Doing night fill in a supermarket isn't something to aspire to like NZ papers would have you believe. Stay in school and get an education

Stuff.co.nz seems hell bent on running a series on poverty and how people are so incredibly hard done by.  Today I'm referring to a story about Aroha Ireland.  She is from Mount Albert's McGehan Close which prior to 2007 had been labelled a street of hopelessness.  Anyone who knows Auckland's Mount Albert knows it actually isn't a bad area.  It's no Remuera, but it's fairly central in Auckland and nothing like south Auckland.  Mount Albert is close to the more affluent Mount Eden and the student suburb of Kingsland.  How Mount Albert has a bad reputation is beyond me to be honest.

Anyway, in 2007 Aroha Ireland met Prime Minister John Key as she was from McGehan Close which had been described as a street of hopelessness.  At the time Aroha was 12 years old.  She is now 20.  Since then she has moved to Australia, obtained a job packing shelves at Coles and there has been no indication that she finished her education, with Stuff.co.nz and the New Zealand Herald reporting that she had been expelled from school at 16.  Her mother was a beneficiary who had a brief stint working National MP Jackie Blue following the meeting.  No reason has been given publicly as to why that position was terminated, only that she was made redundant.

Aroha is now living in Melbourne and claims to be paying $265 per week with her husband.  To get that price you would need to live at least 50 kilometers away from Melbourne's CBD, closer to Gippsland according to a quick rental search on Domain.com.au, that would be the Sydney equivalent of living in Penrith or the Auckland equivalent of living in Pukekohe and travelling to the city.  The average weekly income in Victoria's Pakenham is around $1200, with the average personal income being around $600.  That is low by Australian standards given the low end of a full time individual's wage is $1000 per week in the city, and significantly higher in the mines, but bare in mind with mining, it is FIFO work, so some weeks you may make $3000 but others you could make no work.  Basically to be paying $265, Aroha and her husband are living in a poor area, one that is probably worse than Mount Albert.

Aroha claims to make $38 in a supermarket warehouse.  Minimum wage in Australia is $16.87 per hour and according to the NSW Government's Coles wage sheet the average night fill wage for a Coles staffer is $40 per hour.  Looking at Victorian wages specifically for Coles, the wage at the high end would be $32.69 per hour based on a salary of $68,000, however, another website shows the average wage at Coles is around $20 per hour, so in order to get $40 per hour, Aroha is doing nightfill.

HOWEVER, although Aroha is making good money, and there is no disputing that, she has no education and no formal qualification.  What this means is that if there is an economic downturn and she finds herself out of a job it will not be easy for her to get another job, like it would be for someone with an education.  The other issue is that when she has children they won't be growing up in poverty like she did, BUT they will grow up with uneducated parents which will increase their likelihood of being in poverty.  If you read the Stuff.co.nz article you'll see that she had trouble stringing together simple sentences.  It's like when New Zealand papers suggest that working in a call centre is something to aspire to.  The feeling I got from the article Stuff.co.nz published today about Ireland was that doing nightfill (though not explicitly said) was a long term option for her, and that is because she lacks an education.  That is why there were no opportunities for her in NZ.  And here she has no other options because she didn't finish school.

The other big problem with the article is that Stuff.co.nz has written it as though doing a night fill job - stacking shelves is something to aspire to, and that is absolute hilarity.  It's no wonder kids in New Zealand and Australia struggle to construct sentences in which they must argue a point (recent NAPLAN controversy) and that some children in New Zealand do not have basic verbal skills, when you consider that the newspapers, online or print, promote, unskilled jobs.

It's one thing to be struggling and educated, it's another to be a struggling uneducated whinger, and they seem to be the loudest people.

I'm sorry but Aroha Ireland is not doing better than she would in NZ.  The only difference is, wages here in Australia are higher so uneducated people who would be on the scrap heap in NZ can get jobs that they wouldn't be able to in New Zealand.  And the main message, if you really want to have a good future with good prospects, and choices, stay in school and go to university, do an apprenticeship etc, because in economic downturns the first people who will struggle to find jobs are those without transferable skills.  She is one such person.