Fox Marama: Estimates Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFox Marama: Estimates Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5638. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARAMA FOX (Co-Leader—Māori Party): For a number of years the Māori Party has come into Government and decided to work with the National Government. It is something that we are willing to do because actually it is easy to sit and throw stones but we are actually more interested in providing an avenue for working collaboratively together. The increase this year of the benefit rates—for 43 years no matter who had been in Government nothing had been done about it. Nothing had been done about it. So there has been an increase but I agree that actually that increase is not going to eliminate poverty. That increase is relief for hardship. We must commit to having ongoing measures that will eliminate poverty eradicate poverty.This year in September the Prime Minister will be attending the UN General Assembly for a sustainable goal agenda where the No. 1 goal is eradicating poverty by our own country’s measurement. There is a whole lot of debate about how we do measure poverty. Well if we look at the one that the Government likes—the severe hardship index—by that measure 100000 children still live in poverty. That is 10 percent of our children. I want to say to the Committee tonight that it is within our grasp right now to do something about it so that we can eliminate and eradicate poverty in this country. If we stall any further measures to do something it will soon be outside our capability and our capacity as a country to do that and to realise the actual goal of eliminating poverty.The No. 6 goal on that agenda in September is to set a target to halve and eradicate poverty by our own measures. I want to call on our Prime Minister and our Government to sign up to that goal agenda to continue to work together. I am willing to work together with the Ministerial Committee on Poverty to do just that: to find ways where we can take a purposefully targeted approach to eliminating and eradicating poverty in this country before it is outside our ability to do so. We can do it through a number of simple measures that do not actually cost a lot of money—it is not about putting an extra $500 in everybody’s hand and therefore making it impossible for us to do.But we can do some things like indexing benefits to the median wage—why have we never done that before?Because in a few years the small gain that we have been able to make will again be widened we could index our benefit rates to the median wage so that they continue to keep pace and not widen the gap.Another thing that we can do is we can ensure that we extend the—what is it called; it has gone out of my blinking head—the paid parental leave. Extend that to the full 26 weeks; allow mothers to be with their babies in those formative first months so that they can give greater input into their lives and into growing and developing the brain which needs to happen. One of the factors for poverty and keeping ourselves in the poverty cycle is actually poverty of the mind.The other thing we can do is have security of tenancy. It does not cost much at all but it guarantees people that they can live in a home for at least the life of their children in school so that their children are not transient so that they can stay in one place and so that they can have a secure warm and safe home to come home to.We can do these things and I call on the Ministers on the Ministerial Committee on Poverty to work with us to work with me. I am willing to do that. That is why this party—the Māori Party—goes into a coalition agreement of confidence and supply with the National Government. It is so that we can make some changes and have some influence.The Prime Minister can commit to this in September. We can set targets for reducing poverty and eradicating it and we can continue to build on the good work—because it is good work because nobody had done anything for 43 years. The Hon Dame Tariana Turia will tell you that nobody talked about poverty in this country until the Māori Party came in here. Why? Because we know poverty.Iain Lees-Galloway: Oh come on.MARAMA FOX: That is what she says and I hold her to it because it was in our relationship agreement the very first one in 2008. It was in the next one in 2011 and it was in the next one in 2013. Because of the Ministerial Committee on Poverty we have seen benefits to our people.