Ball Darroch: Budget DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBall Darroch: Budget Debate[Sitting date: 26 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3994. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DARROCH BALL (NZ First): It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to make some comments on the Budget. I will be concentrating my comments on the changes to the social services area. The first thing I would like to do is to ask a question. That question is about the Budget: has the Government addressed the very worst levels of child poverty in New Zealand with its Budget announcement last Thursday? The answer is unsurprisingly a definitive no. After persistently ignoring 40 years of research on a topic with expert advisory group recommendations largely ignored why all of a sudden a U-turn? The Government has been in power for 7 years and for 7 years it has denied it denied the scale of the problem. We have the Prime Minister who usually shrugs most things off including the problem of child poverty. But worst of all is that in those 7 years the Government has failed to address it. So why the U-turn? Probably because of the public pressure and post-election promises in the face of widespread public protestation.We are already witnessing the Government reverting to its ideological blind spot on child poverty. On Thursday we had a Budget preaching about the focus on child poverty and the needy and just 2 days ago we had Mr English commenting about the anti-poverty figures. The article in the New Zealand Herald has the title: “English hits back at anti-poverty figures”. It goes on to say that “Professor Jonathan Boston refuted the minister’s claims saying Mr English ‘doesn’t understand how poverty measures are calculated’.” Mr English’s response to that in an interview on Q+A is that “campaigners like Prof Boston and the Children’s Commissioner used an unrealistic set of measures to quantify poverty in New Zealand.” The funny thing is that during Mr English’s Budget speech he said this: “Two-thirds of children in more severe material hardship have a parent on a benefit and nine out of 10 of those are sole parents”.Where did he get that measure of severe hardship from? In order to get to this conclusion he would have to be using the very calculation of poverty used by Professor Jonathan Boston the same man he criticised on national TV for the way in which he calculated it. So I challenge the Minister to prove where he got those figures from and by which method. He cannot continue to contradict himself and say that Professor Boston has an unrealistic set of measures and yet use those exact same measures in his speech. That is a blatant attempt to diminish expert opinion. The public can now quite clearly see that the Minister of Finance has no idea about how poverty measures are calculated. It is a poor start to the Government’s acknowledgment of the problem—far less than a step in the right direction.We know that the measures the Government announced on Thursday will not lift those children out of poverty. The Children’s Commissioner someone else whom the Government does not listen to himself said that it will not bring families out of poverty and he is calling for a comprehensive plan. So all pre-Budget all at the end of last year there was this promise from the Government from the Minister for Social Development and from the Minister of Finance about a comprehensive plan to tackle child poverty and vulnerable children. What we got was not even a skeleton of a plan. They have not even done the map recce yet.So where is the package? Where is the plan? The measures announced in the Budget are piecemeal and they are disappointing. Put quite simply this Government is continuing to fund supported poverty. Being a step in the right direction is not enough to warrant a vote of confidence for or indeed acceptance of this Budget. One can never win a game of cards if they are given only one single card to play with. How are these people in poverty with vulnerable children expected to get out of their way of poverty to work their way out of poverty to fight their way out of poverty with just $25 a week? The Government has given them that one card to play with. These moves are a token effort to appease the general concern of the New Zealand public at the plight of an unacceptable number of our children. We want to hold on to the country we once proudly advocated for when we travelled around the globe proud of a land of equal opportunity but now we are reminded by the National Government that times have changed and that we need to focus on quite a long-term savings for the Crown—on cost cutting on more efficiency and on better investment.How did child poverty end up being about what these children will cost us in the future? Why is it not about the New Zealand vision that every one of these children should have an equal opportunity to contribute to our society? New Zealand First believes in the fundamentals of a social welfare system that provides a robust safety net. No one should fall below this most minimum of levels—no family and no child. It should not be a reward; nor should it be a punishment. It should not be a matter of approval for a Budget change; it should be an automatic expectation. Anything less would mean we are all leaving our principles behind for the sake of financial convenience and outright judgment.The Government’s investment approach stretches it further. Now each person who requires a social service has a dollar sign floating above their head. If their need does not fit within the criteria of the Government’s targets then the dollar is extinguished and the individual is left to fend for themselves. If a social agency tries to look after all of its clients’ needs it will run adrift. If a service attempts to exist in the regions where the client numbers are low it will struggle falter and disappear. So if you are a young person looking for support in a small provincial town tough. Your need is not financially sustainable. Where in this do we allow for a community to identify its own needs and provide a response? Will a coupon system for social services mean less supply and lower quality just as it did with the voucher system for childcare that was evaluated in Sweden and Australia?We have seen social services retracting. Most recently we have seen the struggles of our biggest counselling agency Relationships Aotearoa and the release today of an article “Government forces closure of Relationships Aotearoa”. It goes on to say: “Unfortunately our financial position worsened by Government’s needless delay means we cannot afford to transition clients. We had hoped to transition clients [more]. …Government could have easily reached an agreement with us that was equitable for all concerned. It is fair to say that we feel betrayed … it is likely that our doors will be closed to our 7000 current clients by the end of the week.” But this Government would rather spend around $30 million on a flag referendum. Where is the priority shown by this Government?Two months ago we met with the Salvation Army youth education and employment unit. It has just shut down branches in Kaikohe Matamata Wairoa Waipukurau and Blenheim. The common theme in all of those is they are all regional. Why did they shut down? They were not financially viable. One would have to ask where this will end. Where is the plan by this Government to ensure that the essential safety net that is faltering in our provincesespecially remains intact and maintains its integrity? This Budget surely did not deliver confidence in that.New Zealand First wants more than just a $2 a day down payment for the 250000 children living in poverty. We want front-end investment focused on our youth. Simply increasing the benefit is lazy. It lacks focus and it lacks realism of the understanding of the real issue. Instead it tries to plug a gap over the symptoms. The Government has ignored our young people in this Budget. The Government may not care but the vast majority of New Zealand cares about the future generations. As Mark Powell chief executive officer of The Warehouse said this weekend: “A flourishing society equals flourishing business.”May I lastly say this: if we are to maintain that minimum social floor that no one should fall through we need a heavy focus on our youth. Unemployed youth become unemployed adults who remain on a benefit and bring children and families into poverty. Acting too late with too little should never be acceptable.