SWAP)
Springfield Road, Christchurch
Saturday 19th June 2010 , 11.30am
Thank you for the opportunity to address you today on the occasion of your AGM.
I was very pleased to be asked because I have referred to this organisation in Parliament. I referred to the slogan that you had adopted at the time ‘none of us is as strong as all of us’. It symbolised for me the strength we find in numbers as a neighbourhood, as a community organisation, as a collective as opposed to standing alone as an individual at times when we are feeling vulnerable.
New Zealand has long since been a place that valued that sense of looking out for each other and giving everyone a fair go. It’s a quality that defines us as a nation - from the Treaty of Waitangi through to our commitment to things like a public health system and quality education for all. We are also a country of innovation - the piece of number 8 wire speaks of a ‘can do’ attitude that sees us as a nation that has produced people who have been top of their profession or field of discovery.
This year has three significant anniversaries for me. I have just turned 50 years of age; in November it will be 10 years since I married my husband and in October, 20 years since I was elected to Parliament.
This has led me to reflect on many aspects of my life and the choices I have made. I had a phone call from a friend this morning, who asked me if I was depressed about what the Press wrote about my spending as a Minister, and I said no, but I was disappointed because I had specifically said to the journalist that it was important that these stories gave a full account of such issues, because it can look quite misleading. I was disappointed that she deliberately chose the course of action that she did.
I said to my friend, I am giving a speech this morning and I am going to explain exactly what has happened, but then I thought better of that because what has happened to me pales into insignificance against the effect the Minister of Social Development’s disclosure of two women’s DPB and other payments had on their lives and on the lives of many other beneficiaries. The vitriol that that inspired was a disgrace and nothing like the New Zealand I grew up in. I was a teenager in the 1970s when the DPB was first introduced and I know what a difference it made to the lives of those who had stayed trapped in violent relationships for the sake of the children, not knowing how much harm could be done to the children anyway. People like this Minister talk about welfare dependence, when it has been the path to independence for so many.
I wrote to the Minister last year after I was approached by a constituent, who was on an invalid’s benefit, but who felt keenly the impact of the beneficiary-bashing the Minister’s release inspired. This is what I wrote:
Dear Minister
I have had a meeting with a constituent who wanted to express his concerns about your actions in releasing information about people on single parent benefits which resulted in public odium being poured on all people on benefits. I undertook to write to you so that you could get a sense of the impact of your actions and also to give you an opportunity to explain to my constituent why you did what you did and whether you have anything you would like to say to him about the impact the public response has had on him. He asked me not to give you his details or any identifying characteristics as he does not want his personal circumstances in the public arena.
He is very clear that the two people you targeted had said publicly how grateful they were for the support they were getting from the government and that they were doing all they could to get off the benefit. My constituent is on the Invalid’s Benefit and feels trapped. He too would like to get off the benefit, but if he mentions his disability in a job application, he doesn’t get an interview and when he mentions it at an interview, he doesn’t get the job. He knows he is being discriminated against, but that doesn’t help.
I wish to quote to you his exact words about how he has felt since your response to the two women trying to get off a benefit.
“She’s created a fear factor.”
“People are not saying they are on a benefit.”
“It has left people feeling shamed and vulnerable – now I feel angry.”
“I try not to think about what I would like to do when I am angry.”
I have no concerns that my constituent would follow through on the last statement. He is an intelligent man, whose professional career and life in general have been turned upside down by a relatively rare medical condition.
He doesn’t want anyone to know he is “a beneficiary”, because he doesn’t want to be defined as what has again become a pejorative term that captures everyone on a benefit regardless of their circumstances.
I am pleased my constituent came to see me, because he has provided me with an opportunity to explain to you just how damaging your comments have been. The impact on the two women was bad enough, but I hadn’t appreciated just how widespread the shockwaves have been felt within the wider community.
I look forward to being able to share your response with my constituent.
She didn’t even have the decency to reply beyond an acknowledgement from her office that the correspondence had been received.
This is a woman who quite rightly used the DPB and the Training Incentive Allowance - which she has also cut access to for degree level courses - to give herself a “hand up” so she could “step up” to the role she has today, because the government of the day “backed” her because she was prepared to put the effort in. Her actions as Minister can be described as hypocritical.
But enough about that. She will be held to account for what she has done. And as for the comments about me, I guess I just have to suck it up, as I am secure in the knowledge that I was meticulous in terms of meeting my obligations and that I work extremely hard on behalf of the constituents I am privileged to serve and on the portfolios I am honoured to hold for the Labour Party in government or opposition. I might just lodge a complaint with the Press Council though and see how the Press comes out of that.
I want to end with a quote from a speech that JK Rowling gave on the occasion of Harvard University's 357th Commencement a couple of years ago. A friend sent it to me and I was struck by its message, which I thought was particularly apposite to today’s occasion. JK Rowling talked about failure – not to glamorise the experience of finding herself at the end of a broken marriage as a solo parent with a classics degree and not much else. In fact there was nothing glamorous about her experience of poverty and despair. But she said this:
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learnt no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.
Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.
Isn’t that inspiring? Doesn’t it make you feel like you could take on any challenge that confronts you?
I have experienced failure in my life and been tested by adversity on a deeply personal level. You do find out who are friends are. I am sad to say that I did feel I was let down by people who I thought were friends, but I have been uplifted by people who I thought were just colleagues or acquaintances but who turned out to be true friends. And of course my real friends who have always been my friends continue to support me in ways that a busy politician doesn’t often get the chance to acknowledge.
After nearly 20 years I still feel keenly the sense of privilege I have to serve my electorate in Parliament and I know that it is a privilege I have to earn every day that I hold office.
I have had some great successes helping constituents break through the barriers they have encountered, and that has been the case as a government and as an opposition MP. But more importantly the failures I have had have identified the policy changes that must be made when we are in government and unfortunately that list is growing longer everyday as we experience the subtle behind the scenes changes to policy that is occurring in the social development and ACC arenas in particular.
On a personal level however, the challenges that confront me as I said before pale into insignificance against the challenges that I know many of you face on a daily basis and I thank SWAP for offering a place that makes you all stronger than you would be if you stood alone.
That is the essence of the New Zealand value system I grew up with and which will always guide me in my work as your elected representative - none of us is as strong as all of us.
