BEHOLD YOUR LITTLE ONES

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a very new infant and seen them see you, then watched as they shifted their gaze to somewhere just beyond you and smiled in delighted recognition?

When that happens I always ask, “Are you talking to the corner-angels darling?” By that I mean those flickers seen from the corner of adult eyes, but which our little ones see square on and clearly until earth life claims them fully.

I thought of the ‘corner angels’ after watching this week’s Inside New Zealand documentary on child poverty in our country, and I wondered where they were, not just for the children but for their parents.

In the mid-1980s my mother wrote an essay titled “Starving in Paradise” in which she talked about the craziness of living in a country with enough land, water, food, health, housing and education services to meet everyone’s needs, but not enough paid work to give families at the bottom the wherewithal to provide those things adequately to their little ones.

The Prime Minister of that time, Rob Muldoon (for all his well-deserved reputation as an often nasty man) saw what people needed was meaningful, paid work. In Pawarenga the six month PEP schemes with two week stand-downs between each that he established were heaven-sent. Crime rates dropped, health stats rose, and the kainga was abuzz with happy, active, engaged whānau.

Unfortunately not one government since Muldoon’s has shown any common sense about those at the bottom. Instead they’ve clung to the hopelessly failed ‘trickle-down’ theory of enriching the 1% at the top, believing that will lift the earning power of everyone else.

It’s not working for our little ones, because it’s not working for their parents.

I’ve seen good parents break under the stress of not being able to pay for what their little ones need. Some have simply walked away, some have struggled on, some have gone half or wholly mad. Most make it through somehow, a few turn bad. But many, many more are simply choosing to take themselves and their families out of the country entirely.

My brother left for Australia last week to work in the mines. He’s a registered nurse and a qualified teacher with reasonable earning power. But he’s had enough. So he’s gone, and his wife and kids will join him in the New Year.

We’re expecting two new mokopuna in the next few months. When they arrive I want to be able to say to them, “Say hi to me, I’m your corner angel and always will be.”

Then I want to be able to turn and say to their parents, “Behold your little ones, they have a happy, healthy future here in Aotearoa, and so do you.”