A lot of people will consider this as a justification for not merely soup kitchens, but a system of social distribution. Christ fed the crowd. So we must feed all: there must be no poverty.

No.

The poor will always be with us. There will always be those whose businesses fail, who can no longer work, and who have alienated themselves from the first and most important form of welfare, the family. Consider instead this: Christ had been teaching for three days — so the supplies that the Jewish people bought with them to the desert were exhausted. People were hungry, and may not have made it home to their food. The disciples rations were reduced: They were down to seven loaves, and most of the time one loaf fed a man for a day.

For they had been listening. For three days.

Consider how many people now cannot concentrate for twenty minutes.

Christ was concerned for the safety of the people he had been teaching. This food was to prevent exposure and collapse.

Mark 8:1-10

¹In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, ²“I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. ³If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way — and some of them have come from a great distance.” ⁴His disciples replied, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?” ⁵He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” ⁶Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute; and they distributed them to the crowd. ⁷They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. ⁸They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. ⁹Now there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. ¹⁰And immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.

If you see that being fed is a right you will get distortions. You will get activists demanding their bread dole so they can sit in their cafes, plotting to subvert the nation. Some of these will become politicians. They will make charity given in exceptional circumstances a right.

And Turei is an example. Of what not to do, of how not to live. [1]

Metiria’s life is peppered with challenges that have been successfully converted into opportunities. She remains resolutely unbound to any particular ideology (“the dusty tomes of old, dead guys”) and developed her political theories alongside the practical application of dissent and organisation.

Much of Metiria’s political action has centred on the rights of beneficiaries. She well remembers unemployed life as an 18-year old in Wellington and says that, after heading to Teachers’ College in Palmerston North, she continued to volunteer within the Unemployed Rights Movement.

“The work started as a social outlet but it soon became a full-time job,” she says. “I became a co-ordinator for the National M?ori Beneficiaries Network and it was a tough role organising some very hardcore men, especially when my age and gender at that time were massive disadvantages in certain people’s eyes.”

Wiser and a little older, Metiria then moved to Auckland where she came into contact with three groups that would prove instrumental in developing her political conscience: the anarchist movement, NORML, and the McGillicuddy Serious Party.

“We had fantastic discussions on the exercise of power and crucially I came into contact with many young P?keh? who, just like my M?ori contemporaries, felt disenchanted with the state,” she says. “The truth was there were lots of people excluded from Government.”

At just 22, Metiria became pregnant and along with the excitement came a sense of panic. “I thought ‘I can’t rely on a man or the state to look after us’, and coming from a poor family, there was no fall back plan. So, I had to come up with a way to ensure we could take care of ourselves.”

In true Metiria fashion, she applied to law school, (“A friend of mine had applied and I knew I was at least as smart as her!”), was accepted, and duly graduated, all while maintaining significant links with her political contemporaries.

This is what she did.

Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei will not resign from her party or from Parliament, but will not seek a ministerial position if she comes into power.
The under-fire politician made the announcements on Friday afternoon after she revealed last night she was registered to vote in an electorate that she was not living in.

The Dunedin-based MP said she would not resign over that or her benefit history – in which she failed to declare all her flatmates when she was claiming a sole-parent benefit while a law student in the 1990s – despite considering it and discussing it with co-leader James Shaw.

“I’m not resigning as co-leader or as a member of Parliament,” she said.

“I will continue to stand for New Zealanders who are poor and who are treated with discrimination by the welfare system. This work is important. It is more important than one person.”

However, Ms Turei said she would not seek to be part of a cabinet in a Labour-Greens government after the general election on September 23.

Ms Turei admitted this was a concession to the Labour Party, who had voiced “concerns” over the revelations. She was disappointed that she would not be a minister, but said the work she was doing on welfare was more important than her personal career.

Last night, the Dunedin-based MP admitted that she enrolled at a Mt Albert address where she did not live in 1993 so she could vote for a friend. Enrolling to vote at an address you do not live at is an offence.

Ms Turei also confirmed her mother was a flatmate for part of the period she claimed the benefit in the 1990s. She said they were financially independent at the time.

And last month she revealed that she did not disclose to Work and Income in the 1990s that she had extra flatmates while she was a solo mother on the domestic purposes benefit.

If you have any form of charity, it will be gamed. If you have a state based beneficiary or pension system, it will become a political football and people will cheat. What allowed it to work in New Zealand was a nice combination of English Decency, Scottish Presbyterian Guilt and Catholic Shame: we wanted a welfare safety net (I am hard right wing for a New Zealander, and I want a the same thing) but we all felt guilty about using it. We wanted to provide for others, not take.

Turia does not have that. She is an example of the failure and fall of the left. Do not be like her.

1. Hat tip whaleoil, and link is to archive.is, as I expect the greens to retcon their history.