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Having been on the left, and now being on what I call the liberal right, I have detected a deficiency in the way poverty is addressed. Poverty is, of course, a broad problem, and it is obvious then that the issue of where to start is possibly the most intimidating part. But for the sake of getting at least one point across, let’s just take a broad look at the electoral politics of poverty.

I find it difficult to discuss poverty properly with people. When I do, I come up against walls that reject anything new. For instance, when I propose to my left-inclined friends that the welfare state may actually institutionalise poverty, it is rejected out of hand. And when I tell people of the right that their paternalism drives the poor into the hands of self-serving radicals, the warning is dismissed.

Okay, so they don’t think I have an argument. I can live with that. So, more objectively, what do the impoverished hear when social democrats and conservatives open their mouths? From the left comes the idea that the poor should settle for mediocrity and blame bourgeois bogeymen, almost superstitiously, for causing poverty. From the right comes a stern, paternalistic message and the thinly-veiled imperative to accept an unforgivable guilt for what is presumed, but never confirmed, to be poor life choices.

What this competition for superiority overlooks is that at the centre of the poverty problem are thinking, feeling human beings who have been made slaves to their own survival. They are human beings who hope for freedom, but for whom the way forward is blurred by politics as usual.

Disagree with me if you wish, but go to the streets of the worst parts of South Auckland or Huntly West (where I went to High School) and tell me that those messages haven’t been received loud and clear and haven’t wrought the following damage.

Poverty makes the poor slaves to their own survival. When that is the case, liberation is clearly the answer, not merely state handouts or discouraging those who need help from asking for it. Whether from the state or civil society, a hand up should not be offered with conditions, but as a form of solidarity with those who struggle. That, instead of harvesting the poor for votes or pretending to do something about poverty, is the solution.