Child Poverty Reduction Bill, Children’s Amendment Bill

I move, That the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and the Children’s Amendment Bill be now read a third time.

Mr—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I call Jacinda Ardern and I’m going to admonish Mr King, who is exceptionally rude and somewhat noisy. The Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern will start again.

I want to start with a reflection on some comments I made in this place 10 years and two days ago to this day. And those were actually the words that I spoke in this Parliament for the very first time. I don’t often reflect on my maiden speech, but it occurred to me, when thinking about my long-held desire to progress child poverty legislation, that it was in that speech that I first reflected on my motivations to be in here in Parliament.

I’ve spoken often of some of the places that I grew up in in New Zealand and the influence that that had on my social conscience. I think the way that I referred to that in my speech at the time was “My passion for social justice came from what I saw; my love of politics came when I realised that it was the key to changing what I saw. And there is so much to change. The fifth Labour Government made good progress on what I believe must continue to be our focus: reducing poverty in this country. Labour lifted 130,000 children out of poverty through Working for Families, but that does not mean that many do not remain there still. I will not pretend that the response is simple; it is not. … These children are not part of an underclass, as I have heard them called; they are part of our community, and we have a responsibility to continue the momentum of the previous Labour Government and to finally rid ourselves of poverty in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is our collective challenge.”

You know, when I think about it, the reference to a collective challenge is one of the things that I feel most proud of, because in this House today we are not doing this on our own. This is no longer just an initiative of the Labour Party, although I’m very proud of the role that we have played. This is now an initiative that has been led by a coalition Government with the support of New Zealand First and the Green Party. And it also is an initiative that has had the support of the National Party. I want to acknowledge that. This is this Parliament’s collective challenge, and the groups that have come together in Parliament today to support it in this House mean that it will have an enduring legacy—unless by some shock of nature the ACT Party’s vote grows beyond one. It is a collective challenge and it has been collectively responded to by this House and for that I acknowledge each and every one of you.

But there are many others that I wish to thank and that’s where I want to start my speech here today—and that is with a note of thanks. I want to thank the countless individuals, organisations, researchers, and academics who have worked tirelessly on the issue of child poverty and child well-being over a number of years. I want to thank and reflect on the work of the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty. It was established by the Children’s Commissioner at the time, Dr Russell Wills, and it was chaired by Jonathan Boston and Tracey McIntosh. Now, they shifted the debate and brought focus and rigour to this issue. They were the first who drew on the child poverty legislation of the United Kingdom including Wales and proposed that we take a hybrid here in New Zealand. John Hancock, as I understand it, was one of the people who drafted the first chapter that suggested that the legislation that we will, essentially, pass in this House today should be constructed. And John, wherever you are right now, I acknowledge your work and the role you have played in getting us here today.

I also want to acknowledge a very special man to this place, to the Ministry of Social Development, to Parliament, and to all Ministers who have ever engaged with him—Bryan Perry. No one knows numbers like Bryan. He has been critical in making sure that we have produced a robust document here that does what it attempts to do, and that is to hold ourselves to account. I also want to acknowledge the current Children’s Commissioner, Judge Andrew Becroft, for his enduring commitment to improving the lives of children, and the members of the Social Services and Community Committee who worked on the bill—and the more than 600 submitters—and took on board the recommendations of many in making alterations to this bill.

So what does it do? It creates a legislative framework aimed to ensure that successive Governments—and with its cross-party support, I truly believe it will be successive Governments—are transparent and held to account in reducing child poverty. It recognises that we must have an enduring commitment in this area if we are to see long-term systemic change and ensures that we will have independent reporting to ensure progress is made. It sets out measures that accord with international standards and scorecards and it does so by setting four primary and six supplementary measures against which Government’s performance can be judged.

The four primary measures are made up of two income, one material hardship, and one persistence measure—the income measures applied both before and after deducting housing costs. They will ensure that they give us adequate information to know what policies will make the biggest difference to children and their families. Successive Governments will be required to set three-year intermediate and 10-year long-term targets for each of the primary measures. Governments will not be required to set targets for the supplementary measures; it is up to them how far their ambition goes and the Government Statistician must, independently of Ministers and Government, report annually on the rates of child poverty against all those measures.

Significantly, the legislation amends the Public Finance Act—I knew I would get my way in there somehow—so that on Budget day the Government reports on its progress towards reducing child poverty and how the Budget contributes to that goal. It also establishes a dedicated child well-being strategy, which requires Governments to make a commitment to ensure that all of New Zealand’s children can thrive and that we fulfil this Government’s goal of being the best place in the world to be a child.

I don’t want to underestimate the power and importance of the child well-being strategy. Measuring poverty is one thing; setting goals to reduce poverty is another, but making sure that we have an action plan that captures the voice of children is critical. We have undertaken to engage children in that process, and we’re undertaking that work now. I acknowledge the Child Wellbeing Unit and the Child Poverty Unit for the work that they are doing out of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet alongside Oranga Tamariki and the Minister for Children.

Here is just a small handful of some of the postcards that have been written directly to me as part of that process. Yes, I am reading every single one of them. The message that they send is really clear. They’re concerned about everything from mental health and the well-being of their peers to whether or not their peers have enough food to eat, enough money in the household to thrive, to participate, to feel like they’re making the most of their talents and their opportunities. From time to time, they send me their Instagram handle as well and ask for a cheeky follow. But either way, this is capturing the voices of children, and it is critical to the work that we do.

This legislation is pioneering. It is unashamedly bold. We have already, alongside that, I think, set bold targets—10-year targets that will, essentially, halve the rate of child poverty in New Zealand. These will be ambitious targets to meet, but if we are successful it will place us amongst some of the lowest levels of child poverty amongst countries that we would compare ourselves to. But, more importantly than that, it will make a substantial difference to the lives of children and their families.

We’ve already started. The Families Package—$5.5 billion of investment—means that, once fully rolled out, over 380,000 families will be on average $75 a week better off; the winter energy payment—over 700,000 people, many of whom will be on low incomes and have children, will benefit; free doctors visits for under-14s, thanks to New Zealand First; the mental health strategies we’ve been rolling out for under-25s, thanks to the Green Party; nurses in schools, which we put in last Budget; making sure housing standards are lifted so that children are warm and dry in their homes; and making sure that we increase the number of State and public housing for those who need it most.

Ultimately, we are focused on making sure that we can stand proudly and say we’re a Government that cares for the most vulnerable. But who better to sum up why we do work like this than someone like Nelson Mandela. He said that “Overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.” Thank you to everyone who’s been involved in what I, ultimately, see as an act of justice. Kia ora koutou katoa.

New Zealand is known—Aotearoa is known—as a pioneering nation. It’s known because the values that it has, over many, many years, over thousands of years—people have come here, and the conditions may have been hard, but we’ve toiled hard on the land and also, too, with the people to create success.

On 5 February 1966, a young New Zealand - born Cook Island boy was born into an old match-lining house, and it was three-bedroom. Match lining means there was no insulation. There was an outside toilet and no running hot water, and yet there were up to 12 to 15 people living in that house. It’s a classic story of migrants coming to this country, looking for a better future. That story tells of the classic story. The fact is that in those circumstances, though they were hard, though they were tough, there was an attitude amongst the people to succeed. The reason I preface that in this third reading speech around the Child Poverty Reduction Bill is that poverty is something that as a nation, we have struggled with, but it’s also, too, been an indication of some of the challenges that we have overcome as a nation to achieve some of the great results.

People talk about New Zealand, Aotearoa, as a country that’s punched well above its weight. It does so because we face these hardships with this attitude of can-do: we can achieve; we can overcome. So when we deal with this issue around poverty, one of the challenges that we have is that, on one hand, we have this character, this nature, this value that we have, this characteristic that actually underlies and is the foundation of who we are as a country and as a people, but, at the same time, too, we have these challenges of material hardship and also poverty that exist in our country. So I preface that because as we journey through this together—the coalition as the Government of the day, with support from National on this side—we do so carefully and cautiously. There are a number of reasons for that. We don’t want to do away with that hardship that has made us who we are today. We don’t want to do away with, at times, some of the struggles, but what we do want to be sure of is that children in this instance don’t become disadvantaged because of those issues and don’t come into a situation where they cannot achieve their potential, and we know the results of that will make a difference in their case.

As we have progressed through this bill, can I also, too, say that this has been an issue that has challenged Governments over a longer period of time. I want to refer to Bryan Perry, who was commented on by the Prime Minister in regards to the work that he had completed. In 2017, he completed some work, and inside of that work he also connected us to some of the past challenges of dealing with this issue. In 2000 to 2009, there were the child well-being surveys, which wanted to measure and monitor what some of the challenges were that were being faced. I have to say, under the National Government, in 2012, the Child Poverty Monitor technical report was established so that we could get a better handle on where the areas were that we could invest in, hence the reason social investment was part of that as well. The Prime Minister indicated around subsidies for children into healthcare and so forth—that was initiated by a National Government.

So, in saying these things, I want to indicate that the fact is that this challenge is nothing new; it’s been happening for some time. Each Government of the day will be challenged with this, but what we are now saying is that as a whole of Government, bar one, we are supporting this direction, but we hold it tentatively. We hold it tentatively because even though we see these are the measures to measure poverty and the reduction of poverty, we know the measures in themselves will not be the only results. I want to quote from Julie Chapman, the CEO from KidsCan, in her submission, where she highlighted that a measure alone would not only be the difference. You see in Bryan Perry’s report that he talks about the Government framework—which, by the way, was established under a National-led Government—and says “Let’s look at what that framework looks like.”

When we’re talking about poverty, we’re taking two key areas of indicators: we’re talking about income and we’re talking about material hardship. We talk about before household income and after household income—income in, income out. We’re talking about how we measure material hardship, and inside of those, these are some of the indicators. But Bryan Perry also, too, wants to remind us that that is not the only indicator that we need to be mindful and thoughtful of in our monitoring in the changes that we perceive. In fact, in his report, he talks about a framework that also takes into account what he calls “other factors”—not quite technical in its name. What are some of those other factors? They talk about family, they talk about whānau, and they talk about community. They even talk about other issues in which there is an attitude that people have in their prioritisation and how they live their lives and how they use their resources—some of the areas that we don’t quite like to get into because it may seem like a judgment, but they are critically important. That’s what he would call the non-income measures that are important for us. We don’t often talk about them. I want to mention these in the House because I think these are critically important for us to be mindful of.

While we have these two other measures that are important, we’ve supported them. Why? That’s because on this side, we know social investment has given us a framework to look at how we monitor and measure those. So those targets that have been set are critically important. We want to ensure that the Government of the day will ensure that they set the targets. They are multi-targets that will allow them to measure everything from health to education, which we think are critically important to the overall well-being of children as well. I think those things are critically important as well. We know that, for instance, for us, we think about those targets.

Another area that has been important under the “other factors” that Bryan Perry talks about is what support we’re giving to whānau and family. The best welfare system is actually the whānau system—it’s the family system. We believe in that. We adhere to that. We think that’s critically important. So we think that while we’re monitoring and measuring these areas, we want to encourage the coalition Government of the day to look at what supports are given to ensure that whānau and family—we’re not just talking about income, we’re not just talking about raising benefit levels; we’re talking about other supports that we know other organisations have. NGOs have continued to say in their submissions that it’s not just about the income; it’s also about how parents and whānau can care for each other in that area as well. So we think that’s critically important. We want to make sure we do that.

We’re looking forward to the Whānau Ora report that will come through as well. We think that’s important because, on this bill, one of the other key areas of indicators that we think are important to pay our mind and our attention to is those for Māori. We are encouraged by the fact that the Minister for Māori Development is factored into the consultation around the strategy as well, but also, too, around the Treaty of Waitangi. Now, again, there is more work that we think can be done here, because if we are going to do something different—if there is a point of difference—we would like to support the development of saying: how can we let Māori present their cases for Māori? Whānau Ora is a case that we think we absolutely support and endorse, as well, as we’re moving ahead in that regard.

As I begin to close my comments on this legislation, as I said before, one of the big challenges—and I said this in my second reading speech, actually—for the Prime Minister is the potential to hold this slightly, because the potential of this is the stigma that could be created. When we tag a poverty indicator to an income, there is the potential around that. When I think about a lot of our families who are migrant families who came here, they had low-paying jobs. They didn’t have much. In fact, in Bryan Perry’s report, what he also indicates is this: low incomes do not necessitate hardship. That’s what he said. So let’s be careful that we don’t tag the poverty indicator to an income that means people who are working hard, who are doing the best that they can to raise their families, and who actually do really well—they look after their family, they have them go to church, and they do other things like that that make sure their children have the best start in life. I would have to say there are many of us, and I will put my hand up as one of those, where my parents didn’t have much but they had an attitude that made sure that we would be successful and that we would do well. I think those are critically important as well.

What I want to finish off with is, again, when I think about what these changes are to the people that are out there—the NGOs that are working incredibly hard, people in our communities and with our whānau. The fact is that, actually, when they can look at the focus not only of this whole of Parliament working collectively together to be able to focus on income, focus on material hardship—things that we would indicate as well—I want to remind them that the fact is this: the foundation of this country was built on a pioneering spirit. That means that regardless of the hardships that we faced, we had an attitude that we would overcome any of those adversities that we had, and I think that’s critically important.

The reason for the season is the fact is that, actually, there’s a young child that was born in hope. Out of children—out of this hope—throughout the whole of the country and also throughout the nations around the world, we hope, too, that people will enjoy this Christmas, and that, out there, the families that may have been doing it hard will remember that the focus of that is to remember that children are the paramountcy of who we are—they are our future; they are also our present challenges—and also the responsibly they have before them. We do support this legislation and its intent and all that it may achieve into the future for New Zealand. I commend this legislation to the House.

It’s a privilege to be speaking on the third reading of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill—now the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and Children’s Amendment Bill. The legislation reflects this Government’s commitment to the children of New Zealand. It embodies our focus on prioritising our tamariki and outlines how the well-being of children will be upheld now and for generations to come.

I really want to take this time to acknowledge the Prime Minister and our Minister for Child Poverty Reduction, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, who led the work on these bills and, as has already been indicated through the words that she used in her speech and from the time that she has been in Parliament, who has been committed to ensuring that as a Government and as a Parliament we genuinely work to address the issue of child poverty in this House. So I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister for that.

I also want to thank everyone who has contributed to this work: the policy analysts and officials, my colleagues in Government and on the other side of the House, the Social Services and Community Committee, children advocates from across the country and across various sectors, and the over 600 people who provided their feedback through the select committee process.

The feedback we have received throughout this process has resulted in what we perceive as being the best possible legislation that really does put children at the centre of what this Government does. It holds us all accountable for the well-being of our young ones. The experiences shared by the submitters during the select committee process emphasised the importance of acknowledging the specific needs of different groups of children.

As a result of this, we have made changes to align the child well-being strategy with the international obligations we have as a country, including fulfilling our requirements under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Alongside this, the legislation now requires child poverty reporting to include particular population groups of interest, specifically Māori children, and, if the data is available, other groups such as Pacific and children with disabilities. This is a really important acknowledgement that, actually, some groups in this country are overrepresented amongst those in poverty.

As the Minister for Disability Issues, I’ve been hearing firsthand that families of children with disabilities often face increased financial hardship due to the high and fluctuating costs of services and supports. This is why it is crucial that we take real steps to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of Aotearoa. All of our children deserve to have their rights and well-being upheld. For our children with disabilities or health issues, having access to the right supports and feeling like a part of the community is so incredibly important. One of our next steps, as we continue to develop our child well-being strategy, will be to set out how we can keep making progress for children with disabilities so that they can live their best lives.

In addition to developing a child well-being strategy, this legislation also requires Government to report, each Budget day, on progress made in reducing child poverty and on how measures in the Budget will affect child poverty. This legislation will also put in place a measurement framework for child poverty and establish four primary and six supplementary measures of child poverty. Overall, this legislation will establish an enduring legislative framework for Government action on child poverty and ensure transparency and accountability for progress in reducing it. This really is a transformational piece of legislation that solidifies our commitment to a better future for our children.

One thing that I’m especially proud of is the ambition that we’ve demonstrated as a Government. We are unashamedly setting goals to halve child poverty in 10 years. The three long-term goals we’ve set for ourselves are: to reduce the proportion of children in low-income households before housing costs from roughly 15 percent of all children to 5 percent; reduce the proportion of children in low-income households after housing costs from around 20 percent to 10 percent; and then to reduce the proportion of children in material hardship from between 13 and 15 percent now to 7 percent.

We all know in this House that child poverty imposes considerable social, emotional, physical, and economic costs. There is robust evidence that growing up in poverty can harm children in multiple predictable, substantial, and often sustained ways. Addressing child poverty is essential not only to secure the well-being of children in the here and now but also to invest in their futures and improve their future outcomes. However, what I know from working with my colleagues on this side of the House is that we are actually primarily driven by a moral imperative to make a better New Zealand for our children. In fact, our Government is so driven by this that we have explicitly stated, on a number of occasions, that making New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child is a priority for us.

We’ve already started taking real steps to address some of the hardship that we see in our community. Our Families Package, which was implemented on 1 July this year, will improve incomes for 384,000 families by, on average, $75 per week and will lift 64,000 children out of poverty by 2021. Under the Families Package, 26,000 more people are eligible for Working for Families, providing extra support for families with children. There are 65,000 children who will benefit from the Best Start payment each year, with the Best Start payment providing additional support for families in those critical first three years of their child’s life. We’ve also increased the accommodation supplement, extended paid parental leave, and introduced a new winter energy payment to provide extra weekly support for parents and grandparents in winter.

The Child Poverty Reduction Bill is relevant across all Government agencies. All of us have a role to play. The Families Package measures that I’ve outlined include things that the Ministry of Social Development have been integral to implementing in the last year, but it doesn’t start and end there. There is also other work under way to create a better, fairer welfare system. Upholding and uplifting the well-being of children has been one of the key drivers behind this Government’s decision to overhaul the welfare system, and I acknowledge the Greens for ensuring that was part of our confidence and supply agreement. We’ve already started making positive changes on the front line to make sure people have positive interactions with Work and Income, feel that the environment is friendly, welcoming, and offers privacy, are provided with all the support they are eligible for, and are able to access financial support as early as possible.

I think, surely, we can all agree that if people are treated respectfully and provided with the supports and opportunities that are meaningful to them, the likelihood of success and positive outcomes increases. That has to be critical to the well-being of our children. While as a Government we are already taking so many steps to make New Zealand the best place to be a child, we all know there is more to do. This bill will help drive the work we do in the future and will create enduring and sustainable change that lasts for decades to come. This is an achievement we can all be proud of, and I am pleased to be able to be here today to see this monumental piece of legislation passed through this House. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I’m pleased to rise and speak in support of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill in its final reading. I want to just, first of all, put on record the way that our leader, Simon Bridges, was very clear at the outset of this work that he wanted to work constructively with the Government, with the Prime Minister, on this piece of legislation. That is really following on from former leaders of National, both in Opposition—the Rt Hon Bill English—and then the former Prime Minister Rt Hon John Key, and it’s great to see that there is a continued focus on improving the lives of children in New Zealand.

I wanted to just look at a couple of figures, because one of the challenges in legislation that comes before the House is that it’s got to be more than just what the intention is and it’s got to be about the immeasurable outcomes that that legislation enables. So one of the jobs of the Opposition—although we’ve absolutely constructively worked on the legislation, and I want to talk about a couple of key areas shortly—is to hold the Government to account. The Government has set some targets. One of the targets that the Opposition was a little concerned about was the level of aspiration in terms of the targets set around the number of children that would be lifted out of material hardship.

And we’ve actually just heard with the speaker prior, Carmel Sepuloni, a bit of a contradiction in terms of ambition. In a five-year period when National was in Government, we lifted 85,000 children out of material hardship. And this Government has committed to lifting only 70,000 children out of material hardship over a 10-year period. But what the Minister for Social Development has just said is, by 2021, the Families Package would lift 64,000 children out of material hardship, so it’s a little confusing that there would be then only 6,000 children from the period 2021 to 2028. So this side of the House is concerned about the level of aspiration—when 85,000 children were lifted out of material hardship over a five-year period, 70,000 in 10 years doesn’t seem high enough. But it’s the Government of the day; the legislation is drafted in a way that the Government of the day sets their targets. They’ve done that. So, as the Opposition, we will hold the Government to account for the outcomes for those children, and the New Zealand public can rely on us for doing that.

As everybody knows—and only too well, those who work and listen to their constituents across the electorates—poverty isn’t just about lifting incomes. Again, the member who spoke before me talked about two of the three targets that were related to incomes. And what this side of the House is clear about are the other significant challenges that families face and the fact that it’s got to be a broader perspective than just about income. My colleague the Hon Alfred Ngaro also very clearly made the point, which I think is important to repeat, that we don’t confuse the issue of households on low income—them kind of being in poverty—and being unable to provide a family environment as many Kiwi families do. We want to ensure that those families are supported.

I want to talk about the vulnerable families that are actually trapped in deprivation. Some of the things that trap them in deprivation include long-term benefit dependencies, low educational achievement, and also recidivist crime. That’s why one of the areas that we wanted to improve the legislation by was including child poverty - related indicators. And those who followed the work of the previous Government around the Better Public Service targets will recognise areas around housing, areas around health and education, child abuse, and crime that are all really indicators of a broader picture of poverty.

So what the Government of the day is able to do with these child poverty - related indicators being incorporated into this legislation is to choose which of those indicators—I’m optimistic that the Government will choose multiple indicators, not just one. As I said, housing, quality of housing, health, and education, because those are the areas that, if Government policy reflects on having an impact on that, will absolutely change the life course of the children that live in that household.

So it was a pity that, close to the time that the Child Poverty Reduction Bill was introduced, the Government got rid of the Better Public Service targets. And one of the things, as well as covering those child poverty - related indicator areas, was the Better Public Service targets had greater levels of accountability on the Government departments. This has been one of the debates that was had through the legislative process, that it’s one thing to have accountability on a Minister—and, in this case, it’s the Prime Minister who’s the Minister for Child Poverty Reduction—but, actually, where the work happens each and every day is the Government departments. And if you don’t have measures and accountability clearly and squarely on them, then the ability to produce the outcome, as opposed to just an intention, is watered down.

So, as I said, this legislation gives the Opposition and the New Zealand public the opportunity to measure the progress of the Government of the day. As I said, it’s not just about incomes. It’s got to be about improving health, improving education, improving our record on child abuse, as well as improving the number of households that rely on benefits.

The other area that I think is really important in terms of the way this legislation has been improved was the incorporation of social investment. So what we saw in the previous Government was quite a radical way of using data to drive innovation and tackle real problems for real families—very, very complex and hard-to-solve challenges, but social investment created absolutely the best tool kit to be able to understand both the context and the culture in which the poverty and hardship and dysfunction was occurring. The fact that that has been incorporated into this legislation as a Supplementary Order Paper that was initially lodged by my colleague the Hon Alfred Ngaro is important. And, again, he used the word “pioneering” in his speech—actually, the approach using social investment was also pioneering, and so I’m pleased that some of that has been incorporated into this bill, because, like the Government, the Opposition absolutely does want to ensure that every New Zealand child grows up happy, healthy, and with wonderful opportunities in front of them.

The other piece I want to just reiterate is that the family is absolutely the best form of welfare. Another area that the Opposition will be holding the Government to account on is the supposed welfare overhaul. As a Government that increased benefits in 2015, I was somewhat shocked that the Minister of Finance has come out and said that increases to benefits are off the table. So the Welfare Expert Advisory Group hasn’t even reported back. He said it’s off the table, and that was somewhat surprising because what we saw in 2015 was a marked increase in the ability of those families who were dependent on benefits to do better than they were. It’s also somewhat puzzling, given that those on the lowest incomes, I would have thought, would have been a priority and this Government’s well-being Budget, which, of course, it has spoken a lot about.

I want to finish my final comments on those that submitted on the legislation, but also they are often the same people that are working with our most vulnerable children and families on the front line. As we go into the Christmas season, I want to give a particular word of thanks to them and their organisations. Some of their workers are volunteers; some of them are paid. They do critically important work in our communities with our families. So I want to thank them for the work they do and to say that National is proud to support legislation that improves the lives of our most vulnerable children and we won’t shy away from holding the Government to account for their targets.

Kia ora. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was going to start—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Speaker.

Speaker. Beg your pardon. Sorry, I’ve just flown in. I’ve been down in Napier this morning, and I wanted to make sure that I was back here for the—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Suffering from jet lag.

Yes. Well, it’s only Napier. But it is almost Christmas. I wanted to be back here to make sure that I could contribute to the debate today in this final reading of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and subsequent legislation.

I was going to start my contribution saying how wonderful it is that there is no politics in this bill, but unfortunately just in the last contribution I can’t start with that now. But fair enough—fair enough to the honourable member, Carmel Sepuloni, who just finished her contribution. Can I then start by acknowledging the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, Minister for Child Poverty Reduction and Prime Minister. I want to acknowledge her because there is one thing that the Prime Minister and I share and that is a passion for New Zealand’s children and an absolute commitment to making what is currently New Zealand’s reality for some of our children different. We are decades apart in age but that doesn’t mean—and so my past is a little bit further away than the Prime Minister’s past, but we share that commitment to New Zealand’s children.

I also want to acknowledge Hon Alfred Ngaro, because he shares it also. He has a job to do as a member of the Opposition—having sat there for six years—his job is to make sure that—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: You’re back there soon.

—this is not just about headlines. Thank you, Mr Smith for your Christmas contribution. It’s not just about headlines, that it actually becomes a reality. So I want to acknowledge the Hon Alfred Ngaro. It’s always interesting to sit here and listen to him speak, because he comes from such a place of truth; that combined has created a coalition of a Parliament, actually, to make sure that this legislation goes through.

I also want to make sure that I acknowledge the Hon Alfred Ngaro and his recognition of the coalition agreement between New Zealand First and the National Party back in 1996, which led to the healthcare that he referred to, which was free doctors’ visits and prescriptions for children under the age of six. So it is amazing what New Zealand First can do when we finally get into a place where others work with us.

But coming back to this piece of legislation, it is a pivotal moment—this is a pivotal moment. This is a moment where the New Zealand Parliament—this is not the first time in our nation’s history that we have had poverty, nor is this the first time in our nation’s history that a Government has come together to step in to do something about that poverty. But I think it’s one of the few times that a Parliament has said, “We acknowledge and we recognise, as all of the representatives in this House—almost all of the representatives in this House—that something must be done. We cannot set aside a real focus on a particular area.”

The Hon Louise Upston was absolutely right: poverty is affected by so many parts of what is Government decision making. That is why one of the pieces that falls out of this legislation that we’re passing today is the child and youth well-being strategy. We have had thousands of voices of children as part of the consultation around that child and youth well-being strategy. The Prime Minister held up some postcards that she had received directly from children to articulate their submissions into what is the current piece of legislation we’re talking about. The Children’s Commissioner, along with the units inside the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Oranga Tamariki, other youth panels, and so on, have made sure that the voice of children in this whole process has been clearly articulated.

This is a serious topic but it’s also a topic of hope. We’re in the season of what should be hope; a hopeful season. For some of our families it’s always a challenging time. But one of the things—and this is why I want to articulate what the children have told us at this time—one of the major things they ask for, probably number one at the top of their list, if they could have one thing from us for their parents, for their family, for their whānau, it was time. It was to give back time to their families so they could give it to them, their children. I ask for all those families that are going to be under stress during the season, I ask for all of those that we have yet to provide the housing for, the income for, the education for, the employment for, all those things that this Parliament will continue to strive to deliver for you, I ask for those of you who are under stress this Christmas to remember that, if nothing else, what tens of thousands of New Zealand children have said is the most important thing to them is time for you to spend with them. I know it sounds like a cliché, but it truly can be that simple. There are so many stresses that once we get this piece of legislation in place and we continue the work, whether it was started by this coalition Government or started under the previous, the fact we’ve come together to make a decision that we are going to move forward on it at this moment in the year is a powerful thing.

I’m not going to take up much more time because I think we need to get this passed, we need to collectively move on, and we need to remember and reach out to those at Christmas that we haven’t been able to take away that stress and that time for yet as a community, as a Parliament, and just as New Zealanders.

I do want to finish by acknowledging all those in this House that have come together in this moment, the Hon Alfred Ngaro who has led the way for the Opposition, for the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern who has led the way for the coalition Government, to acknowledge you and to say that this is a good thing we did here today, people. Kia ora. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Madam Assistant Speaker. It is indeed a great privilege, even an honour, to stand in the third and final reading today of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill.

I pay tribute to all of the speakers today. As the Hon Tracey Martin has said, there is very little politics involved in this debate. But I’d like to especially acknowledge the contribution of the Hon Alfred Ngaro, who spoke about his humble upbringing and the situation that he experienced as a child. I think there’s quite a few of us in this House who come from similar backgrounds, myself being brought up on an old railway house with not a great deal of money. But in those days we were poor but happy.

There’s no question that across this House we are all combined in our desire to bring our children of Aotearoa out of poverty. This bill certainly sets the way for us to begin that journey. This is a bill of the whole Parliament. I think this is actually an indication of where cross-party agreement really does good for New Zealand. This bill, as we’ve heard, actually sets on paper the direction of travel that the National Government was on its journey towards in lifting 100,000 children out of poverty. It was a collaborative approach to getting this bill to its introduction with the Prime Minister and the National Party leader Simon Bridges working very closely on some of the details that now form part of this bill that we are debating for the final time here today.

The issue of child poverty certainly transcends politics. We, on this side of the House, are very supportive of the move to enshrine the measures that are now embedded in this bill into legislation. It gives it longevity, and it gives it continuity across former Governments into the future. At the core of the bill are our tamariki, our children of Aotearoa, the most vulnerable that are in our society. So if we are to build a nation of successful and competent people then we must also begin with our children, and ensure that they can function without the stresses of poverty.

As part of the Social Services and Community Committee visit to Australia earlier this year, we were very fortunate to learn about the value of having longitudinal data. That data supports and guides decision making. So in that study that is being undertaken in Australia there are 10,000 families participating. In the study—it’s called Growing Up in Australia. It began in 2004 and is still ongoing. It covers a range of issues including health and physical development, social and emotional functioning, family circumstances and relationships, learning and cognitive development, and emerging adulthood. One of the glaring results that has come out of that study already is that the desire for children—the biggest priority that they had—was to feel safe and to be loved. The measures in this bill will actually give us some longitudinal data over time, and it will paint a picture for us.

Now, lifting child poverty is not just about achieving a one-off target; it’s actually about ensuring that the reduction in child poverty is sustainable, and we want to be able to hold ourselves up against other countries with low rates of child poverty, such as Finland, Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. So this bill is not the end; it is merely the end of the beginning, and the real work and commitment to lifting our game for our children starts after the passage of this bill. We must continue to work towards building an economy that creates good paying jobs and gets families off long-term welfare dependency. It is not all about the Government continually throwing money at that issue.

We must also continue to support those who struggle with either health challenges—mental or physical—or with disability. And I acknowledge the work and commitment from Alfred Ngaro during the select committee process, supported by his National Party colleagues, where we were adamant that this bill also reference New Zealand’s commitment to our international treaties and conventions, and they are now forming part of this bill. I refer to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to, and celebrate with, Dayaram Ganda and Jo Sholes of Greymouth, who’ve recently been recognised nationally with the Attitude ACC Employer Award, who employ staff with disabilities, and they now currently have 50 percent of their staff from the disabilities sector. So I congratulate you Dayaram and Jo, and your team at BP Greymouth.

We also require this legislation to set the legislative framework for lifting our children out of poverty. So this legislation is, in fact, the “what”, and what we are looking forward to now is the result and the outcome of the child well-being strategy, which is the “how”. And that is really the crux of the whole programme towards lifting our children out of poverty. Parliament is taking a major step forward today in the passage of this legislation, and I’d like to take this opportunity to wish all of the children in New Zealand a safe and very happy Christmas. I commend this legislation to the House.

Tēnā koutou. I think we in this House understand that we are pleased to be standing in unison to support some real measures on finally actually understanding what is going on with children and whānau living with poverty and how we are going to have a set of indicators. This is a historical day on these third readings, and I think we’re in unison when we stand and rise to say that we are pleased—that we are honoured—to speak on this.

I think too there will be no disagreement when I say that I am not honoured to have to stand on this. I am not honoured that we have reached this situation of poverty here in Aotearoa, where our tamariki and whānau have called us to account and now we are sort of doing a bit of backlog work here. Things should never have gotten this bad. There is absolutely no excuse or reason why things have gotten this bad—why we have tamariki who are being sent to hospital from poor, inadequate, and unhealthy housing; why incomes and household incomes are so low that tamariki do not have all they need to live healthy, happy, dignified lives.

I think we all agree that this is not what we should be looking at today. The country, as it is today—we’ve just had the Child Poverty Monitor report come through—is not what we would want. So, yes, this is an incredible step. It’s a start that often frustrated former co-leader Metiria Turei in her particular work to bring a similar bill into the last Parliament, while we were in Opposition. I did, absolutely, in these third readings, want to acknowledge her and the longstanding call from the Green Party to at least commit to child poverty reduction targets, and it was with frustration that many, many times she stood in this House to ask the question again and again and again of at least committing to targets.

So, in that vein, I am incredibly proud of my colleague the right honourable Prime Minister and Minister for Child Poverty Reduction for taking this leadership step and bringing us to this point today, having a clear commitment, a clear reduction target across a range of indicators. And I firstly wanted to offer my sincere congratulations alongside the Hon Tracey Martin, who will have a particular leadership role under her ministerial portfolios in the area of child poverty reduction. I wanted to pick up on my colleagues—their leadership in this issue—because I have sat with them in the halls of Parliament and am truly satisfied and pleased with the absolute integrity and genuine commitment that they have as professionals, as politicians, and as human beings to this call to transform our nation to one that is fair.

I think that if we go to clause 45 of the Children’s Amendment Bill, inserting new section 6AC, I wanted to acknowledge that it stipulates that “children should be viewed in the context of their families, whānau, hapu, and iwi, other culturally recognised family groups, and communities.” And this is particularly relevant for me, as we heard this consistently through submissions, firstly, and always have, particularly from Māori, that while this is called the Child Poverty Reduction Bill we cannot separate children from their context, and if we are being truly honest, we are talking about children and their whānau—whatever that may look like—and community and their community’s ability, their family’s ability, to raise and nourish their children in a way that will sustain dignity, well-being, and happiness. And so I’m pleased to see that come through in this legislation—new section 6AC(c). So I wanted to pick that out.

I wanted to pick up on Minister Martin’s work to ensure that we had the lived experiences and insights of children included in the work to pull together the draft of this bill, and that is important. I’m pleased that we are constantly hearing, through this Government’s programme of reporting, reviews, and inquiries, a theme of: “We will do harm if we do not centre the voices of those with the lived experiences of the very problems we are trying to solve.” And so I wanted to acknowledge that that expertise—it is expertise that the children offer us—needs to be continuously called on and centred throughout the rest of our ongoing work. Now we’ve set the targets; now is the rest of the ecosystem structural work on what we do about those.

So going forward from this bill is then about the actions that we hopefully put through as a whole of House parliamentary team for the well-being of tamariki, and that is going to have to include systemic and transformational change across all of the other systems and public core agencies like education, health, housing, justice, and so on and so forth. We cannot—and I think there will be agreement—look at child poverty in a narrow vacuum; it is all relative and it is all connected. And, for that—I’m trying my hardest to be pleasant, but I think a little bit of politics is an order—I do pick up on the term “welfare dependency”. This is about people having adequate incomes. This is about the fact that we have kept incomes low, that house prices and rents are incredibly high, and that this is about having a social security system that ensures people live with dignity. That wealth is currently held in the arms of a few at the exploitation and on the backs of the majority, and so I want to challenge that firm dependency on welfare. Our country’s wealth has been dependent on low-income households and communities.

I want to acknowledge that poverty does not impact on everyone in the same way, and, again, this is why a strong, truly compassionate social security system is essential. I want to acknowledge that not having enough income will not be the same if you are a child with a disability. If you are already a low-income household, it will further accumulate that harm. If you are Māori, Pacific, refugee, or in poverty, we know—it’s very clear—that it impacts on those different groups differently, and for that reason, our measurements are going to have to take that into account.

Lastly, I wanted to pick up on the fact that it’s clear, too, that Māori children are disproportionately represented in struggle and hardship and in households that do not have enough. Many of the submissions picked this up as a breach of Te Tiriti—and the Greens absolutely support this—alongside the breaches of, for example, our human rights instruments for people with a disability. We will continue to breach a range of human rights agreements that we have actually signed up to a long time ago if we do not at least acknowledge the different effects that poverty has on different groups of people.

With that, I’m incredibly pleased to see these bills coming to their third readings today. I look forward in the new year to all of us working together to pick up the work to actually reduce poverty for children and their whānau. Kia ora, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Tēnā koe, Madam Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call at the third reading of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and the Children’s Amendment Bill. I’m really pleased to stand here today even though I’m not on the Social Services and Community Committee. They have heard this legislation and worked on it very hard and did a very good job of it, and I am privileged and honoured to stand and speak on behalf of Māori whānau who struggle. They are going to be the majority population, unfortunately, affected by this bill, and to do anything that we can to reduce their poverty is what this side of the House is all about as well. So I want to thank the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, for shepherding this bill through the House.

I say that about Māori whānau, because it is really tough out there for whānau. I have three mokopuna myself. I spent the weekend with them, and I saw first-hand some of the struggles of their friends and neighbours with some of their children, and either the pressures that parents put themselves under or the peer pressure from other families outside of their family unit. I do feel for those parents because they want their children to have everything that all the other kids have got, but they can’t afford it. They can’t afford it. Therefore, priorities are mixed, and it is the children who lose in this situation. I think that these bills are a really good step towards actually reducing child poverty for those children.

I want to acknowledge the Hon Alfred Ngaro for his persistence in getting his two Supplementary Order Papers (SOPs) included in this bill, with the first SOP being indicators—which he spoke about today, and other members in the House have also spoken about—that will specifically measure and report on child poverty in this country. It’s always about the numbers. It’s always about the research on how well our legislation is actually performing out there in the community and asking: is it hitting the right spots, and are the people that it’s aimed at actually benefiting from these pieces of legislation? That’s what’s going to be the telling part over the next few years as this bill gets embedded into legislation and is rolled out amongst the various departments and organisations.

I do want to thank the people from the Whānau Ora community. That particular programme—Whānau Ora—was set up as a strengthening programme, and it was about empowering families to do things for themselves, because, as a legislative group, we should not be trying to throw money at these things; we should be putting in place certain aspects of our society that will actually help whānau to reach out to help themselves. At the end of the day, that is actually the key, and it’s really, really difficult to be able to do that. So I think that this select committee has done really well at trying, through this legislation, to put in some of those steps so that whānau can reach out and help themselves to actually improve themselves, and that’s what the whole crux of Whānau Ora is all about. So when I talk about that, I think that this particular legislation is another addition to the kete of Whānau Ora to help out our tamariki and our pakeke ā matua.

I really don’t have a lot more to add to this. There’s so much that this select committee has done, and the people who have submitted to the select committee and who came and gave their ideas to the select committee, who were very passionate about their submissions. So I just now look forward, as I said, to the next couple of years to watch this bill actually be embedded amongst the rest of the legislation that actually supports tamariki and supports whānau and that will actually grow this country into a better place for everybody.

So, without any further ado, Madam Assistant Speaker, I want to wish you a merry Christmas. I want to wish my parliamentary colleagues a merry Christmas. To all the whānau out there, please do not let Christmas get you down. It is very simple: it is all about when Jesus was born, and as long as you keep that in the forefront of your minds, you will have a very merry Christmas. So, without any further ado, I commend these bills to the House. Kia ora.

I understand that this is a split call. You have five minutes—the Hon Peeni Henare.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare. Ka noho tonu ahau ki roto i Te Reo Māori. He aha te take? Tā te mea ko te nuinga o ngā tamariki e pāngia nei ki roto i tēnei pire, he Māori. Te nuinga o ngā whānau ka pēhi nei i tēnei mea te rawakore, he Māori. Nō reira ka kapohia ake ahau i wētahi o ngā kupu o ngā mema i kōrero i mua i a au, ā, taihoa ake nei.

Tuatahi ka mihi atu ahau ki te Pirimia, nāna tēnei pire i ārahi nei ki roto i te roanga ake mai i te pānuitanga tuatahi tae noa mai ki tēnei wā. Ki ngā mema katoa o Te Whare, hei aha rā ko te pāti ACT, engari, ko ngā mema hei tēnei taha, anā, ko te pāti Nāhinara e tautoko nei i tēnei pire. Ko tēnei pire he tūāpapa. He tūāpapa mō te nuinga o ngā mahi kei mua i te aroaro o te kāwanatanga. Ko tētahi o ngā kaupapa hei hāpai ake i ngā kiko o tēnei pire, kua meingia mai i tērā taha o Te Whare, arā ko Whānau Ora. Nā te Whānau Ora ka piki ai te oranga o te whānau, he mea māmā te whakaaro ake ki tērā tūāhuatanga.

Heoi anō ko tāku e hiahia ana kia whākī atu ki tēnei Whare, nā kua rongo ngā taringa o Te Minita mō ngā take Whānau Ora, kua rongo ngā taringa a ngā kaikomihana o te kaupapa o Whānau Ora. Anā, me ngā ratonga hapori puta noa i te motu whānui. Mā tēnei pire ka taea e tātou te patu i tēnei ngāngara, arā, e kīia nei ko te pōharatanga, anā, e kīia nei ko te rawakoretanga. Nō reira ka mihi atu ahau ki tērā tūāhuatanga.

Heoi anō, kua riro ki a au nei te rima miniti. Ka whakaaro ake ahau, anā, kua kōrero mai ētahi atu o ngā mema o tā rātou whakatupuranga. Ka whakaaro ake ahau mō te wahanga ki tōku tupuna ki a Tā Hēmi Henare. Ko āna tohutohu, ko āna whakatauākī i waihotia mai ki te iwi Māori he mea hei hīkina atu i te iwi Māori mai i te pōharatanga ki roto i tēnei mea e whaiātia nei e tātou, arā, ko te oranga. Anā, anei ko wētahi o wāna kōrero hei whakakapi ake i taku kōrero i te rā nei. Tuatahi, ka kī atu tōku tupuna a Tā Hēmi ki te motu whānui, hei tāna “Kua tawhiti kē tō koutou haerenga mai ki te kore e haere tonu. He nui rawa ō koutou mahi ki te kore e mahi tonu.”

[Greetings, Madam Assistant Speaker. I will remain in the Māori language. Why? Because most of the children who are affected by this bill are Māori. Most of the families who are oppressed by this thing, poverty, are Māori. Therefore, I will seize some of the words of the members who spoke before me a little later.

Firstly, I acknowledge the Prime Minister, who has led this bill for the duration from the first reading through to the present time. To all the members of the House, other than the ACT Party, the members of this side and indeed the National Party are supporting this bill. This bill is a foundation, a foundation for the majority of the work before us as Government. One of the initiatives to carry forth the contents of this bill has been expressed by the Opposition, namely Whānau Ora. Whānau Ora has increased the well-being of families; it is easy to consider that phenomenon.

However, what I want to say to this House is this: the ears of the Minister for Whānau Ora have heard, the ears of the commissioners of the Whānau Ora initiative have heard, and, indeed, the community services throughout the country. This bill will enable us to get rid of this problem which is known as poverty and is known as destitution. Therefore, I acknowledge these aspects.

Nonetheless, I have been allocated five minutes. I considered—and some of the other members have spoken for their upbringing. I thought about the load carried by my ancestor Sir Hēmi Henare. His directions, his aphorisms that he left to the Māori people were there to lift the Māori people out of poverty and into the thing we are all pursuing, that is, well-being. And here are some of his words to conclude my speech today. Firstly, my ancestor Sir Hēmi said to the country, he said, “Your journey has been long indeed if you don’t continue. Your work has been vast indeed if you don’t continue working.”]

In translating the words of the my grandfather, and I often reflect upon his words in times like this—he was often considered to be a sage and a leader for Māoridom and, in particular, for Ngāpuhi and Te Tai Tokerau, but I think his words resonate with the bill that’s being discussed right now and the work of the Prime Minister, where he said, “We have come too far not to go further and done too much not to do more.” This bill sets a foundation for us to do more. It sets a foundation for us and a challenge for us to make sure that we strive to lead our children and our communities into a better place.

I’m also reminded of another one of his pearlers that he left to his family and, indeed, to the people of Te Tai Tokerau—and this is, I think, more to the relevance of my kōrero in relation to Māori families and Māori tamariki—where he says, “It is preposterous that any Māori should aspire to become a poor Pākehā when their true destiny, prescribed by the creator, is to become a great Māori.” And I take those words and I reflect upon them, because while we have one goal, and that’s to lift tamariki, children, out of poverty, there is also an impoverishment of mind. I think about the plight upon my people, our people, the Māori people, who, after many generations of impoverished lifestyle, after many generations of repression, suffer, I would argue, a greater poverty, and that is the poverty of the mind. And I want to, with this bill, take up the challenge, with my hat of Whānau Ora and also with my hat of being the Minister for Youth, to enable future generations of Māori tamariki and, of course, tamariki right across this country to aspire to be great leaders. Kia ora tātou.

It’s a pleasure to talk today to the third reading of what is the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. I just want to start out by acknowledging, certainly, the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern. I’d like to acknowledge, certainly, my colleagues on the Social Services and Community Committee, of which I am a proud member, for looking through and working tirelessly through the submissions in this process. Unfortunately, I came into the committee a little bit later, having come from the by-election, but no doubt I got a little bit more of an up-to-speed to this bill. I also want to acknowledge the contributions from the speakers today—in particular, the Hon Alfred Ngaro, and the Hon Peeni Henare and his acknowledgment of his late grandfather, Sir James Hēnare, in his uplifting and aspirational statements. I do agree that his aspiration lives through this bill, because this bill is an aspirational bill that is shared by virtually all of the House today.

I acknowledge Marama Davidson for her words around how much we are speaking in unison about this bill, because we all have the same desire in this place: to see a New Zealand that is most prosperous and where our children are alleviated from poverty. I do want to acknowledge the collective aspirations and intent through this bill that we will be passing today.

This is a good bill, in purpose and intent, in terms of its aspiration to reduce child poverty, which everybody in this House wants, and in terms of improving the measurement and the accountability for aspirations and targets around child poverty measures. Those accountability measures have been well versed in this House today, around the four primary and six secondary targets, as well. It is a good general framework for us to consider with respect to child poverty reduction. It is also going to help coordination amongst ministries so that we have a coordinated approach to measures and policies which aim to reduce child poverty. I want to, in the short time that I have, reflect on something that my colleague the Hon Alfred Ngaro said. He talked about the importance of attitude and the pioneering spirit in reducing poverty. While this is a good bill in its intent and its purpose, intent and purpose alone are not enough to, in fact, alleviate child poverty.

I reflect on my own story and my grandmother, who grew up poor in Hokianga and then spent 27 years in a State house in Glen Innes. I reflect on her story and how my auntie and my mother managed to climb out of poverty. There are a few themes that come from my own grandmother’s story about hard work, about getting a good education, about having a decent house to live in, and about family values. It is important to reflect on stories like my grandmother’s where, in fact, it is much more important around the multifaceted nature of child poverty. To assume that we can take a few measures and say “If we can improve those measures, then we are all hunky dory.” is, in fact, misleading and disingenuous.

So while this side of the House is very supportive of this bill, we do want to acknowledge that there is much more that needs to be done in the areas of housing and building housing—much more than what has been done to date. There is much more that needs to be done around the family unit, and I want to acknowledge the contribution from speakers on this side of the House who emphasised the role of the family unit but also that hard work and that pioneering attitude. How can we as politicians encourage and lead that work ethic throughout New Zealand society? I think if we can do all of those things, then we will truly alleviate child poverty in New Zealand. Thank you.

I understand this is a split call. David Seymour, you have five minutes. It would be normal custom to have the Government precede the Opposition; however, it looks as though the Government is going to give way to you in this instance.

Madam Assistant Speaker, I remind you that the power and discretion is really all yours and thank you for using it in this way. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this Child Poverty Reduction Bill, and I suspect that I’ll be the only vote recorded in this House today opposing that legislation.

But, you know, while being the sole member of a political party is sometimes disappointing at election time, it does give a certain amount of freedom to say things that other members can’t say. I thought Peeni Henare gave the best speech in this House today by a member who was voting for the bill but disagrees with it. He said it repeatedly and strongly whilst the Prime Minister and the author of the bill were sitting metres away from him. He said it’s not really a question of a poverty of material things—nothing that this bill matters—it’s a poverty of spirit.

And Dan Bidois, who I would say is one of the sharpest public policy minds in this House—he worked for the OECD in Paris; he’s an economist. And he got up and he thought, “What do I say now? The National Party, my party, is supporting this. I completely disagree with it.” So he got up and he acknowledged here and he acknowledged there and he acknowledged people everywhere. And then he thought, “What do I say now?” And then he talked a bit about describing the bill without endorsing it, and then he thought, “I’ve got two minutes to go.”, which he rounded out by talking about his grandma and how she beat poverty in ways that wouldn’t be acknowledged at all by this bill.

They don’t believe in this bill. Neither Peeni Henare nor Dan Bidois believe in this bill; neither do I; and the difference is the ACT Party is not going to vote for it. Why? Because it’s an admirable intent. There’s almost nothing Jacinda Ardern does that is not admirable in its intentions. But what will be the outcomes? The outcome of this bill, if we’re to believe its promoters, is that it will change the way that we look at child poverty. It will make us reflect each year on the level of income that different households have and what the gap is and what the distribution is for different household incomes. It won’t tell us anything about consumption. It won’t tell us anything about the absolute amount of resources that a child has or that they consume.

What it will tell us about is simply the amounts of income and the relative gap between the incomes of different households. That is folly, because what it tells us is that the best way to reduce poverty under this bill is to tax some people and transfer income to others. Well, if that works to reduce child poverty, then we would have solved child poverty in this country a couple of hundred billion dollars of Government spending ago. But it’s worse than that, because when this bill has its effect and encourages people to tax in this House and to spend in this House, to transfer income to reduce those income gaps, what they do is they increase the amount of money that low-income earners lose when they earn more. The incentives that this bill creates are actually to increase and strengthen the very poverty trap that we are supposed to be getting rid of through better policies in this House.

The National Party are supporting it because they have negotiated for a minimum of one measure to be added to the bill by the Minister of the day, who is probably a Minister that they deeply disagree with in every aspect of their philosophy. I think that it is absolute folly to sell out to bad policy for such simple reasons.

I have to acknowledge that there are some measures of absolute consumption in this bill. They will be swamped by the income measures, but they are simply not the right ones being defined by the chief statistician as measures of absolute poverty. The measures of consumption that are in this bill—and I should acknowledge them—are simply inadequate.

So what do we have? A well-intentioned Prime Minister, on a mission throughout her political career, introducing a bill that is going to have no effect other than changing the incentives for politicians, who will tax more, who will transfer more, who will make the poverty trap worse, and leave the real welfare of children no better than she found it. I’m proud to oppose this legislation on behalf of ACT. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

It was just through my sheer West Coast politeness that I sat down when the previous speaker, David Seymour, rose to his feet. But I’m so pleased I did, because he gave me such good context for what I want to speak about now. That member and his party—when we want to see how his policies work, we have no problem doing that. Look at history. Look at Victorian England, that place where so many of our ancestors came from: the wealthiest country ever was full of poor people.

That’s actually what the context of this bill is about. We all come to this House, and it doesn’t matter what hue you are; we all come to make this country a better place. But when we get here, so often we find that the parameters of Government, the parameters of the party system, and the parameters of the machinery of Government really do mean that the opportunities to make a major difference are limited. I’ve been on some very busy select committees this year. Most of the bills have gone through the hands of the Justice Committee and the Social Services and Community Committee, but none of them come near the importance of this bill. We talk about a reforming Government. This is the type of reform that I believe every politician comes in and wants to be proud of, because what is the difference with this?

Go back to the Budget day. Budget day’s the day where everyone’s out there with their templates, everyone’s out there with their calculator, their abacus, their fingers, or whatever it is that they balance money in and money out with. It’s so often now, in the modern world, and it has been—it certainly was in Victorian England, which I’ve referred to—that success was measured on money in and money out. Now, think about Budget day, because now, as a result of this reform, we are actually going to be considering how well-off our people are as a country, and particularly our children.

Now, there’s an old saying from Aristotle or Ignatius of Loyola—no one really knows where it came from—but it basically says, “Give me a child until it is seven and I’ll give you the adult.” I have desexed that for the modern time. But, really, if we can turn that into how we should operate as a country, then, as a country, if we focus on those under seven, if we focus on our children, it means that in the future those people will have the opportunity.

Various speakers have talked about wealth—how we measure that success. Is it about wealth? Really, it’s about participation. It’s about the ability to participate, because the very society that ACT would have us return to means that anyone’s ability to participate in society is completely limited. So that’s what this bill does: it ensures that we are giving those who are coming, those under seven, those that we are ensuring are able to go into adulthood—we’re giving them the ability to participate. I remember seeing a very well-heeled lawyer from a very, shall we say, privileged background. We were talking about poverty. Her definition of poverty was no musical instrument and crooked teeth. That lawyer had come from her relatively sheltered background to work in the court, and that was her idea of what poverty looked like. It was probably a reasonable one, and certainly that’s what she considered.

Coming back to the bill, what’s really important about this is that we’re going to require the Minister of Finance—whatever hue he or she may be—to look at more than just the balance sheet and more than just the top and bottom line. They will still be important, to ensure we can achieve those things we want to, but what we’ll be doing is making sure that we actually look at the results and that we’re actually measuring the success of our society in a different way.

I’ve seen what’s happened. We’ve had talk today from the Opposition about Better Public Services. I believe they were just simply cheaper public services that believed that if we counted the paper clips then everything would be fine; that wasn’t going to be fine. It never worked, and it was a failed system.

What this does is it makes sure that those things that we are going to be looking at, those things that we are going to be counting, and those measures of success are going to be measures that are going to ensure that the society—the New Zealand that we are here to make better—can be better. Because, as I went back to, it isn’t going to be necessarily about the wealth, the money in their hands; it’s going to be about the ability of the next generation to participate fully in the society we leave them. For that reason, I’m proud to commend this legislation to the House.

I rise to speak in support of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. This is one of those days in Parliament that I tell people about, because when people say, “Why do you want to do this politics thing? There’s all this conflict. People disagree with each other all the time.” I say, “You know what? Actually, we agree on the important things.” When it comes to our intentions and what we are here to achieve, I think you’ll find most people in this House agree that lifting incomes, increasing the prosperity of our nation, taking people out of poverty, improving our physical and natural environment, delivering better health services, improving what happens in our schools—those are good goals to have. Those are things that we can all agree on. The question for this Parliament is not what we should set out to achieve; it’s how we do it.

It is a good day today because in this legislation we have Parliament working together. We had an OK bill brought forward by Labour: a bill that said, “Yeah, actually, what we measure is important, and that which gets measured, gets done.” All of us in Parliament agree that child poverty is a scourge. It actually takes away the potential of young New Zealanders to fulfil and be the best that they can be. It takes away from the ability of this nation to improve. We do not want child poverty in New Zealand. We agree on that. But how do we measure it? How do we ensure that we are doing a better job on it?

These were the discussions that were had at the Social Services and Community Committee and National put forward amendments saying, “Actually, the measures need to go into some deeper areas. We need to look at what’s happening in the education system. We need to look at what’s happening with housing. We need to look at what’s happening in health, because it is not enough to simply measure how much we are redistributing income. That is not sufficient. We actually need to look at what is happening in the individual lives of children, so let’s broaden the measures.”

National further improved the bill by saying, “Let us think about what’s actually going to move the dial on these measures.” National said that that will be a social investment approach that acknowledges the importance of data, of evidence, and of intervening early in children’s lives. So in coming together in this Parliament today, we’re demonstrating that we agree on our intentions and we can work together to get good legislation in place.

But let us not be complacent, because good intentions are not enough. And it would be dangerous today if we were to say that the child poverty reduction legislation’s third reading was the day that child poverty got solved, because, in fact, what we have before us is a significant challenge and it’s a challenge, actually, that previous parliaments have faced head on, and we would be arrogant to think that this was the first ever Parliament to consider that poverty is an important challenge to be met. And I want to remind everyone in this House that if we are to meet the targets that this legislation sets out, we need to remember that the economy is the foundation on which equality of opportunity is built, because unless mums and dads have jobs, unless they have the prospect of a rise in income, unless they are able to find opportunity in their own community, they will never have the dignity of independently raising their children outside of poverty.

So let us look at what a strong economy can deliver, because it is very easy to forget that even in the time of the global financial crisis, the major Christchurch earthquakes, we had a National Government that remained focused on the economy. And during that time—and I place it on the record today because it is forgotten too easily—85,000 children were lifted out of material hardship. And that didn’t actually happen because Bill English or John Key were nice men. It didn’t actually happen because the Cabinet had a great discussion. It happened because individual New Zealanders made the decision to invest in their businesses, to hire more people, to pay them better wages, to embrace a new idea, to export more, to do more, and they created opportunities for everyone, and that meant that children were being raised in homes with less material hardship and that was a good thing. So let’s remember that the economy will remain the foundation on which we make these improvements.

Let’s also remember, as we come together in support of this legislation, that strengthening families is not just about increasing incomes. We would be naive in this House if we were to suggest that simply giving some families more income will alleviate their problems, because in New Zealand we have cycles of dependence and disadvantage that are ingrained, in some cases, and that are particularly upsetting to speak about and to observe but are real. And what we know is that if we are to do something about those cycles of disadvantage, we need to get into families on the ground, because actually no child is truly living a life in which their potential is ultimately fulfilled unless that child is given the strength of a strong family. And so how do we do that? How do we break those cycles of disadvantage?

This legislation compels us to break those cycles, because we will not meet these targets if we simply redistribute income. We need to think about social investment. What are the initiatives—whether they be housing, whether they be education, whether they be health—that will truly make a difference to families and allow them to lift themselves out of disadvantage and that will allow them to embrace opportunity? And the exciting thing for us as members of Parliament, the exciting thing for us as a country, is that we are living in a time of unprecedented data. We have information, we have evidence, and we have research which tells us what works and what doesn’t. And so we should be compelled to use that information and that is what social investment is about. It says “Let’s intervene as early and effectively as we possibly can. Let’s not just pat ourselves on the back for doing another press release saying we’re doing another initiative. Let’s test whether the initiative actually worked and how many lives it actually changed.” That is the measure of whether or not a Government policy is effective. And we owe it to every New Zealander in this country who wants to see child poverty reduced to use the best data available to us as we intervene.

You know, Marmara Davidson got up in this debate today and she said she rejected the word “dependency” because she thought that that was a nasty word. Well, I say to Marama Davidson, “I agree with you, Marama, because I want for every New Zealand family the dignity that comes from independence. I want for every New Zealand family the dignity of having their own value and contribution respected, that they do not just get ahead with handouts from the State, that they can do it themselves.” And I say to Marama Davidson that the Kiwi way is actually a way of hope and opportunity because we here in the National Party are optimistic about the power of individuals to shape their own lives. And we urge all members of this House to share that optimism, because when we give people the tools, when we give them a strong economic platform that actually has jobs they can apply for and promotions they can receive, that is when child poverty will be reduced in this country.

It is a good day. We are agreeing that child poverty should be reduced. We are agreeing that if we measure it, it’s more likely to get done. We’ve come together as a Parliament to improve this bill, but let us not give in to the dangerous complacency of good intentions. It’s the delivery that counts. Let us measure the achievement of this bill by how many lives it changes. The work starts today. And I encourage members opposite to get on with it and to not just put more headings on press releases. Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Assistant Speaker. It is with a great sense of privilege and, indeed, honour that I rise to make a contribution to the third readings of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and the Children's Amendment Bill. I want to begin my contribution by paying tribute to the Minister for Child Poverty Reduction—indeed, the Rt Hon Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who has been the driving force behind this bill. She's said time and again in this House that one of the motivations for her entering Parliament has been to work towards reducing child poverty. And as this bill passes with near unanimous support this evening, we are one step further, a significant step further, towards realising her vision, this Government's vision, to reduce child poverty.

I also want to begin with a quote by—actually, something that Associate Professor Susan St John, who was a founding member of the Child Poverty Action Group, said to the Social Services and Community Committee. She said that having a Prime Minister who has children at the heart of all that she does is a great thing. And that reminds me of, I understand, a Japanese proverb translated that I quite like, which goes like this: “Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare; vision and action can together change the world.” And I absolutely pay tribute to the Prime Minister for her leadership, vision, and action to make Aotearoa fairer and the best place to be a child.

We've talked in this House about the face of poverty in New Zealand. We've talked about the children and we've visited schools where principals have told us about children who go to school hungry and can't concentrate. We've heard and seen families who are forced to make choices like buying cheaper food or taking their children to the hospital to access healthcare. Children—too many children—have been hospitalised as a result of preventable respiratory illnesses. We've all seen the evidence, the research that tells us about the links between poverty, poor health, and educational and social outcomes later in life.

I just want to clarify something that the member Alfred Ngaro mentioned in his contribution earlier this evening. He cautioned us about making or placing a value judgment on poverty, on families who are on low income, and ensuring that we don't further stigmatise them. I just want to say in response, really, that this is about—I accept what he says, absolutely we shouldn't do that, but this legislation doesn't do that. This legislation is about addressing deprivation. It's about ensuring that all our families and all our children are supported to thrive.

This is legislation that aims to build enduring political accountability, consensus, and action to reduce child poverty. And I'll just touch on the specifics of the legislation. I won't go into too much detail because we've heard that from previous speakers this evening. But this legislation will introduce a framework to measure and target child poverty. It sets into law a range of widely accepted measures that will require successive Governments to set short- and long-term targets to reduce child poverty. It requires annual reports relating to child poverty to be produced and published independent of Ministers, and it requires our Minister of Finance to report on child poverty reduction at every Budget. It includes a strategy to improve the well-being of all children, especially those with greater needs, and there is a specific focus as well on children from specific population groups that are disproportionately represented in poverty statistics.

An action plan that captures the perspectives of our tamariki—and yet, the beauty of this legislation is that it’s flexible enough to accommodate different Government approaches and priorities, and that’s why there was a huge amount of discussion amongst the select committee members about targets. But the reason that targets are not specifically included is for this very reason: to ensure that it’s flexible enough, to ensure that the legislation isn’t too prescriptive, to ensure that successive Governments commit to lifting the well-being of all our children.

This is legislation that is ambitious. This is indeed a historic moment. It is the culmination of the advocacy and passion of so many over so long. It’s the commitment, or a reflection of the commitment, of this Government to focus on lifting the collective well-being of Aotearoa and it aims to entrench this commitment to endure over time.

It sits within the Government’s wider work programme to ensure that the benefits of a strong, growing economy are shared more fairly. It sits within a work programme that focuses on fixing critical problems in health, housing, education, transport, and so many other sectors. It fits within the programme of a Government that is tough on the causes of crime, that focuses on addressing family violence, supporting those with mental health needs and drug and alcohol addictions to get the help that they need, improving incomes and employment conditions, and it fits well as we work towards the well-being Budget that will take place next year. This is a Government that takes on these important challenges, and I’m proud to play a supportive role to that Government.

I want to thank, in the time that I have remaining, so many who have been part of this journey to get us to where we are at today: the researchers, the advocates, the NGOs, and the individuals who have fought for this legislation for so long. There were over 600 submitters at select committee and, overwhelmingly, they supported the intent of this legislation. I thank the officials who’ve worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that the select committee had the tools that we needed to finesse the legislation. And the select committee—as the deputy chair of the Social Services and Community Committee, I want to thank the chair, Gareth Hughes, and members from both sides, who worked hard. We had some very robust discussions at the committee to suggest improvements to this legislation, and I believe we have achieved that. The over 600 submitters, as I mentioned, have worked over so many years to ensure that we’re here today.

This is legislation that’s powerful. It is legislation that has the power to lead to transformational change for so many families. And I, too, as the Prime Minister did, want to end my contribution with a quote by Nelson Mandela—a different quote, though. He said, “There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.” I’m proud to support a Government that’s getting our society’s soul back on track, and it is with great delight that I’d like to commend the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and the Children’s Amendment Bill to the House. Thank you.