Picking up pieces in Sydney

Press, 31 October 1979, Page 20

Picking up pieces in Sydney

The much-burdened taxpayers of New Zealand should not be required to help people who, attracted by what they think are green pastures outside the cloisters of this Welfare State, find that they are high and dry in a less hospitable place. The director of the Wayside Chapel Crisis Centre in Sydney has said that the New Zealand Government should be providing a welfare centre in Sydney for stranded New Zealanders. This plea is nonsense.

People who leave their home country with resources or skills not wanted elsewhere must take their chances at their own expense, or at the expense of the country of their adoption. If New Zealand has a responsibility to refugees, it is to those who come to this country, not to those who leave it. Many of the people who leave New Zealand succeed admirably. Those who fail should not be encouraged to look to the New Zealand taxpayer for support abroad. That is not the meaning of foreign aid.

Mr William Crews, of the Wayside Chapel, is also reported to have said that New Zealand should not allow its citizens such easy access to Australia. Any suggestion in New Zealand that controls be placed on movement across the Tasman Sea has always been greeted with vigorous protests on both sides.

Controls might have much to commend them. Criminals breaking bail, debtors fleeing creditors, husbands who want to avoid maintenance payments and drug dealers would all be seriously inconvenienced by the stricter identifi-

cation and control of those travelling between the two countries.

Would the community really accept rules that prevented young women, for instance, from travelling to Sydney on the ground that they might become prostitutes? Sydney is not quite the den of vice that its reputation sometimes proclaims. As in most other large cities, trouble there comes readily to those who seek it.

Judging by the more sensational reports of the behaviour of some New Zealanders in Sydney, the loss is not New Zealand’s. When the choice lies between being a prostitute in Sydney or a reformed prostitute on the dole in New Zealand, the community should allow its adult citizens the small dignity of making the choice for themselves. Many New Zealanders believe they live in a country which is over-taxed and over-regulated. This is not least of the reasons for the substantial emigration of New Zealanders, especially by young New Zealanders, who seek more rewarding or exciting places in which to live. Many New Zealanders also believe this country provides an overabundance of welfare benefits. One of the rewarding discoveries a New Zealander can make is that much of the outside world is less dedicated to a system of compulsory charity. People are encouraged to believe that their behaviour has consequences, for good or ill, for which they must take responsibility themselves. People who face misfortune in their own countries may have every right to look to their more fortunate neighbours for support. Expecting foreign aid is expecting too much.