Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown's draft plan to remove $2m in Citizens Advice Bureau funding would jeopardise the delivery of that invaluable service. But the move could signal an even bigger disaster, writes former CAB volunteer - and client - Devika Dhir.
Community spirit was on display in Auckland and other disaster-stricken regions over this recent period of devastation. Rather than “fight or flight”, the more accurate description of a community’s response to the threat natural disasters pose is “tend and befriend”, coming from Rebecca Solnit’s book A Paradise Built in Hell and that author’s experience living through San Francisco’s earthquake of 1989. For smaller communities, in the regions, that may not be surprising. But neither should that come as a surprise to the million and a half residents of the Super City. In times of need, a neighbour steps up to help a fellow neighbour in Auckland.
That remarkable community spirit often comes to the fore in times of tragedy. But it’s not hard to find in ordinary times too. It is ever-present at the local Citizens Advice Bureau, a perfect embodiment of the principle: local volunteers helping local help-seekers with local problems.
The need
We are living in times of need. We all know the problems. Inflation, cost of living, stagnant wages and benefit rates, high rents, housing shortages, stretched social services, a looming recession, the continuing pandemic still smouldering on the back burner and the gloomier slow hot burn of accelerating climate change.
What does one do when faced with the consequences arising out of one of these problems? Who does one turn to when facing them all? And which door can one knock on when trying to tackle those consequences without a confident grasp of the dominant language of this country?
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We don’t all come equipped with the knowledge and know-how needed to get by in everyday life. It’s an impossible task to be across everything important relating to anything that could come up: insurance, consumer guarantees, tenancy agreements, employment relations, family arrangements, parking tickets, visa applications, tax returns, food parcels, dealings with neighbours to name but a few possibilities.
When faced with a problem, can we recognise that the law might have something to do in the situation, or, are we more inclined to accept it unchallenged on the basis of ‘bad luck’? Can we confidently and capably use online resources to claim our rights or are we open to exploitation by someone who knows more?
The answers to these questions depend on how much “legal health” we enjoy, which varies greatly from person to person. Good legal health allows us to know about and, in a timely way, act upon the many benefits, improvements and advantages the law can give us, even when there is no perceived problem or difficulty. Poor legal health, on the other hand, is when legal entitlements go unclaimed for lack of knowledge.
The Citizens Advice Bureau has been a longstanding tool of legal health promotion. A CAB’s door is the first, and often the only, door to knock when the walls feel like they’re closing in. The free and readily accessible advice CAB volunteers offer means there is always someone present to tend and befriend in a time of need.
Take my example: I hold a law degree but when my landlords gave me nine days’ notice of a rent increase before my lease ended, I didn’t know what to do. Sure, I can research online. Sure, I can navigate my way around legislation and make sense of the law. My training and profession rest on being able to apply the law to the facts of someone’s life and say what should happen. But when the facts were those of my life, it was someone else’s confirmation I needed as to my entitlements (60 days’ notice period) and, crucially, someone else’s concern and comforting reassurance when I thought I wouldn’t have a place to live in two weeks’ time. It was a CAB volunteer who provided that for me.
Mayor Wayne Brown and his council’s draft plan to remove $2 million of CAB funding would jeopardise the delivery of that invaluable service. But the greater disaster would be the damage that will do to the sense of community Auckland's 32 Citizens Advice Bureaux bring to the Super City.
The kind of society we want to be
Nobody needing any charitable help from any source is the goal the council seems to be working towards. At first glance, that’s admirable. What’s not to like about self-sustenance? A world where everyone can take care of themselves without needing anybody’s help to meet their needs. But this can’t be the dream we are aiming for. Just like a hug has countless benefits despite not being an individual activity, some forms of dependence are essential. That’s because, while self-reliance may be a mark of independence, a society of wholly independent individuals is hardly the mark of a community.
We can do better than a disconnected society of independent individuals. We can aim for a city where kindness, generosity and the value of taking care of one another are not obsolete virtues.
Rather than eroding it, we can aim for a city where local government builds community. We must call for our local government to halt the dismantling of structures of support while doing little to address the acute underlying need for that support.
The way forward
Over the summer, I visited the United States for two weeks. During both of those weeks there was a mass shooting in the city I was visiting, first Los Angeles then San Francisco—the cities known for having a handle on gun abundance.
On TV, I heard the government’s plan to make it better. Not directly, of course. The shootings barely made news but Dr Vivek Murthy, the United States’ Surgeon-General’s speech to the Conference of Mayors Meeting caught my attention.
He was describing the importance of community building to begin to address the vast systemic challenges the United States faces. Murthy’s plan to tackle the wellbeing of his country rested on social connection, because “a society in which people are disconnected cannot come together in the face of a crisis”. He spoke of how people fall through the cracks of our shrinking circles of concern. When we don’t feel responsible for one another, it is issues like child poverty and inequality which are directly and negatively affected.
Murthy presented a choice for when society feels fractured. Those fractures can continue to be allowed to fester, leaving individuals feeling on their own, against the world. Or, we can begin to look out for each other and rebuild connection in society. The healthy community Murthy envisioned for the United States would be built upon the bedrocks of service, kindness, generosity and love.
We, in New Zealand, share some of the problems Murthy wished to address in the United States (for example, economic inequality continues to be a persistent black mark against New Zealand’s egalitarian image and some 125,000 children live in material hardship). We must share the solutions too.
The extreme political inertia which makes innovation difficult in the United States should not be a challenge for New Zealand’s local government. Instead, Mayor Brown's council can begin to strengthen Auckland's social infrastructure today, starting with scrapping the plan to remove CAB funding. A CAB is not just a place everyone can go to for free advice. It is a place where people of different backgrounds come together and learn about one another. It is essential to the health of our communities.
Our support structures and sense of community require strengthening, not dismantling. This moment calls for not indifference but an unyielding commitment to one another. An unyielding commitment to those we share the street with, the local community with, the city with, the country with and the planet with. That starts with local government.
