“There have to be spaces of hope” – Rebecca Macfie on tackling poverty

PLUS: Australia plans massive clampdown on big money in politics

Summary:

• Journalist and author Rebecca Macfie has kicked off a major conference on poverty with a keynote speech describing initiatives that are bringing hope to the battle against hardship

• Elsewhere, Australia’s Labour Party has proposed a big clamp-down on donations to political parties

• The move has led to some opposition, but is mostly sensible and is another sign that New Zealand’s failure to adequately regulate donations is increasingly out of step

A reminder that progress on poverty is possible

Photo credit: BWB.

Award-winning journalist Rebecca Macfie last night shared three stories of individuals and the state working together to lift the shackles of poverty, as she opened a major conference on the same subject.

Delivering the 2024 J. D. Stout lecture, Macfie quoted Auckland University professor Tracey McIntosh’s line that “there have to be spaces of hope” in the discussion about hardship. Hope was not blind optimism but, in the words of author Rebecca Solnit, the act of “recognising the uncertainty of the future and making a commitment to try to participate in shaping it”.

Prototyping new relationships between state and community

Macfie’s first story of hope came from her reporting in South Auckland, where locals were “prototyping new ways” of the state working with communities. Guided by the Southern Initiative, an Auckland Council-funded innovation hub, government agencies were trialling “an intentional sharing of power” with communities.