Ardern Jacinda: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 28 May 2014. Volume:699;Page:18468. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): What an absolutely bizarre contribution that was from Joanne Hayes. It is absolutely bizarre to stand up and claim that a Labour Government over 9 years a Labour Government that was focused absolutely on the core business of lifting the well-being of people and children did nothing to support children. I have got a couple of really simple policies which obviously the member missed that would be quite educational for her to remember.Working for Families lifted over 100000 children out of poverty. We are proud of that policy and clearly the National Government is too because it has done nothing to remove it. The member raised the issue of vulnerable children and care and protection issues. We were the Government that made sure that Child Youth and Family was properly resourced to do its job. We reviewed Child Youth and Family Services in 2006 and we boosted its support and the number of social workers. Paid parental leave—something that the Government just voted down—is something that Labour has a proud track record on.When it comes specifically to the issue around things like food in schools we have a bill that says that we want food to be in all decile 1 to decile 3 schools. It is slightly different from this member’s bill the Education (Breakfast and Lunch Programmes in Schools) Amendment Bill but that obviously is why we support the bill before us today. Annette King when she was the Minister of Health put in Fruit in Schools as recognition of the need to encourage healthy eating in our schools. We promoted healthy food in our school canteens and tuck shops—something that the Government voted down.The member Joanne Hayes said if I remember her words correctly: “We support a hand up not a handout and mana for families.” There is no mana in poverty. There is no dignity in poverty. The children who are afflicted by it and who lose the opportunities as a consequence of it are the ones who lose their mana because where are they then left? To prove a point the National Government would rather leave those children behind. We when we are in Government will make sure that children are at the heart of everything and that we do not place moral judgments on parents that end up costing their children. Who is better off when we do that?We have got to remember the context in which we are debating this bill. There are 285000 children living in poverty. One in three Māori and Pacific Island children are living in poverty. That is an absolutely alarming statistic. We cannot sit back and allow moral judgments over personal responsibility to get in the way of assisting those children and that is ultimately what this bill is all about. But even beyond the poverty statistics which are focused primarily on income even if you look at other markers—if you look at material deprivation that is an assessment of whether or not a family has enough money to buy three healthy meals a day and whether or not children are living in overcrowded housing. We have seen that get as high as 21 percent in recent times. We know that has consequences.The member sponsoring this bill Hone Harawira talked about the cost of poverty. Even if the Government does not want to follow the moral obligation that we on this side of the House feel towards children in New Zealand even if it does not want to buy into that it should at least buy into the fiscal responsibility. Poverty costs us money and a lot of money—up to $6 billion. If we get this right if we do something positive for children we can actually save ourselves money as a country. Not only that we start to see that we can enhance the opportunity for kids.I am not saying this is just pie-in-the-sky stuff. The Programme for International Student Assessment results have strongly suggested to us that yes we have a goodeducational system in New Zealand but that actually social deprivation is starting to impact on our educational outcomes. Its strong recommendation to us—and from the OECD—was that if we wanted to start improving our outcomes we have got to look at the child’s wider context. It is not just about what happens to them when they walk in the school gate; it is about what happens in their lives at home it is about what kind of support they have it is about whether or not there is enough money to put food on the table and it is about whether or not they are hungry at school.That is the pure and simple issue we are debating. If you strip that right back do we want our kids to go hungry? The obvious answer is no. That is why Labour is supporting this bill.