Child Poverty Reduction Bill

I move, That the Child Poverty Reduction Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.

It is both my honour and also, I believe, my duty to present this bill to the House today. I’m on record as having stated that child poverty and child poverty reduction is one of the reasons that I was motivated to get into politics and, ultimately, into this House, and my view on that issue remains absolutely undiminished to this day. It is why, as Prime Minister, I also hold the role of Minister for Child Poverty Reduction—that is how strongly I feel about this issue. It is why we initially proposed this legislation and why we prioritised it. We want to make sure that we make significant, substantial, and sustained action to reduce child poverty and hardship in New Zealand.

Now, I don’t believe that I need to recount the many images and stories that exist that anecdotally have quantified child poverty in this country for some time. They’re in the images of the empty lunch boxes, of the child doing homework by torchlight. I’m confident that those images have spoken to each and every member of this House and that we don’t question the existence of poverty in New Zealand—because it is real and it is debilitating.

As the Children’s Commissioner’s expert advisory group reported, “It means, for instance, a much higher chance of having insufficient nutritious food, going to school hungry, wearing worn-out shoes or going barefoot, having inadequate clothing, living in a cold, damp house and sleeping in a shared bed.” No matter what numbers we talk about, that is ultimately the face of poverty in Aotearoa.

Yet I know, and many of us believe, this is not what parents want for their children. Many sacrifice every cent they have to try and give the best future to their kids possible. So long as families and whānau live with inadequate income, this cannot be a debate in this House about blame, but is instead one that starts to talk about fixing the issue and ensuring that families finally get their dignity back.

Now, every Government, present and future, should be absolutely dedicated to the notion that children should get the very best start in life, free of poverty and hardship. I believe that that sentiment actually has long been shared in this Parliament, because there shouldn’t be politics in child poverty reduction. I believe that we are better than that, and the public, ultimately, has the right to expect better than that of us. Parties across this House have already pledged to act on child poverty in different forms, something that, ultimately, we should all celebrate, but that is why I am seeking cross-party support of this bill today.

The essence of this bill is to try and build enduring political accountability, consensus, and action on the issue of child poverty and to reduce it. It sets out in law a range of widely accepted income and hardship benchmarks for which we can be measured against and will report on; a requirement for successive Governments to, themselves, set targets around those measures; and, ultimately, a requirement to produce a strategy—the piece that actually details what a Government will do to take action on child poverty but also on child well-being more generally.

Now, all of this closely matches the member’s bill I had in my name in 2012, which was all about establishing measures so Governments could be held to account. Measurement will always be an important starting point. It’s not the whole picture, but it’s an important part of it. Currently, we do see debate around child poverty rates. They’re often contested by policy makers and commentators, citing different measures and often assuming that they’re directly comparable. Confusion over measurement can undermine public confidence. It diminishes the understanding of the issue, diminishes public accountability and debate. It ultimately doesn’t get us anywhere. That’s why this bill addresses to resolve that issue by setting four primary measures and six supplementary measures against which our performance—a Government’s performance—can then be judged.

The measures that are in this bill accord with international standards and scorecards, and they’ll be familiar to anyone, for instance, who is familiar with the Child Poverty Monitor or, for instance, the Ministry of Social Development’s detailed income reports. The bill includes both income and hardship primary measures, and I’ll detail them quickly now. The first is low income at less than 50 percent of the median disposable household income, without deducting housing costs. The second is the same 50 percent income measure, but this time after deducting housing costs, and against a fixed reference year. That enables us to unambiguously show how incomes have changed year to year, but, importantly, also to show the impact of housing costs, which is a particular issue for New Zealand at present. The third measure is material hardship—that tells us about whether or not a child’s basic needs are being met within their household—and the fourth measure is persistent low income or hardship. That one is an entirely new measure.

Now, taken together, they give us a good insight into the experiences of Kiwi households, families, and their children, but also give us a good way of determining what policies will make a difference to those families. Successive Governments will then be required to set both long-term and short-term targets so they can be held to account. The persistence measure, the new one I mentioned, that’s going to be particularly important, because we know now, through good work like the Dunedin study, the harmful and sometimes long-term impact of being exposed to child poverty, particularly in the early years. This risks cycles of poverty becoming repeated through generations. That’s why it is so important that we get that persistent poverty measure right and we target our Government policies where they’re needed, to try to address that generational impact. Sadly, we don’t currently have a suitable database and benchmarks, and that’s why this bill actually requires the Government Statistician to create one. Targets will then be set against those once that information is available.

But that’s not all. We’ve also put in place supplementary low-income and material hardship benchmarks. The reason we have those additional elements is they’ll help us better measure our progress against other countries. It recognises that, actually, different groups, experts, and future Governments will have their own view on what constitutes child poverty, and it gives us a more rounded picture of what’s going on in New Zealand as a whole.

Now, why does all of this matter? It matters because we all want to know, I believe, what is happening for our most disadvantaged children, so that we get our policies right. Governments present and future, though, will not be required to set particular targets. That’s based on a view that there will be legitimately different views around what is ambitious and what is not. Targets themselves are purposely, therefore, not included, to maintain that neutrality. The Government Statistician, however, must, independently of Ministers and Government, report annually on the rates of child poverty against the primary and supplementary measures.

I do want to flag here that, currently, the start dates for the bill are based on when we’ll have some of that initial income reporting available. My preference is that we actually bring our start dates forward from where the bill currently has them. I seek the view of the select committee and the public on that preference, given it’s not currently in the bill. Of course, we’ve also put in a requirement that the Public Finance Act will be the mechanism at each Budget by which we will be required to report on our progress in the House.

What I want to acknowledge is that although we will make sure targets are available for the public to comment on, the targets set by this Government are the most ambitious targets we have seen any Government set for poverty. A 5 percent rate has not been achieved by New Zealand that I can see in the records ever—ever. If the last Government believes that they can achieve that, then please, by all means, vote for this bill and support those targets, because the honest truth is we’ve never achieved them before, and if we do we’ll be amongst the best in the world. Finally, the well-being strategy is a requirement because we acknowledge this bill itself doesn’t change anything except our political accountability and the public’s ability to hold us to account. The strategy makes all of the difference. I commend this bill to the House, I commend it to the Opposition, and I ask for your support.

Mr Speaker, thank you, and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. Forgive me if I stand here first off and say how ironic I find it that the Prime Minister stands up and lectures us about taking the politics out of child poverty, when one of the first things she did was remove the Better Public Services targets, which actually got to the heart of the causes of some child poverty and child deprivation, and didn’t have anything to replace them with. She said, “We will one day.”, but actually, politically, had to take them out and take them away, let alone let them continue to run until she could actually replace them with her own ideas. So she didn’t have ideas. They were very, very clear and specific targets that went to the heart of—for those that are in the first trimester of being pregnant, setting a target that 90 percent of them would actually be with a lead maternity caregiver. I would have thought that was something well worth backing, well worth getting behind. If the Prime Minister didn’t actually think that was something that would help children, then perhaps she could have let it go until she came up with some of her own ideas, but she couldn’t do it.

Excuse me if I find it a bit rich to be told that this is the, kind of, panacea and that some Governments will be more ambitious than others, like the feeling we got from her own would be—when, actually, it was the National Party that was more ambitious in the number of children that we could remove out of child poverty. We proved you could do it, by seeing 85,000 fewer children in poverty, and yet all we’ve got so far is bluster, blunder, and the talk of what might happen, not the actual evidence behind it.

We have an opportunity; it is right to do it right. We have an opportunity to make some significant changes, as we constantly should be as a Parliament, as we have an obligation to be doing as members of Parliament, for the children of this country. But this is a bill that has significant risk and has significant opportunity. The risk is that if this bill is enacted as it currently stands, it will do nothing and it will help no one. It will do nothing and it will help no one. It will simply be another well-intentioned piece of legislation that has absolutely zero impact on the families who are genuinely struggling every day. I’m sure the Prime Minister does not want to play the political spin game with the most vulnerable children in New Zealand, and I’m sure that she has good intentions, but one thing we know after nine years of working on these problems in Government is that good intentions count for very little for those children that are actually in their homes; it is your actions that will actually count.

At the moment, this bill is an empty symbol of this Government’s need to show how caring they are, but it achieves very little. On one level it sets targets for child poverty reduction, but my colleagues here in the National Party believe they are too low. Where is the ambition for our children? Where is this new ambitious Government that told us it was all going to be so much bigger? That is why the National Opposition plan to support this bill to the first reading but make absolutely no obligations of supporting it to a second reading. We have some key amendments that we will be putting forward and that we feel will dramatically strengthen it and really change the lives of New Zealand’s most vulnerable.

The first thing is the targets. The targets are too low. To go out there and say that it’s something like 70,000 over 10 years to be doing the—and we might get to 50,000; it’s too low. It’s just simply not ambitious enough. Work out your priorities. Work out what needs to be done in your next Budget. Put that into place. Look at your debt levels. Look at what needs to be done. Follow a great example, actually, of two previous finance Ministers under National and know that you actually can put more money genuinely into tens of thousands of New Zealanders’ homes that need it.

But poverty is just one problem that these children face. They face such a range of issues that have often been intergenerational and over a long period of time—and this bill does nothing to address the needs of those children in that way—family violence, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health problems, untreated health problems, and poor housing, to name a few. We had a plan in place addressing those very issues. We had targets that the Public Service had to measure themselves against. We pumped literally hundreds of millions into them. We saw crime coming down, fewer on benefit, and, actually, things improving. Now we see the eye off that ball and, instead, a lofty bill full of good intentions but with no actions or no substance actually behind it.

We want to see Better Public Services targets introduced into this bill, and we will be presenting a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) along that line. We want to see that we get into the heart of things, like pregnant women getting access to the health outcomes and support that they really and truly need, that there is better housing, and that there are fewer people on welfare and living in decades of deprivation.

We want to support place-based initiatives. If we are serious about making change in those families’ lives, who are most vulnerable, we have to devolve power—which means money—back into our communities so that they can be self-determining on how that actually is spent, what programmes work the best, and put the most money into that and over a much longer period of time. To do that, you need social investment. Forgive me if I sound like I don’t quite believe all of the words that the Prime Minister was saying around taking the spin, politically, out of this stuff, when, actually, we can’t see the evidence behind the initiatives that she wants to run. We can’t see the backing on what actually, really, we do know will work.

We haven’t heard that support for social investment, which literally means that you’re getting the right funding into the right organisation that gets to the right people that gets into the heart of what the issues really are over a much longer period of time and can prove to those that are paying their taxes and working hard that the money is well spent and when it is actually able to present the evidence that it is not quickly enough, you can change and move another way. This bill does nothing for those children that are living in Kaikohe at the moment, actually getting support from a place-based initiative and worried whether or not that will still be run or will it go, like charter schools.

Excuse me if I find it just a little bit rich from a Prime Minister that tells me, “Put children first.” in the same week she is telling us that charter schools have got to go. So the kids that they care about need to be put first but not the children, actually, that are in charter schools and are, for the first time for many of them, getting an education that they can relate to at a place that they want to be every day, and are achieving at levels that they and their family hadn’t seen before. So to stand here now and say to take the politics out of what’s happening around children, I think, just speaks volumes.

We will be putting forward three different SOPs, one around actually setting some real targets that go into the heart of the Public Service and to those families that most need that support, and really get into that deprivation stuff. We will be putting forward an SOP around social investment, because, as the Prime Minister said, if you can’t measure it, you can’t measure whether it’s working right—you can get in there sooner and you can make a genuine difference, and that’s what the social investment approach actually believes in.

We will also be saying that the targets that the Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government are setting here are simply not ambitious enough. This can’t be as good as it gets for the kids that need us most, and, quite frankly, I am quite disappointed at the lack of ambition by this Labour Government.

So, as I say, we’ll see it to the first reading. We want to work with this. Let’s take the politics out and work together to improve this bill for the good of all of our children.

I wish to welcome the introduction of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and the vision it embodies for the future of New Zealand. I just want to refer to some of the comments made by the previous speaker, Paula Bennett, and remind the House that that previous speaker was once the Minister for Social Development and, under her watch, child poverty skyrocketed to 220,000 children. Under her watch, 220,000 children were living in poverty. So when that member says, “This can’t be as good as it gets.”, I have to sit here shaking my head at that member, because we have to remind her that it was much, much worse under her watch. At least we are aspirational for New Zealand. We actually have a strategy and a plan for addressing the very urgent issue of child poverty in this country, unlike that Opposition, who sat on their hands for nine years and did nothing to help those children—nothing, member Louise Upston, who’s shaking her head.

We are all devastated in this House at the sight of children without their lunch, to see them throughout the day walking to school in the rain without a coat, or living in cold, damp houses. We are all devastated in this House by the number of children every winter that get admitted into our hospitals, into our emergency wards, with respiratory problems due to the conditions of the housing that they’re living in. Not only do we rightly find it unacceptable that some of our children live in households that can’t afford adequate food, clothing, secure housing, dental and medical care, and more; we don’t recognise it as the New Zealand we have come to believe in. So many New Zealanders say that they do not recognise the country that they are living in.

We see our country as somewhere that everybody gets a fair go, where there is equal opportunity, but we know that it’s not always so and that children often bear the brunt of it. The reality is that there are families living lives of quiet desperation, where losing a shift at work, an unexpected bill, or an illness can spell the difference between being able to feed your children or not. These families are often stressed, strung out, and ashamed of not being able to properly provide for their families, and we’ve all had examples of that in our own electorates whilst we’ve been out and about as members of Parliament.

I want to refer to one, and that’s an example that I used whilst in Opposition. The father in the family lost his job due to a workplace injury. Within a couple of weeks, they could no longer afford to pay their rent. At that point, they were evicted. They ended up—the mother, the father, and two children—living under a tarpaulin at the back of somebody’s house, and that was because they were on the brink of poverty that whole time. It only takes one bill—all of a sudden, you’ve lost your job, through no fault of your own, and you are, all of a sudden, in that desperate situation.

The experience of poverty in childhood goes much wider than the here and now. The impacts of persistent low income and material hardship are pervasive and cumulative, and for some groups of people, it’s also inescapable. Evidence suggests that a substantial number do not move out of the low-income zone over a seven-year period. There may be other reasons why children don’t thrive, but childhood poverty is, undoubtedly, one that matters, especially when the experience is severe and persistent, and the working poor form part of this picture. While adults in employment in households reduces the chances of poverty for children, it’s not a cure at all, and we know this is the case because around 40 percent of children living in poverty are living in households where there is at least one adult in full-time employment or self-employed.

Child poverty rates, after taking housing costs into account, are much higher now than they were in the 1980s. Most low-income households with children are now no better off or even worse off than their counterparts in the 1980s. We also know that Māori and Pasifika children are overrepresented in poverty statistics. Just under half of children in poverty are Māori or Pasifika, and rates of poverty and persistent poverty for Māori and Pasifika children are around double the rates of Pākehā, and I certainly see that in my own electorate, where we have a population of 24 percent Pacific, 14 percent Māori, and there is a higher number of children living in poverty, more households with three or more families living in that one household, and a higher proportion of sole-parent households. We see poverty in electorates like the one I am the MP for.

So what’s to be done? We all want answers, but when people’s lives are financially fragile and sometimes unstable or transient, answers can be elusive. So what to do about children living in poverty is the question.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Could I ask the member, please, to come to the bill.

I’m here to tell you that this bill forms a good deal of the answer. The legislation outlined in this bill will establish long-term targets to encourage Governments to have aspirational goals and to take actions that have both short-term and longer-term effects. At the same time, it will ensure milestones are put in place that build over time. This is critical to ensuring momentum in the fight to better children’s lives. In real terms, that means putting goals in place that ensure a long-term, sustained effort to address child poverty while taking action in the now to alleviate children’s suffering.

Each measure in the suite of measures is an important lens on the issue of child poverty. Setting them in primary legislation will help ensure that the actions of successive Governments can be better and more consistently judged. By setting goals for each of the four measures, the Government will make progress on several fronts for New Zealand children, and reaching and maintaining those long-term targets would place New Zealand alongside those countries who currently have the lowest rates of child poverty and material hardship. New Zealand has the opportunity and the moral obligation to ensure children are free from the burden of poverty. The Child Poverty Reduction Bill will drive a significant and sustained reduction in child poverty that lasts beyond successive Governments.

Alongside this, we have to look at other measures that we are putting in place to address the issue of child poverty in this country, and this Government has been proactive on that front. The Families Package will mean an increase—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, that’s very interesting to the member, but a large part of the speech has not focused on the bill. So I ask the member, please, to keep it tight and focused on the bill.

Madam Deputy Speaker, this bill will take this country a long way to addressing the very urgent issue of child poverty. I encourage all of the political parties in the House to do the right thing, to support this legislation, and to work with us to be able to adequately, effectively address the issues of poverty that New Zealanders are facing.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. At the start of my intervention, and with your indulgence, I want to reflect on the news today of the retirement of the Leader of the Opposition, the Rt Hon Bill English, who, I have no doubt, history will judge as one of the country’s great parliamentarians. Now, his legacy will very much be the steady financial acumen with which he steered this country through the global financial crisis and the Canterbury earthquakes, but my abiding memory of Mr English will be his passionate, unequivocal, energetic support for social investment and the families who would benefit from it.

This is very relevant to the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. If there is any regret that Mr English might have, it would be, I think, that the social investment programme wasn’t given three more years to really, really bed in. I think that the intervention from the Minister for Social Development and her comments in November, December last year indicate to me that she just does not understand social investment. She announced that it would be repackaged, retrenched back into the Ministry of Social Development, and that it would undergo significant changes. The Prime Minister herself, when looking at some of the Better Public Services (BPS) targets that the previous Government had, using rheumatic fever as an example, I think also shows how lacking in understanding the Government is about the need for agencies to work across silos in order to solve entrenched problems—the symptom, much less the cause, of which is child poverty. I think the more one drills into the issue of child poverty the more it’s clear that financial poverty is both a cause of dysfunction and a symptom of it. And if it were as simple as pouring more money into those families and then leaving them alone, we wouldn’t be here debating this bill.

Rheumatic fever is, I think, a very important barometer. Prior to social investment it was not unusual for hospitals to simply treat the pathology, discharge the child, and send them back into the very conditions that led them to those poor health outcomes. I sat around the table, watching as agencies were shoehorned out of their silo mentality and, through those targets, forced into directly addressing the causes of poverty and ill-health. Rheumatic fever was a really good example. It wasn’t simply OK for the hospital to send that child back into the cold, damp mouldy house from which he or she came. There was an obligation, because of the targets and the expectations the previous Government had, that they would be fixed so that that child would not come back.

The significant improvement, I think, we were starting to make and the transformative actions that Government departments were going through, in order to work collaboratively to reduce both the symptoms and causes of child poverty, were very, very promising. We will support this bill, but we do so with the condition that there will be a very serious look at the way in which those BPS targets—those social investment targets that were becoming so effective—were going to be addressed by the Government. I look forward to the repackaging, but I counsel the Minister that there was much good that was going on and it would be a terrible shame if, on a blind ideology, they were lost.

I want to just make two points about the bill. Firstly, the Prime Minister appears to have had something of a road to Damascus experience. I don’t know how many times I sat in this House when, in Opposition, Jacinda Ardern grilled the Minister for Social Development, the Hon Anne Tolley, on her refusal to be boxed into a corner and to say, “There is one single definition of child poverty.”, and the previous Minister was right. Now the Prime Minister agrees with her. We see in the explanatory note of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill, under “Measures”, and I quote, “material disadvantage is multi-dimensional and therefore more than 1 measure is needed to properly assess trends and understand which groups are over-represented.” It further says “—as noted, the level of poverty is a contestable notion and different views can reasonably be held:”. Well, if that’s not a road to Damascus experience for the Prime Minister, I don’t know what is, and I actually applaud her for backing down off the high horse she rode for years in Opposition, to come to the sensible conclusion that there is no one measure.

But the other particular feature of this bill, which we will support because it does no harm—but doesn’t do much—is the lack of ambition from the Government in actually solving child poverty. The previous Government took 85,000 children out of poverty. Its Family Incomes Package, passed in Budget 2017, which was mostly repealed by this present Government, in order that they can give my children completely free first-year tertiary education, is an example of both misguided targeting and a lack of ambition. The previous Government committed to taking 100,000 children out of poverty in this term of Parliament, and now we have a target that says that if they’re lucky, with a fair wind, and they don’t completely muck up the economy the way business is concerned they might do, that target is going to be 100,000 children out of poverty in 10 years. So tens of thousands of children are going to have to wait longer and longer for the Government to assist them into independence from the State, and, for their families, self-determination and a life better lived, because the Government wants to give my children free tertiary education.

Well, I’m sorry, but this bill lacks ambition. This bill grossly lacks ambition. I think what we heard from the Minister for Social Development is that knowing the data—knowing the numbers—is an important prerequisite to solving child poverty, but actions speak louder than words. Data will not change lives; policies and actions will.

💬 Hon Clare Curran: Nine years.

Yes, there were nine years, and in nine years a far greater number of children were lifted out of poverty than at any time in this country’s history, and the previous Government was the first—it supported those families through a significant recession and then it raised benefit levels for the first time in 42 years. So I’ll stand very proudly on that record, Ms Curran—very proudly on that record—and I challenge the Government to change its targets, to at least match what the previous Government was prepared to do and had a plan to do, because data is not a plan. Knowing the target is not getting to the target, and all we have heard is rhetoric and numbers and good wishes, but no plan—in fact, a plan to unwind the very vehicle that the previous Government used to be able to lift those children out of poverty.

So we will support this bill. We will support it, but it is caveated by that very clear expectation that numbers are not enough. Actions are what are going to lift children out of poverty, and we will be holding this Government very strongly to account for their success or failure. I would love to be able to stand up in this House at the end of this Parliament and say they exceeded their own modest expectations, they did better than we thought they would—than they thought they would—but, unfortunately, I can’t see any reason why I would be able to do that in the future. I hope I’m wrong. I hope we can achieve the previous projections of child poverty reduction because we owe it to our children to do just that.

Kia ora, Madam Deputy Speaker. Thank you very much. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to speak on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and I am going to try and stay apolitical, because what we have seen from the Opposition to date—and unfortunately from all members that have spoken—is a level of politics that has been interjected into this discussion. Considering that it appears that both sides of the House believe that this is worthy, believe that our children are worth it, believe that we need to work together to set this vision in place for our nation and then hold ourselves accountable regardless of who becomes a Government in the future, then let’s stick with that sort of wording. So I’m going to try. I mean I’m a political animal by nature but I am going to try.

There are things inside this bill that have yet to be mentioned and I want to talk about Part 3, “Amendments to Vulnerable Children Act 2014”. This bill actually makes amendments to change the title of the Vulnerable Children Act 2014 to the Children’s Act. I’m pleased to see it. As I have spoken in this House on many occasions since becoming the Minister for Children—and I acknowledge you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as previously the Minister for Social Development who implemented and created Oranga Tamariki—in my view, this is the first piece of legislation that starts to set us on that pathway that creates the vision for our children. All of us in New Zealand, raised here, understand and have heard often the statement that says that this is the best place to bring up kids—and, considering what many other nations are like, that is very true, for many other nations. But it’s not what it was, and we need to reassess and we need to hold ourselves accountable across this House and across whoever is in Government.

This is only the beginning of a pathway. What there is in Part 1—Part 1 is being replaced inside that Act by this piece of legislation and the Government strategy for improving children’s well-being and the Oranga Tamariki action plan. So those are all pieces that are going to fall out of this initial step. So not only does it put in place and finally into legislation—regardless of whose targets are whose targets, we finally now have in a piece of legislation at least something that we will be held to account on, and that’s an enormous step.

I’ve sat for years in this House arguing and debating on bills about whether we should feed our children. I’ve sat in this House and heard argument after argument about whether the State should provide meals for children at school. I acknowledge the previous Government put into place, through charities predominantly, a delivery of food in schools with the help of Fonterra and Sanitarium. We need to acknowledge those organisations, but it behoves us to continue to have that argument. Are they not our children?

I want to be clear, though, too, that by changing the name of the Act, Part 3 does not remove Oranga Tamariki’s focus on the 5,600-odd children who are in our care, nor does it change the focus of Oranga Tamariki and the Ministry for Children on the 92,000 children who have many of the indicators that we know mean that they are on the cusp of falling into our care. We need to concentrate on prevention and early intervention for those children. Part of this legislation, by making sure that we hold ourselves accountable, will go towards us making sure that none of those 92,000 fall over into that 5,600 that we currently must take from their whānau and family and actually hold the care in our possession as we work to bring them back into that safe and committed environment.

So nothing about the change of the name changes that, but what it does do is it stretches what is the focus of a Government—this Government, any Government—to all the children of New Zealand. We need to set—and it will be set through those other pieces of work that I’m talking about: the child’s well-being strategy, and the Oranga Tamariki action plan—a baseline that we will not allow our children to fall below. To do that we need to support their families, and I’ve heard exactly the same words from the Opposition today. I’ve heard exactly the same words when the members of the Opposition were Ministers. We know that children do not live in isolation. We know that we must support those who are vulnerable. We also know that many are vulnerable tomorrow who may not be vulnerable today.

The flexibility that we must have, the way that we see our citizens and our responsibility towards them—this is the first step on a different pathway, in my view. It says that the State must take responsibility for the people who placed us here and use their dollars to support them to make sure that they do not fall below a line that we will not accept that our citizens will live below: living in a car, living in a garage, living in mouldy bedrooms, not being able to afford to go to the doctor, not being able to afford to give lunch at school, not being able to do so many things that we know are the minimum we would expect for our citizens. This is the first step on that pathway, I believe, and I’m thrilled that the Opposition is joining with the Government to—and I acknowledge that they say that there is no guarantee, that this is the first step, that this is the first reading, and that they will work, I hope, constructively at select committee. If the targets are too low—

💬 Hon Tim Macindoe: Of course, we will.

Thank you, Mr Macindoe, that’s great. If the targets are too low, then absolutely let’s have a talk about that, because regardless of who sits on this side of the House, they will be held accountable for those targets. So if the Opposition believes that the aspiration is too low and they want to set the aspiration higher, then let’s have that conversation, and then let’s have the conversation at the same time about how we’ll work together to make sure as a nation we reach those aspirations. How about we work together to try and figure out that in 2020 this won’t be a political issue either, that from this moment forward while we might talk about trade deals in 2020 and while we might talk about immigration and so on, let’s not make this the issue of the election campaign in 2020. Let’s say from this moment forward this is an apolitical conversation. We will all hold ourselves to account. We all care. We are all going to work towards it. Kia ora, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to start my contribution in what, of course, is an important conversation for New Zealand. The Prime Minister has said that her intention is to have legislation that’s supported through the Parliament by all parties, so it’s a fairly bittersweet day on this side of the House as we acknowledge the resignation of our leader, Bill English, because I see that, of anyone in this Parliament based on their record and their results, he is the single most effective MP in terms of actually delivering results for the very children that we’ve been talking about today. You cannot deliver for the very vulnerable children we’re talking about unless you have an economy that’s growing, unless there is employment, and unless there are opportunities. And the guts of this, if we are serious about improving the lives and changing the lives of children living in poverty, is that social investment is the only path to do that. So I do want to just put on record my thanks to the Rt Hon Bill English for his leadership in this work.

My request to the Labour Prime Minister is to engage fully with this side of the House on the “how”. It’s all very well to set targets. I don’t think anyone would disagree that targets aren’t a good idea, which is why, as a Government, we set Better Public Services targets to focus results.

Our support beyond the first reading is conditional on three significant areas. I want to talk about those three significant areas, because there is no one out there who listens to the Prime Minister speaking about lifting children out of poverty that would disagree, but what everybody wants to know is how. How is the current Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government going to do it?

What we’ve seen, if we look at results and if we look at what has been achieved, is that 85,000 children have been lifted out of poverty in the last five years. So what the New Zealand public want to know is is the new Government paying attention to what worked, or is the new Government going to be ideologically driven and just abandon anything that the previous Government had in place that worked? That’s my challenge to that side of the House today—if that side of the House is authentic about solving the very challenges for families up and down this country, or is that side of the House going to abandon the very things that worked?

I want to give the House an example, because it actually speaks to the three areas that our deputy leader, Paula Bennett, spoke about in her letter. It’s about Better Public Services targets. It’s about actually being ambitious, and not just saying you want to achieve less than what was achieved in the last five years. I think that’s outrageous. I actually think it’s outrageous for a leader of a party whose supposed top priority is child poverty—but then, actually, housing is the top priority, and something else as well, so I’ve kind of lost track. It’s about how. It’s about how the Government will do it, and it becomes even more of a challenge to get the results that that side of the House is suggesting if you abandon what worked.

Let me give you an example of a place-based initiative. Yes, the Prime Minister was in Northland for five days. I’ve not heard that the Prime Minister visited the place-based initiatives in Ōtāngarei, in Kaitāia, or in Kaikohe, because when you meet with the families, the very families that this bill purports to work for—I want to know how many of the Ministers opposite have sat in front of those very families and their children to understand the challenges they face.

So if you look at the challenges, gosh, it’s kind of interesting. Look at the Better Public Services targets that we were measuring ourselves on: reducing—

💬 Jan Logie: Wow! Come to my neighbourhood. Talk to the people in my street and give that speech.

Did you visit them in Northland? Did the Prime Minister meet—well, I haven’t had a yes.

So look at reducing long-term welfare dependence, look at healthy mums and babies, look at keeping kids healthy, look at safer kids, improving—

💬 Hon Clare Curran: How many State houses have you visited?

Oh, they just don’t like to hear. The pathway to lifting children out of poverty is these very complex areas of dysfunction, and I can tell that side of the House that the problems will not be solved by writing a target and a number on the wall of your office. You’ve got to get out there. You’ve got to look at innovation and do things differently from how things have been done before. That is the reality.

Another part of it is it’s not just accountability and targets on politicians—what about on the Government departments? It’s disappointing, but it will make it challenging for the Government to not have a mechanism that forces Government departments to work together. I’m concerned we’ll see a withdrawal back into silos, and instead of focusing on the very children this bill is meant to serve, Government departments will retreat into silos because, all of a sudden, they are not having to deal with the complex issues.

I’ve had members opposite say, “Well, of course we know what’s happening in our community.”, and I was talking about Northland. So one of the things that Better Public Services targets enables you as a local advocate, as a member of Parliament, to do is to actually talk to the Government departments, talk to iwi, and talk to the community organisations, and ask them, “What are you doing differently about this particular issue?” So I’m concerned, and this side of the House is concerned, that the current Government is removing, because of ideology, the very things that worked.

So let me tell you about social investment. Let me tell you—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, I’d really like you to relate it to the bill.

In terms of the bill, our support is conditional on three things. Our support for this bill, past the first reading, is conditional on the continuation of Better Public Services targets, being more aspirational in terms of the targets you’ve set. Because this side of the House doesn’t think it’s good enough, when we’ve actually achieved more in the last five years. So we’re challenging the current Government to lift your level of aspiration for the very children we’re talking about.

Also, our support past the first reading is conditional on social investment. If that side of the House is serious about changing the lives of these children, we’re not just talking about financial poverty. We’re talking about poverty of health and we’re talking about poverty of opportunity. So in order to do that, you need to use information and data about them. These are real people in real need, and the invitation is to deliver the services much closer. In order to achieve the targets—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: I thought the other guy said data wasn’t enough.

In terms of achieving the targets that the Government is setting—

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Which one is it?

Well, your Minister for Social Development isn’t sure that she wants to support social investment via data. So if you talk to the very families that I’m talking about, the more you know about them the more you can deliver what they need. And it is interesting, going back to the place-based initiatives, that a very high proportion of the one in Northland is Māori, and yet your Minister of Finance is talking about removing—removing—funding for those programmes and initiatives that are focused on Māori. It’s no surprise, also, that this is the week that you’ve killed the schools that are delivering for Māori and Pacific Island students. So that side of the House is providing mixed messages.

I want to close by saying that this is about real people with real needs, and what this side of the House is looking for is real answers and real plans for how the Government intends to do it, because we’ve heard nothing. We’ve heard nothing. We’ve heard nothing about your plans for how.

So I think that if this Parliament is to support a bill unanimously through all stages, the New Zealand public is owed an explanation of the how. You can talk in fluff and you can talk in convoluted statements, but, at the end of the day, if you want to change lives, you’ve got to show us a plan.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Actually, if I’m really honest, I rise with quite mixed feelings to speak to this bill. I support this bill in its entirety, but I’m really conscious of the reason that it’s required, which is entrenched, persistent poverty in our communities that has been going on and has just sky-rocketed from the 1980s and not been addressed since.

There are kids dying every year in this country because of low-income related diseases. We know that the hospitalisation rates are huge and that kids are struggling at school, or not being able to get to school because of that poverty; that they’re stressed and worried because of the stress that they’re seeing their parents under, trying to cope with just putting food on the table; and that kids are coming home after school to nothing in the fridge, and no heating in winter. We know that we can do better. And I know that for all of those people, this bill is going to feel odd. It’s going to feel like we’re accepting a degree of poverty in this country. And that’s uncomfortable, but the political reality is that we clearly need a set of measures to focus our efforts, to make sure that we are tracking in the right direction.

I do want to particularly acknowledge the work that has been going on for a really long time, calling this House to introduce legislation of this type. I think the work was started by Every Child Counts, and then was picked up by the Office for the Commissioner for Children and the expert advisory group, and then Tick for Kids in successive elections. All those advocates for our children have been asking us in this House to do this because they wanted some measure and some surety and some accountability around our commitment and our fine, fine words about how much it means to all of us to end poverty.

I do want to point to some of the debate that we’ve heard this afternoon. I don’t want to make this political, and I do want there to be unanimity in this House about moving forward based on what the experts have been telling us. But I do have to say that some of the stories I’ve heard from the Opposition today have really indicated to me the need for this bill and for having the four primary measures and the six supplementary measures. We’ve been hearing that the last National Government did really, really well on addressing child poverty. I’ve heard the figure—around 85,000 children lifted out of poverty under their time—and the suggestion that we’re not being ambitious enough, because, goodness me, they did so well! That is all in the face of the very real evidence of people queuing for food banks halfway down the street in Auckland, our food banks being overwhelmed and overrun, the continued hospitalisation rate, and the other statistics.

Looking at that one measure over a different time period tells us a very, very different picture about the success of that last Government’s approach to child poverty. When they chose that figure of 85,000, it was taking the number of children in poverty from the peak of the global financial crisis to now. Of course there was a reduced number. You would’ve had to be doing something so much worse wrong than what you were, for that number not to have gone down. Actually, your measure should have been from when you came into Government–sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker. That Opposition’s measure should have been from when they came into Government to the end, and they should have been looking across different measures, like this bill will set up, because if they had and were completely honest about what had happened, then they would have admitted that the latest household income survey showed that the number of children living beneath 60 percent of the median wage after housing costs, which is the relative income poverty line, is now 290,000—30,000 more than in 2008. Most importantly, between 2008 and 2016, the number of children experiencing the most severe poverty rose from 105,000 to 140,000. So the point of this bill is to have a suite of measures—a comprehensive look at how we are doing, to stop Governments cherry-picking numbers that put rhetoric and their own political ambition ahead of the well-being of our children. Enough. We need to put our children first.

We hear from that side that we need to be saying that actions are more important than the measures—absolutely. Absolutely—that is going be the test. But we need to make sure that we put in the measures around the political accountability, and the measures to drive public service action and involve our community, so that we are all part of the solution. That is another thing that this bill does. It provides for a legislative mandate for a strategy to focus on the well-being of our children. That will have focus areas around education and housing, and more wider well-being measures, so that we can get beyond just looking at what’s wrong, to looking at what is possible for our children. They deserve us as a country to be focusing on the best outcomes for them, and that does go beyond even the targets that will be enabled by this bill, of reducing poverty. Ultimately, we don’t want any poverty in this country; we want all of our children’s families to have enough to sustain themselves and for their children and everyone in our society to thrive.

I do, again, want to acknowledge all of those people who are impatient for change. I’m also impatient for change. It’s not good enough, and when I hear from other members about how things have improved, I think about the conversations I have with people in my street about how they are doing just everything they can to be able to get work and juggle studying, to be able to put food on the table and put the heat pump on in winter, and they just can’t manage it. They are going without food themselves, struggling to pay attention in their courses, to be able to give their kids just something to eat. That is not good enough, and that is no measure of success, and I am just embarrassed to have heard suggestions from previous speakers that we should be following in the footsteps of some system that produced that outcome. We want better for our kids. This bill, in itself, isn’t going to do it, but it’s going to create the framework and the accountability to make sure we’ve got a chance of doing it.

Finally, I also do want to acknowledge my previous colleague Metiria Turei, who a couple of years ago now introduced a bill very, very similar to this. She was listening to those experts in our community and introduced a bill that had a range of different measures and indicators and a set-up for a target and a strategy and child impact assessments. This is not dissimilar to what we introduced, we are pleased to see it, and we will be pursuing the actions associated with it with vigour. Kia ora.

One of my favourite All Black captains is Tana Umaga. He is a famous Cook Islander—actually, he was Samoan, but that’s beside the point. He made this comment when he was confronted by the media. They had been talking about how rough the game was getting. They said we wanted to make the game a little bit more PC, a little bit more soft and cuddly, and here’s his famous words: “This is not tiddlywinks.”—this is not tiddlywinks.

So now we are here, in Parliament, where we are debating the issues, and the Government of the day, who were the Opposition of yesterday, who would hold us to account many different times, want us to play tiddlywinks. Well, I’m sorry but it’s not tiddlywinks. Be prepared, when you are the Government of today, to be held accountable. That’s absolutely what there is.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Argh!

Mr Kris Faafoi, when he was on the other side, he was giving it to us. He was holding us to account, and so he should. So for the Government of today to expect us to just give you a free ride—I’m sorry. No free passes. Here we go. This is not tiddlywinks. This is the real deal. Let’s hold each other to account. There’ll be no soft and cuddlies; there’ll be no marshmallows. This is where, if you’ve got the ideas, if you think you’re just as good—in fact, here’s the thing that concerns me. The Prime Minister today stood up and said, “Let’s all be bipartisan. Let’s hold hands. Let’s sing ‘Kumbaya’, and somehow we’ll make child poverty disappear. Somehow we’ll make it all look good and rosy.” But we won’t. Why? Because the reality is you have to work hard. You are in that position today. You may not be there tomorrow, but you’re in that position today, so you’ll be held to account, and that’s what you will deserve and that’s what we’ll demand of you as well.

Since we’ve been talking about this bill, the first thing I want to say is, “What’s in a name?” Part 3 of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill talks about removing the name “vulnerable children”. We know that the Hon Tracey Martin had also been talking about this. She talked passionately about it in her speech, about the importance of why the name had to be removed. The reason why the name had to be removed was simply this: the stigma that it would give to children.

When the Government of today was the Opposition of yesterday, they would say to us, “How dare you name this bill ‘Vulnerable Children Oranga Tamariki’?” The stigma that it will give to children—why should children be called vulnerable? Why should children be treated in this way? There were many speeches and debates in this House, and now you’re going to remove “vulnerable children” but you’re going to put “child poverty”. So, what’s in a name? You’re going to remove the vulnerability but you’re going to keep the name “child poverty”. In other words, you’re going to say this. You’re going to say there are some children in our nation that are impoverished.

Look, I don’t resile from the fact there are children who are impoverished. But if you’re going to take the name “vulnerable children” but keep the name “child poverty”, well, I’ll tell you this: isn’t it interesting that you are doing this? It’s hypocritical to be able to talk about it in this way, because now you’re going to put a stigma on children. But, so be it. Now you’re deciding this. And yet, it was under this party—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! I just remind the member not to bring the Speaker into the debate.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I do apologise for bringing you into the debate. The issue, though, is that the fact of the change in Part 3 of the bill—the changing of the name “vulnerable children”, removing that, to now become the Children’s Act, as part of the omnibus process of this bill, but we’re going to leave the name “child poverty”.

I will tell you the reasons why. Of the 230 that they’ve measured, the children that are impoverished, over 130 are Māori tamariki. They’re Māori tamariki. What we’re going to be saying is this: we’ll say those children are impoverished children. I know that the honourable matua Shane Jones and the Hon Kris Faafoi, we grew up in homes that probably today would be measured as being impoverished. I can remember the late Parekura Horomia standing up in this House, giving speeches about his times in Ruatōria, when there were dirt floors. The people of today would have judged that as being impoverished and incapable and unable. But they never chose to do that. Why? Because they believed in themselves that they had opportunity and they had aspiration.

My concern with this bill is that it will send a message out there. It will create a stigma, and that these children are now going to be labelled. Our children are going to be labelled. What it’s going to say is, “Who are the poor kids, and who are the kids that are the rich kids or the good kids that are doing well?” We will start to measure them and start to look at what they are doing. That’s what my concern is. We’re going to take the name “vulnerable” and leave the name “poverty”. We’re still keeping that name that will create a stigma. I think that’s going to be an interesting challenge as we go forward.

Let’s talk about the targets in this bill and what it’s proposing to put into place. And yet, many speakers have talked about this, about Better Public Services (BPS). I have spoken to people and they have said to me, “What does BPS mean, Better Public Services?” I acknowledge the Rt Hon Bill English because, actually, it was under his leadership that he said this, “Before we go out and ask anything of our communities, as a Government department, as a Government institution, let’s hold the mirror to ourselves. Let’s hold us to account.” That’s what Better Public Services is about. Then, when Better Public Services came to social investment, it was also saying, “So, here’s the how.”

So the mirror then turned around and said, “Are we doing a good job? Are we more of the problem, rather than the solution to the challenges and the issues—yes of poverty, yes of health, yes of education?” That’s what the BPS target was all about.

Then it went on to social investment. Social investment was simply this: when you look at the forecasting of the predictions and when we see this in the bill, when it talks about the growth, potentially, of those children that are in poverty—social investment took an approach as to how we would address these very issues that are actually trying to be addressed in this bill. It talked about this.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Can I just remind the member that we are talking about this particular bill, and not previous policy. I don’t see anywhere in this bill where those two elements are part of the bill. So would you come back to the substance of the bill?

I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Can I just say that it’s the linking of the how—talking about the targets that are actually inside this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I have been watching this debate, and this has been raised as an issue with other speakers. I think we need to move on from that point, and talk about the content of the bill.

The content of the bill talks about targets. In those targets, it sets out so-called ambitious targets of reducing child poverty by 100,000 over 10 years. Now, the challenge that we have for this bill is talking about the how, inside of those targets. So the challenge, in my debate over here, is how will this Government—it’s already taken away the targets. It’s going to remove the Better Public Services. We don’t know what it’s going to be doing in regard to social investment. It’s an institution. It’s there, in place.

I would encourage the Government of today to look at that social investment that’s actually been agreed upon by Treasury and other Government departments as a way of looking forward. What the social investment strategy does, in regard to targets like this, where those departments that will be impacted and be initiating the legislation of these targets—it says to them, this: when we’re forecasting what the growth may be, and in this case the target is around the reduction of children in poverty, in low-income households, then the how is where the social investment will do that. It will tell you how.

First of all, it asks this question. We can do that by raising taxes. Secondly, we can do that by increasing debt. By the way, the current Government is doing both. Thirdly, we can find a new way. Social investment then finds a new way, simply by doing this. In the targets that it’s producing inside this bill, I hope that it will talk about the data that becomes important, to ask the right question in regard to the fact: where can we invest early to create the greater income in the long-term approach?

Those are the things that I think are really important. I want to challenge this process. I’m actually on the Social Services and Community Committee, and we’re looking forward to this bill coming in. We look forward to the submissions and the debates that will talk about this. Again, in my speech, it’s the issue around the stigma that that may be creating. I hope that this doesn’t create a stigma. Under the National Government, we started removing the stigmatisation. Part 3 talks about the name “vulnerable children”, and there were some debates about that—whether we should still keep that. But it went with “oranga tamariki”. I would say, use the same principle around child poverty, because you can also find another name, rather than stigmatising children, to say that actually you’re poor children so we’re going to help you.

The thing that concerns me a lot about this bill is the fact that it’s removing the power of communities, and now it’s saying that actually the power is in the hands of the Government to make the changes. We heard some other speeches from the other side talking about the fact that we can surrogate this. Could it be lunches in schools that are mandatory, universal, throughout all schools, and so forth?

That, again, concerns me. If we’re thinking about the factors, that does not help communities that are wanting to find a way to better their outcomes, to better their situations, to be aspirational if we keep surrogating. I’m concerned, on this side, that what we’re going to have is a Government machinery that’s going to continue to grow, rather than devolving the opportunities for communities to become self-sustaining, self-determining, and taking their responsibilities for their whānau and their families.

We look forward to this bill coming in. We will be supporting it. We will be holding the Government to account. As I said before, at the beginning of my speech, this is not tiddlywinks. It is going to be a game that will be played hard. We will be holding you to account and challenging the very issues and the parts of this bill. There are parts that are good, that we support. There are other parts that we will challenge in our Supplementary Order Papers. I commend and commit this bill to the House.

I understand the next call is a split call. Greg O’Connor has five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise to support this bill. This is a bill that I, and I’m sure many here, when they contemplated coming to this place—this is the type of legislation that we believed we’d be here passing: meaningful, life-changing legislation.

It’s quite interesting how the debate has gone to Better Public Services. In fact, while we’re talking about Better Public Services, the very difference with the way this bill is formulated is that it’s making us account, here, as to how this will be achieved. Better Public Services, of course, is about us imposing what we believe should be done—prescribing to public servants what should be done. Of course, those of us with a knowledge of the public sector know that you will get exactly what you want, and we’re very conscious that over the next several years the gaps—as public servants gave Government what they wanted and were forced to ignore the important long-term strategies, then those things that were ignored are the very things that are going to bite us on our proverbial backsides over the next few years. So what this bill does is introduce targets. It is a broad target that we here now, through the Budget, through the processes, will be forced to look at, in terms of how what we’re doing is going to impact on those most vulnerable in New Zealand.

In my maiden speech, I spoke of being an undercover police officer and being introduced to a side of society—I hope this is not unparliamentary, Madam Assistant Speaker: I regard myself as very much a “lucky sperma”. That’s someone who was born into a loving home; someone who had warmth, safety, and education; and someone who was well fed. When I met people who didn’t have those things—people who were born without those advantages who were smarter than me, who were cleverer than me—what I understood was they were never going to be in a position to achieve what I achieved, for that very reason. So when I look at this bill, what I look at is that by ensuring that we all understand what the end result is—as we spell it out in the bill, what we want is to ensure that we know what we are looking at. So when we ask, for example, that a budgetary statement be made, that it be mentioned, and that those who are going to be overseeing this are required to account on a broad measure, we understand what will succeed and what success will look like.

One of the issues in the past, when we sought to define what poverty is—I remember a lawyer who said in court, when the question of poverty came up, “Well, poverty is crooked teeth and no musical instrument.” I think we’ve gone a little bit beyond that. I think we need to understand just what poverty is, and poverty is—as I went back—a lack of those things; a lack of ability to see your way out of the circumstances of your birth. I go back to that term I used—that our “lucky sperm” puts us in a situation that means that we are more likely to be a successful member of our society than those others who don’t have that same luck.

So I commend this bill. I believe that it is a change in that whole focus that we, as a House—this is forcing us to be accountable ourselves for what we achieve, so I commend this bill. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

I call Denise Lee—five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I’m happy to take a call on this, the first reading. The country has proved that we care about this topic and we have a heart and we want to do right together as a nation. Anyone can talk about being ambitious but the proof is always, of course, in the pudding. But let’s not break out the pavlova just yet. The details are where this bill falls just a little flat, so we’re going to be putting up some amendments with some incredible detail in order to beef up the bill. Those amendments are conditional on our further support of the passage of this bill.

The first reading today has some coincidental timing for the team on this side of the House. We all know of Bill English’s announcement today. He is the architect and the champion of the social investment approach—a key and personal pillar for him and his personal journey, and now that of the National Party. I’ve been in live debates where senior members of the Government sitting across the House from me today have decried social investment as bad targeting, bullying, punitive, and overreaching. Well, do you know what’s overreaching? Letting families slip by because the Government wants a one-size-fits-all approach, throwing up new targets while at the same time getting all the good ones gone.

Our amendments to this bill will restore frameworks that are not overreaching; they are reaching out to specific families in a compassionate and in a careful, targeted way. Will the Government argue with our amendments setting targets that require increased attendance of children at early childhood centres and at school—is there a problem with that? A substantial reduction in the number of children being physically and sexually abused—a problem with that? Getting to 100 percent of pregnant women registered with a lead maternity carer in their first trimester—yes, that’s right, none of these are in the bill.

The opening statement of this bill says, and I quote, “Measurement is an important starting point.” We have a responsibility to act. Governments—successive Governments—need to make a commitment. Well, that was in place. Our team had committed to 100,000 kids being lifted out of poverty. We’re not in Government but we still stand by that. And how long for our team to get there? Three years. How long for this Government to get there? Ten years.

Finally, the purpose of this legislation is to achieve significant and sustained reduction in child poverty. You can read that in the bill. Well then—grow the economy. Targets are good, but the chequebook says all: $2.8 billion on free fees; winter payments to couples who will go on holiday to Aussie with them—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: A billion trees.

A billion trees slush fund. We call on the Government to accept our amendments, reprioritise the spending, and get on with the actual detail.

I call Priyanca Radhakrishnan—you have five minutes.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I am absolutely delighted to stand up and take a call on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill, and I’m going to begin with a quote by Nelson Mandela: “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” Well, I’m actually really proud that, thanks to this Government’s leadership on this bill, our society’s soul is back on track.

This Government is ambitious; we’re ambitious for New Zealand, and it’s actually been quite heartbreaking to stand here and listen to members opposite talk about how disappointed they are in this bill, how it falls flat, and how we need to lift levels of aspiration, when they had nine years to do just that and didn’t. What we’re seeing now, the reason that the need for this bill is actually so dire, is an increase in homelessness. We’ve seen the gap between the rich and the poor widen—it’s the widest that it’s ever been. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. We’ve seen the crises: the mental health crisis and the housing crisis.

As I reflect on what this bill will achieve, I think back to what I’ve seen in the Maungakiekie electorate where I’ve been based. I’ve seen the impact of transient housing, of substandard housing—the impact that those things have on health, on educational achievement, on employment; not just the number of jobs that have been created, but the quality of jobs that people have, and the impact that that has on the children who live there.

I think back to specific children I’ve met and talked to: a nine-year-old boy at a school that I visited who had been through subsequent or successive foster homes, who had been subjected to horrific levels of sexual abuse, who didn’t have shoes to go to school. That’s what we’re talking about; that’s the face of child poverty. It’s a phrase that hides immense pain, struggle, and suffering. Members on this side of the House have gone into what that looks like; what that looks like for families who live in that poverty—entrenched, intergenerational poverty, where children are living without hope. That’s why I’m proud of the ambitions of this Government.

Now, members opposite have brought up social investment as well. Let me tell you why we think that is so lacking in ambition—it’s all about limiting liabilities; it’s about cost-cutting. It’s not about what we can do as a Government to ensure that our children thrive and that New Zealand is the best place to be a child.

That’s what this bill will do. This bill will encourage successive Governments to focus on child poverty reduction. It actually is an invitation to New Zealand to hold us to account. It’s about political accountability. It’s about published targets. It’s about setting measures, targets, and a strategy that will reduce child poverty. This Government is ambitious for our environment and our people.

Manaaki whenua.

Manaaki tāngata.

Manaaki wāhine.

Manaaki tamariki.

Haere whakamua.

Care for the land, care for the people, care for the women and the children, and together we will go forward. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. If only we could make the world a better place simply by having good intentions, then this Labour Government would have solved all of our problems. That was a beautiful speech with beautiful intent by the member who has just resumed her seat, Priyanca Radhakrishnan. Yet, sadly, it will do nothing to lift any child out of poverty—unless, of course, they are suffering from a poverty of nice words, in which case we’ve just seen the fix; it is in.

The fact of the matter is that measuring poverty and inequality—Madam Assistant Speaker, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know—is actually quite an interesting field. You can divide poverty and inequality measures up into measures that are relative and measures that are absolute—that is, measures that try to compare the incomes of different households, and measures that try to compare the incomes of different households against some absolute baseline.

The problem with the measures in this bill is that, with the possible exception of the absolute material hardship, they are all based on relative measures. In other words, they say, “Is a particular household under 50 percent of the median?” or “Is it under 60 percent of the median before or after housing costs?” Well, that’s great, but the difficulty with that is even if everybody gets richer, we end up with the same level of poverty. There have been times in history—examples of this in Ireland and in Hungary, are set out excellently in the National Business Review by Lindsay Mitchell this week—where countries have gotten poorer, but, because the income distribution closed up, their measures told us there was less poverty. So let’s be clear. This is based on relative measures of poverty, and it does not tell us what the real material hardship faced by children is.

The second way you can divide up income and poverty measures is that you can divide them up by whether they are based on incomes or expenditures. What’s interesting is that you can have households with relatively low incomes that nevertheless are consuming: they are spending on the right things and avoiding poverty. You can have households—and I might have lived in a few like this during university—that are OK for income but, because of very poor spending decisions, do not provide the necessaries that are required to live a prosperous life.

That is the reality. We are measuring relative incomes of different households, but this bill does not tell us anything about the actual levels of consumption. Are the kids getting enough food? Are their teeth being brushed? Are they getting to school at the right time? Are they consuming housing of a particular standard that allows them to live healthy lives? This bill won’t answer any of these questions, and it’s worse than doing nothing, because it brings us the distraction that as long as the chief statistician tells us that at least the family could have afforded to do that—or, actually, not even that: at least the family had enough income relative to other families to do those things—then they’re fine. It is worse than doing nothing, because it is a distraction from the real deprivation, the real neglect of children, that is harrowing in this country and damaging New Zealand’s future.

If the bill had said the following, “We will instruct the chief statistician to replicate the Dunedin study on a smaller scale every year; we will go and test, in randomly selected households, how many children are getting the basic necessities of life.”, then I would have supported this bill. The ACT Party would support a bill that targeted real children’s welfare, not the statistical incomes that their parents are said to have relative to other parents in the neighbourhood.

Sadly, the bill does not do that, but if it did, the Government would have to face up to some hard facts. They’d have to fix the housing market—that’s why we have deprivation. They’d have to fix education—that’s why we have deprivation. They’d have to fix welfare dependency—that’s why we have poverty and deprivation. But they’ve taken a soft option. They’ve distracted the country with relative income measures rather than measuring the real things that matter: how are children looked after; are they neglected; what do they consume; and do they have a real future in this country. The ACT Party will stand alone in Parliament opposing this bill, because it’s worse than nothing. It’s a crock.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. I stand to take a call on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. I agree with everything that this side has said about this particular bill.

💬 David Seymour: Including me?

It will go nowhere—including Mr Seymour over there. It will go nowhere because it is about Government working with Government agencies telling people what to do and trying to measure that. You won’t actually get to measure anything, because one of the things—when I’ve worked with whānau, out there in their communities—is it is always policies and bills and pieces of legislation like this that come over the top of whānau and bash them over the head with it.

They’re saying this is an ambitious bill. I can tell you right now, the Government wouldn’t know ambition if it punched them in the face—I can tell you right now. They wouldn’t know it, because they have never listened to the people that are on the ground.

Now, let’s take a look at Whānau Ora. I haven’t heard anything from the Government about Whānau Ora, yet this particular bill actually targets—the target population for child poverty is located within the Māori populations, yet we have a number of really good initiatives that are actually making headway amongst whānau under the Whānau Ora framework.

When I look at clause 45 in Part 3 of this particular bill, replacement Part 1 of the Vulnerable Children Act, I look at it and I think, “Government strategy for improving children’s well-being and oranga tamariki action plan.” So “oranga tamariki”—going to work with the chief executive, going to work with ministries, and Government agencies to make sure that they’re achieving the measures that Government and the agencies are putting together. I look at it and I think “oranga tamariki”—“oranga tamariki”—where are the children in this bill? Where are the children advisers in this bill? The Minister’s going to talk to the agencies, but where is the voice of youth in this bill? There is no voice of youth in this bill.

I am not going to repeat everything that everybody else has said that’s wrong with this bill, because at the end of the day this is a bill about children, for children, yet children aren’t even in it. They’re going to get dealt to. Agencies are going to go into communities—and I know; I’ve worked in communities where Government policy has stood over the top and bashed us around the head.

💬 Hon Kris Faafoi: Did you read the bill?

Yes, I have read the bill. I have looked at the bill, and I was thinking, now, what good things would come out of this bill for whānau—for whānau? What are the good things that are going to come out—what are the good things that are going to come out for children? I can see that there is going to be absolutely nothing.

Just recently, when the Government took away the Better Public Services targets—and I think, why would you do that, when you had no targets for this particular bill anyway? When we start to look at National’s Better Public Services targets, it is a big and multifaceted way of actually addressing poverty within communities. It is like reducing long-term welfare dependency. As David Seymour said in his speech, it is about getting people into jobs. Why isn’t this Government actually targeting to get people into jobs? Why isn’t that one of the targets—reducing welfare dependency? We all know that welfare dependency actually gets families for generations and generations on welfare benefits, and we’ve got to get them off welfare benefits. So what is wrong with that particular target?

Supporting vulnerable children—OK, so we change a name, but where will this bill actually support vulnerable children through Oranga Tamariki? It’s not going to, because they’re too busy measuring stuff. There is no one piece of policy or clause in this bill that actually does something for our children on the ground, in whānau, in communities. What on earth is going on with that Government? I can tell you right now—not a hell of a lot of thinking has gone into actually developing this bill.

The other side is boosting skills and employment. Well, you boost skills, people get employed, we reduce people off the benefits, and what do we get? We get very strong whānau. The Government needs to go and take on board the work that Sir Mason Durie has done around Whānau Ora and the targets that they set within Whānau Ora around the framework. [Interruption] You can yell and you can shout and you can carry on—the Government can do all that—but at the end of the day, this bill’s going to go nowhere. It’s not going to help anybody, any family, and it will not reduce child poverty. [Interruption]

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Members, I’m having trouble hearing the member deliver her speech, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

The fourth side of the targets that National had—these are all targets that can be picked up and put into this bill—was reducing crime and reoffending. We know that when people get jobs, when people are well-educated or get an opportunity to be well-educated, offending and crime actually drop in a community, and these are key to actually growing whānau and the abilities of whānau. Why—why—is this Government not actually looking at that? Why, again, are they implementing measures that actually can’t be measured? Why? Why—why?

The last thing was around improving interaction with Government. Well, actually, there is nothing in that bill where it says it’s improving interaction with Government. What it’s doing is Government’s talking to Government agencies, and then Government agencies are going to be doing all of this work about people, rather than with people—with families.

This is a very bad bill, but it can be improved. I’m not saying—I’m not saying to the Government—that your time this time can actually come forward and the bill can be made really, really good. What I’m saying is look at the Better Public Services targets that National had put together in the last Government. Look at all of the things around the Families Package that National had put in place in the run-up to the election. Take some of those things. Don’t be pigheaded or blindfolded or blinkered because all Government wants to do is just shut everything out. Cherry-pick the good stuff, and we had many good things for improving and reducing—improving children’s well-being and reducing child poverty.

In one of the contributions I heard today, just before I stood up, from the Government, I heard one of them talking a little bit about children not going to school with shoes and all of those things that they need. Now, in Christchurch East I met up with some people that live in one of our low socio-economic areas. She works with a number of children, and one of the things that she said is some of those things like giving children shoes, clothing, etc.—even some food—sometimes didn’t actually help those children. Sometimes the parents wouldn’t actually use all of the material they were given for their children. At times they would find them hidden in a wardrobe in the house. The money through benefits that this particular family got went on alcohol every fortnight. So really, at the end of the day, when you start to look at reducing child poverty, you need to look at a broad spectrum of all of the great programmes that are out there on the ground that are actually working to improve the well-being of all whānau.

Now, Mason Durie once said if you improve the Māori nation you improve the whole nation. That’s what he said, and what he meant by that is that because Māori have got the highest statistics in this particular area that this bill is targeting, one of the things that the Government needs to look at is how on earth they are going to be accountable to Māori whānau if they start tinkering around with things like Whānau Ora. Even Te Ture Whenua Māori Bill has been taken off the list. It has been taken off because the Government is saying they’re going to have another look at it. Well, get it back into the House and start to move it forward, because that particular bill will actually help to advance the economy and well-being of iwi.

Talking about iwi, iwi are not in this bill. Consultation with iwi is not in this bill. I’ve looked in it and tried to find where iwi consultation is. There is no iwi consultation in this bill. There is no youth consultation in this bill. It is about Government talking to ministries—that’s what it’s about—and ministries reporting back to Government. Why would you do that? Why not bring in everybody that’s working on the ground with our whānau?

💬 Hon Shane Jones: He waiata.

We can talk about trees—well, actually, we can’t talk about trees, because you’re not going to hit your targets. The Government will not hit their targets, even if they ask the forestry industry to keep growing and expanding. I want to see this bill go to first reading, and let’s have a look at it. Thank you.

He kaupapa taimaha tēnei hei kōrerotanga māku, nā te mea e kōrero ana e pā ana ki ō tātou tamariki, he taonga tuku iho rātou. He kōrero tōrangapū kei roto i tēnei Whare e pā ana ki ō tātou tamariki. Kua hōhā au ki ētahi o ngā kōrero, engari kua tū au ki te tautoko i tēnei pire i tēnei rā. He uri ahau nō Te Tai Tokerau.

[This is a difficult issue for me to talk about, because it is about our children, who are after all precious beyond words. People are playing politics in this House and it is our children who are at the centre of it. While I get fed up with some of the talk, I stand here today to support this bill. I am a child of the North.]

I am a child of Te Tai Tokerau, born and raised in Northland. It is my tūrangawaewae—home for my whānau. Northland is where 49 percent of our children were identified as being born in the bottom two most deprived deciles—the highest child poverty rate in the country. Northland is where families are, and have been for a long time, struggling, living in real poverty, in severe poverty. So when I hear challenges from the other side of the House to go and spend some time in Northland, I’d like to remind that side of the House that I live in Northland. I see poverty every day. I am from Moerewa. I recently visited Kaikohe—last Thursday, in fact—where we were running a stall on the street to fund-raise for the distribution of menstrual cups, because my community has period poverty. We are experiencing real poverty. I’m glad the other side of the Whare has finally acknowledged that poverty is a real thing, and that they are all of a sudden so committed to addressing poverty. I welcome them to work with us to eradicate child poverty in our country.

I struggle as I stand here today and I think about my communities in Northland who are currently flooded-in in their homes with the severe weather, and I’m reminded of a story by my local GP, where he has seen on numerous occasions the same baby being brought into his clinic because that baby has been bitten by rats. When the floodwaters rise on both sides of the township of Moerewa, the rats come up on to the land. They crawl up through our substandard housing and they bite the babies during the night. This family cannot afford rat bait. It is over $100 for a bucket of rat bait from our local stores. These families cannot help themselves. They simply do not have the money.

I talked about period poverty. It is something that came up in the election. I was visiting a local school. I was made aware that girls are missing school because their families cannot afford the sanitary products to manage their periods every month. I was shocked. I could not believe this level of poverty. We immediately started doing something about it by partnering with My Cup NZ, a social enterprise to distribute cups into our local community. Our girls are missing school. The number one reason why they are truant is because their families cannot afford sanitary products. They are now failing at school.

These absences from school are resulting in failure. I saw the statistic that there are over 300 young people in Kaikohe, which was mentioned earlier, who are “neets”. This is hard work for our Government to now deal with—to alleviate poverty, to alleviate the deprivation in Northland. I look forward to the work that all of the Ministers are doing, and that is going to go into developing a strategy to promote the overall well-being of children, which will include a particular focus on the reduction of child poverty.

That’s what is in this bill. That is the work that we are going to do. And I hope that it does also address that we are the rheumatic fever capital of New Zealand. These are Third World diseases in our country. I challenge the voters in Northland. What will it take—pussy eyes and distended stomachs?—before we stop playing politics with our children and we do something about this?

We are resilient, but do not use that to justify doing nothing. Māori and Pasifika are overrepresented in the poverty statistics. Just under half of the children in poverty are Māori or Pasifika, and rates of poverty and persistent and sustained poverty for Māori and Pasifika children are around double the rates for Pākehā.

I support the purpose of this bill. I encourage everybody in the House—the descendant of Tāreha who is no longer here—to support this bill. The purpose of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill is to encourage a focus by successive Governments and society as a whole on child poverty reduction, to facilitate political accountability against published targets, to require transparent reporting on levels of child poverty, and to create a greater commitment to the action on the part of the Government to addressing the well-being of all children and the particular needs of children in poverty and those at greater risk.

We are going to do that through this bill by requiring Governments to set 10-year targets on a defined set of measures of child poverty and periodically setting and publishing three-year targets and, importantly, developing and reporting on a strategy to promote the overall well-being of our children, which will include a particular focus on reducing child poverty. And, importantly, we’re going to include this in the Finance Act so that on Budget day we have a report on how the Budget will reduce child poverty and how the Government is progressing towards its target. To increase accountability and independence from the politics, the bill is also going to require the Government Statistician to report, independently from the Government, trends in the range of measures specified in the bill. We are challenging the public to hold us accountable to this very ambitious piece of legislation and our very ambitious goal of reducing child poverty in this country.

In my maiden speech, I referred to the words of Dame Whina Cooper, where she said, “Take care of our children, take care of what they hear, take care of what they see, take care of what they feel. For how the children grow, so will be the shape of Aotearoa.”—for how the children grow, so will be the shape of Aotearoa.

I campaigned on the belief that not one more child should live in poverty, not one more family without a home, and not one more young New Zealander without a dream. There shouldn’t be politics in child poverty reduction. I thank the Prime Minister for her leadership on this issue. I thank this Government for being ambitious in setting ourselves targets, setting ourselves a framework in which we will be held accountable by the public of New Zealand. And with that, I commend the bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee.