I have just watched your interview on The Nation & am very interested in the research you have done. I am a 56 year old pakeha woman with 3 grown up kids. I brought my children up by myself for 17 & a half years after leaving a 12 year violent relationship. For the first 6 years I was on the DPB & once my kids were at kindy & school I went out & did voluntary work to increase my skills & confidence to return to the workforce. I created a job for myself by establishing a Charitable Trust from my voluntary work & am now the CEO. I have been & still am on a fairly low income due to my work being in the community sector, but I work bloody hard & love the work I do in the disability field. I also have Multiple Sclerosis & I have struggled financially to make ends meet on one income coming into my house for the past 17 years & have only escaped living in poverty only because my parents have helped me out & I have a mortgage which I have been able to borrow on to ‘get ahead’, if you could call it that. In my work with people with disabilities & chronic illness I see a lot of inequality. Most of our clients are on benefits or very low waged work & they too often live on the poverty line. Carers struggle not only financially but physically as well and feel so undervalued, especially when they have to deal with WINZ. There is also so much inequality within the disability sector between funding through ACC & funding through the MOU. This system is very wrong! Why should someone with a disability from an accident be more valued & treated better than someone with a disability from birth or illness!

There was one comment that Lisa made on the Nation, that “people who are wealthy have worked very hard to become wealthy”. While I agree with this to a certain degree this comment gets me VERY angry & I have heard this comment so many times & have always retorted by saying “I take offense to that cos I work bloody hard in the job I choose to do”. Many people work bloody hard but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re ever going to be wealthy & often those hardworking people are working to make the people at the top rich! I will probably never be wealthy & I feel sorry for young people nowadays who don’t come from wealthy families & have to start their young lives off with huge debts & the unlikely hood of ever owning their own home. When I was a kid there sure wasn’t the huge gaps between the rich & poor in NZ & in our neighborhood in Whangarei all people worked, even the Maori family down the road who had 11 kids! The father was Pakeha & mother was full blooded Maori & they didn’t bludge off welfare like half the people in my current neighborhood do! It makes me sad to see that gap increasing even more.
I don’t know if this information is of any interest or relevance to you but I felt the urge to email you after seeing your interview this morning. My hope is that things will change for the better in NZ but I doubt it will when we have so many right wing, self absorbed supporters! Thanks.
Regards,
Robyn Pengelly