N.Z. public will decide Corso’s future

Press, 29 September 1979, Page 15

N.Z. public will decide Corso’s future

By

ROGER MACKEY

Corso is in a precarious position. The Government nas refused to continue its annual grant of $40,000 and has removed Corso s status as a charity. This means that contributions to Corso will not now be tax deductible. And, compounding the situation, its latest street appeal netted $lOO,OOO less than last year. One of those who helped bring about the changes in Corso which have got it in its present trouble is unrepentant. To Bob Consedine, regional organiser for Corso for almost eight years, it is better to be relevant and perhaps effective than popular. affluent, and almost certainly useless. “Corso could be sowing the seeds of its own destruction by taking a prophetic role but it is better to take the risk,” he adds.

Corso has changed directions in the last 10 years. When it began 35 years ago its emphasis was on relief aid — money, food, medicine, blankets — an ambulance service to the poor. In the early 1960 s it moved to providing aid for self reliance. giving the poor a

chance to help themselves, a chance to be self-sup-porting and independent of the hand-outs from relief agencies and governments alike.

The change was a controversial one, but Corso led the way for other relief organisations and, eventually, for government aid to follow. Corso has always been a prophetic voice, Bob Consedine says; its job is to be out in front. “The establishment will pick up on the ideas later.”

The third stage of Corso’s evolution began with the present decade and, Bob Consedine says, was initiated by the very people Corso was trying to help. Development for self-re-liance, the foundation of Corso’s programme in the 19605, was “a failure.” The message of those with whom it worked overseas, and of the United Nations

agencies Corso represented in New Zealand, was unequivocal: “Tidy up your own backyard, change yourselves and change the structures that are keeping us poor if you really want to help.” According to Bob Consedine, those Corso were trying to help were finally making their voices heard. Critics of Corso could contend, however, that a decade of experiment with development for self-re-liance was not long enough to gauge true results, and that tackling poverty by any method would require considerably longer than a decade before any real change was made.

Corso responded to the urgings from overseas after considerable debate. Relief or ambulance work continued, as did development aid for self reliance. and they continued to take up the bulk of Corso’s budget.

But Corso added to this work an educational programme conducted within New Zealand aimed at setting out what it saw as the causes of poverty. It was this programme which has reaped many of the problems Corso faces today. Much of the argument has been about the amount of money Corso spends on education. This year, because of the drop in income, Corso could spend up to half its budget on administration. Not all of this will go to education; most in fact will be spent on the normal administration expenses that. any fund-raising group faces. Bob Consedine says that during his term as an organiser no more than five per cent of the budget was spent on education in Canterbury. That figure is a little misleading as it. does not include the cost of wages to staff — one

full-time and one parttime worker in the Canterbury, Westland, Nelson, Marlborough district. Wages take up 25 per cent of the total budget but staff spend mo>st of their time on other tasks. Much of the argument might focus on money but some people, including Corso administrators, sus-

pect the real conflict is caused by what Corso includes in its education programme. Aid for self-reliance, the focus of Corso in the 19605, meant projects such as sinking a well in a poor village. These projects helped a few, Bob Consedine says, but too often much of the benefit was diverted to those who already had enough for

their needs. There had been no change in the political structure of the communities in which Corso worked. Corso, in its new education programme, tried to explain why this happens — why the poor are poor and why they tend to stay, that way. Ups and downs in the prices the rich countries

pay for commodities produced by the poor; the cost of capital from the rich countries; the activities of multi-nationals and trade barriers to goods from the Third World are all causes of poverty. Corso says. Repressive regimes, some remaining problems from the days of colonialism, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of

a few, contribute to the problems of poverty inside countries.

Most of what Corso says is arguable, and the facts it uses to support its arguments are open to more than its own interpretation. Its arguments are by no means a new or very radical way of looking at things and it would not be too difficult to find a large number of New Zealanders who thought along the same lines.

The controversay arises because these days Corso applies these lessons not just to poverty “over there” but to New Zealand as well. These days it talks about rich people and poor people rather than poor countries and rich countries or the developed and the developing world. To add fuel to the fire, Corso insists that many of the causes of poverty “over there” are emerging

and taking hold in New Zealand, enlarging the gap between the rich and the poor in this country. As Bob Consedine put it in a speech he made two years ago: “The evidence is mounting that the factors which have and continue to cause hunger in the Third World are beginning to penetrate New Zealand.” His successor as organiser in Canterbury, Mrs Lyn Jackson, is rather more blunt: “It appears to be acceptable for poverty and oppression to exist in the Third World but when Corso talks about it in New Zealand Corso is labelled ‘subversive’ and ‘left wing'.”

To the suggestion that Corso is a little presumptuous in raising the issue of poverty in New Zealand and straying from the original intentions of the organisation, Bob Consedine replies that Corso

has been in the business, so to speak, for 35 years and knows enough about the subject both to talk about it in New Zealand and to do something about it.

He also disagrees that Corso is not spending its funds in the way donors expected the money they gave to be spent. As Corso has changed, he says, so have the people who work for it and give money. To change course now and return to the old ways would mean breaking faith with the “new breed” of Corso supporters.

Corso itself has decided that its domestic work can only go so far. At the last annual general meeting in July a proposal to change the constitution to allow funds to be spent within New Zealand on, for example, aid for refugee resettlement, was defeated. Recent comments by an

M.P. that many members of Corso are Marxist-l.e-ninists was greeted with amusement by Bob Consedine. “That kind of comment comes from the same mentality that says all those who stayed away from work during the general strike are communists.”

Corso, because of the controversy, will lose some support, but Bob Consedine is confident that it will gain, as in the past, an equally large number of new supporters.

In the last 12 months Corso and its education programme has received more publicity than even the most optimistic and professional public relations man could have supplied. Much of it has been directed against Corso but even that has brought Corso into the spotlight and allowed the organisation to explain itself to the public. It will be largely up to that same public whether Corso recovers from the setbacks of last month and continues its work, to good or bad effect, in both New Zealand and oversas.