Chhour KarenKAREN CHHOUR (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. In her Speech from the Throne in 2017 Jacinda said that this would be—SPEAKER: Order! Full names please. KAREN CHHOUR: —Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that this would be a Government of action and that they would take action on homelessness. Five years later a picture says a thousand words. [Holds up a photo of the Prime Minister the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern appearing to give cash to a person begging in the street] The problem has not been fixed and even the Prime Minister now can't ignore that fact. This Government talks about child poverty and Jacinda vowed to end child poverty—Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed to end poverty when she took office and she likes to pat herself on the back about her performance. But Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has spent a grand total of 17 hours in her ministerial diary on the child poverty reduction portfolio since 2017—17 hours. She has spent more time trying to escape to Antarctica this week than she has on her greatest political passion. It gets worse. The Ministry of Social Development's Child Poverty in New Zealand report was released this month and the Government got straight into patting itself on the back about the figures but the report didn't include the 4000 children living in emergency housing. The Government didn't include the children that are suffering the most in this country. Whole families are living in dingy motel rooms often with gang members down the hall and with criminal behaviour around the corner that the Government won't even take stock of. We've heard heartbreaking stories of what's going on in those emergency motels but the Government has dodged questions for years on this saying that they don't record emergency housing as a location type. Another instance where the Government doesn't want to know the extent of their failure is in emergency housing. They've excluded emergency housing from police records and they've excluded emergency housing from the Child Poverty in New Zealand report. When Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was asked about excluding these vulnerable children suffering in motel rooms under her watch she had no idea that they weren't included in the survey. Her office later apologised for the mistake but in the same statement doubled down saying that it didn't matter. Her office kicked back against those who are saying that these 4000 children in emergency housing should have been included. They're within the margin of error her office said. Is this how this Government views a group of some of the worst-suffering children—the margin of error? What's worse is that in the same statement the Prime Minister's office said that these children wouldn't be in material hardship anyway because the household housing costs would be cheaper than private rentals. So is this the PM's office saying that the family of five squeezed into a one-bedroom emergency housing motel are lucky? Think of all that money they're saving on rent. So the PM's office says that it doesn't matter that the 4000 children in emergency housing were excluded from the child poverty report—they're within the margin of error and they're not doing it that tough anyway. How typical of this Government to turn a blind eye to the children they are letting down the most like Minister Davis who refuses to front up and take responsibility for Oranga Tamariki's failings which led to the death of Malachi Subecz. He's been hiding behind an unpublished internal report for months. When the Ombudsman published its scathing review saying that Oranga Tamariki (OT) had failed to do the bare minimum to prevent Malachi's death and calling for OT to apologise Kelvin wouldn't take responsibility. SPEAKER: Full names again. KAREN CHHOUR: Minister Kelvin Davis would not take responsibility. We're waiting for our own report." he said. Is Oranga Tamariki's report going to find anything different from the Ombudsman's report and if it is why would it? This is just another example of the Government shrouding its responsibility behind layer upon layer of bureaucracy and reports. ACT says that this isn't good enough. ACT would put the children at the centre of its response and would make sure that we are collecting the data of those children who are most in need. We would make sure that OT acted on reports of concern and did not ignore them as OT did in the tragic case of Malachi. The wellbeing and the interests of children must be at the centre; not protecting the interests of the Ministers and keeping the Government's nose clean. This Government is utterly failing our most vulnerable children."