Turei Metiria: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeTurei Metiria: General Debate[Sitting date: 05 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16337. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green): The Green Party in Government will put children at the heart of every decision that we make at the heart of all of our policies and at the heart of all our work. What did we discover last week? The Government has been masking hiding the number of children who are living in severe poverty in this country. It missed out on 20000 kids last year—20000 children and their families were ignored by this Government. The Green Party will not ignore those children. We will work to bring them out of the poverty that they suffer. Let us just have a think about the legacy of John Key. John Key since he has been Prime Minister has seen 45000 more children living in poverty than before he came to power. There are 45000 more children and their families in poverty under John Key. The Green Party will change that if we get a chance to be at the heart of a progressive Government after this 2014 election.This Government is failing New Zealand’s children and it does not need to be that way. We can make a difference for each of the 285000 children in poverty. We can change the lives of each of those children and their families. This is how we can do it. The Green Party will put children and their needs at the heart of all our decisions. We have already come up with three major sets of solutions to help address the poverty that our kids are suffering. Step one is to bring about a living wage for families to raise the minimum wage and to make sure that working families have enough money to get by on. Not only will we do that; we will raise benefits because we know that most of the kids who live in poverty are from benefit-dependent households and that is because benefits are too low. Given that work does not solve poverty actually under this current Government we must also raise the minimum wage move to a living wage and make sure that benefits are decent enough for families to live on.We will make sure every family has access to a warm and dry home for their kids through our Home for Life programme for progressive ownership so that ownership of their own home really is within the grasp of young families. We will make sure there is a warrant of fitness for all rental properties—not just a few like this Government has done but all rental properties. We know that most of the children who live in poverty live in cold damp homes. There will be security of tenure so those who are the most vulnerable in their housing including State house tenants know they will be able to live in a home rent that home and have some security for themselves and their families when times get hard.Finally there will be school community hubs. Schools are at the heart of their communities and we can make sure they can support their communities and their kids better by relieving teachers and principals of the social obligations if you like and the social difficulties that families face. We will have a full-time facilitator in every low-decile school a dedicated school nurse a free school lunch fund for those schools and free after-school care for those families. We know that so many kids miss out on extending their education because their families cannot afford after-school care and programmes.We will build 20 new community-based childhood education centres not private but not-for-profit on school grounds. I have talked about this before. I know a young woman really well who has two kids—one at preschool one at school—with no money and no car. When she has no food where can she get help? Well she will be able to get help at the school. She will know that her younger child can go to early childhood education there and that her older child will get a great public education at that public school. It is close by so she can walk to it. The children will be fed through a national lunch fund that the Green Party will put in place when we are in Government. We can make a difference for every single one of those children who live in poverty. We will make that difference when we are part of a progressive Government after this election in 2014. Thank you.