Ideas of fairness – especially the cherished ‘fair go’ – have long been important in New Zealand culture.
But Anglican Social Justice are running a competition for schools, entitled ‘Is New Zealand fair?’, which challenges some of those ideas.
Drawing on information from Inequality: A New Zealand Crisis, it’s asking students to find new and interesting ways of presenting facts about inequality – that, for instance, the top 1 per cent own three times as many assets as the whole bottom 50 per cent put together. Entrants can do this through music, animation, devising games, or any other means.
Last year, the competition was about substandard housing, and it encouraged students to, for instance, build cardboard houses and look at the difference that insulating even a cardboard house can make.
More information about the competition, which is open to all schools and closes on November 22, is available at www.facebook.com/isnzfair.