Why do I stand with Metiria?

Rachael Goldsmith
Aug 8, 2017 · 4 min read

My journey with WINZ began at 16. I needed to go on the Independent Youth Benefit because 17 is the foster care cutoff. It involved describing in detail the abuse I had suffered to multiple strangers, and forced meetings with my abusers just to be approved. Even then WINZ would regularly ask me if I’d made up with my abusers yet so they could get me off their books.
Sex work was less traumatic than demands to make up with abusers. Until it victimised me too.
Shuffle forward to 23. A kid to feed, homelessness looming and WINZ tells me due to a new form of receivership and the lack of documentation that resulted from that hot mess, we get no money for 3 months.
Sex work seemed the only answer in my conditioned, muddled brain to the crisis we faced. In fact I even screamed down the phone at WINZ that they were giving me no choice. They told me it was obviously a good short-term solution as they could not help us! So I did it, until it victimised me again.
As I sat in the police station, describing the attack, I promised myself that I would never do it again. I promised myself I had more value than that. And with the birth of determination and desire for better, I sought out politics. Because I knew that I was far from the only vulnerable young woman and vulnerable young mother who found selling their body a better solution than welfare. And I knew how high the assault rate is in sex work.
I became a Green politician & policy creator. A blogger. I had a voice, and influence, a platform and…. finally…. hope.
But then at 30, behind the scenes, everything crumbled again. My marriage broke down. I was diagnosed with a disability. I couldn’t work a normal job. But I kept my promise to myself and I chose to only rely on WINZ, no matter how bad it got.
2013–15 was 3 years of being continually on a knife-edge between hope and suicide. Every minute of every day my mind repeated the caseworker’s words — ‘you are extremely qualified, extremely bright, but you are because of your childhood and your health at a very high risk of permanent welfare dependency’. To me, that was a sentence, for the crime of being vulnerable due to circumstances I could not control. I was hell bent on climbing out — but that took time. Meanwhile, we were living hand to mouth in a crumbling, dripping wet state house I couldn’t get us out of. Trapped doesn’t begin to describe it. Yes, even with my supposed political ‘status’. Yes, as a candidate. Yes, as a public voice for the voiceless.
It was a total mindfuck. I was writing policy and standing for policy to literally set myself free and hope like hell I lived long enough to see it implemented. Relying on another day’s mental survival from the aroha and manaaki of my fellow party office holders — including Metiria, and my friends. And yes, I slowly climbed out of hell — but it was not without the help of many.
This is my truth, this is my story, this is my reality — and I stand proud of it because I know I am far, far from the only woman out there who found selling their body the only viable way of keeping a roof over their heads and food in their child’s bellies because our welfare system is designed to freeze and starve our vulnerable. I consider this coercion, and as such a breach of the Prostitution Reform Act.
I am so ashamed of our country. I am so embarrassed by our government. Like Metiria, my life goal is to mend our safety net, so nobody has to do things they don’t want to do just to survive — and spend their days wanting to die rather than do this anymore. Life on welfare is a constant dance with suicide.
I stand with Metiria because #IAmMetiria. And like Metiria, my purpose for living, my purpose for recovering from these phases in my life, my purpose for speaking out is to END POVERTY in this beautiful, yet desperately unequal country. And like Metiria, I acknowledge I made poor decisions — but there are few choices when you are poor. I refuse to be ashamed of my past choices, because they were made to feed and shelter my family. And I, like my colleagues, will spend my life working to restore the mana of every New Zealander, because I truly understand the pain, misery and desperation many face.

Rachael Goldsmith

Written by

Green Party candidate for Clutha Southland

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