Ardern Jacinda: Debate on Prime Minister’s StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement[Sitting date: 28 January 2014. Volume:696;Page:15552. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I want to begin by acknowledging some of the contributions that have been made by my colleagues in the House today particularly the personal address that was made by the Hon John Banks and to just again articulate that of course when we discuss issues of poverty we often also discuss at times issues of neglect. But they are in some cases two very different things and we have always required different policy responses to address those issues. No one has ever argued that those issues are simple. They are complex and require not just one response but multiple responses and I will speak today to some of Labour’s ideas in that area.State of the nation speeches as we have seen in the past 2 weeks speak volumes about the vision and direction that political parties want to take not just their parties in but voters—indeed the entire country—in the future if they are the successful Government after an election. You can see where there is commonality and you can see where there is a very big difference. You can see where there is consensus and where there still remains debate. If you want to talk currently about areas of consensus it is very hard to argue that not all of us want children to have a good education in this country. In fact we want children—no matter which school they go to no matter which community they grow up in—to have the best education possible. There is absolute consensus on that. That is why you saw Labour respond to even the Government’s package as having some good ideas that we think we could use. We acknowledged that because of course we are always trying to ensure that we have good professional development and support for our schools. We can quibble over details but that principle remains. That is why you will have seen us supporting in the area of education the Greens’ ideas. Community hubs are fantastic. The ideas around nutrition in schools—good stuff. Of course we are in support of that; in fact we had similar ideas in our 2011 policy.But where there continues to be division is the idea of whether or not children can have their entire lives turned round by the experience they have once they walk through the school gate. Can a child leave behind their home life their upbringing the nurturing they have or do not have whether they have got enough resource and whether there is a computer in the home to do their homework with enough money for a school uniform or money to participate in school trips? We can throw all the in-kind assistance in the world that we want to to families but if families do not have the resources they need to do the job that is there we will always have this debate. In kind goes only so far and that is why the recent OECD report the Programme for International Student Assessment statistics—the ones we all debated about why we are going backwards—pointed out that New Zealand and Chinese Taipei are standout countries when it comes to the fact that we have not been able to overcome those inequalities in our education system and that perhaps it was time to start looking at socio-economic factors. The OECD spelt it out for us. New Zealand would benefit by looking at policies that would improve the socio-economic status of the children who are currently failing in our education system.You cannot isolate a child’s life. You cannot simply fix everything through a teacher and nor should we ask teachers to fix everything. So that is why we are looking beyond that. And why should we look beyond that? Because quite simply the cost of families not having enough to provide for their children costs us money. We spend an estimated $6 billion per annum on the unnecessary cost of things like health care—picking up a child in a hospital system because the family could not afford their prescription or doctor’s costs. You may argue that under-sixes are free but I can guarantee that a parent does not take their child to the doctor for their free doctor’s visit if they have got a billthat they did not pay when they last visited. We know that that is happening in our communities.Those are the kinds of costs we can save if families have the resource they need to do their own job that they want to be doing for themselves. It is not just a waste of money; it is a waste of human potential. So as much as National stands up and says that we cannot afford to invest we say that we cannot afford not to. We need the political courage to do it early to do it at a time when it will take 9 10 12 years to start seeing some of the benefits of what we are proposing now. But it is not about political brownie points. It is not about these bribes that somehow doing the right thing is all about. It is about actually getting the outcomes that we need further down the track. When Labour brings these policies in I can guarantee that there will be a whole lot of political parties that benefit down the track when our prison numbers drop and when we start having preventable hospitalisations drop. It is not about point-scoring; it is about doing what is good for New Zealand.Also when the Government says that there is not enough money in the kitty to do this well there apparently is enough money to spend $40 million on private schools. That is how much this Government has spent. There is enough money to spend over $1 billion on tax cuts to the very people it is now saying are far too rich to get anywhere near close to any kind of support when they have a first child but they can benefit from a tax cut from the National Government. There is enough money for those things but there apparently is not enough money to invest in children. There is enough money to ignore that we are spending an extraordinary amount on our universal superannuation scheme without looking at whether or not we need to start looking at the age of eligibility not only to guarantee that it remains universal and that it remains sustainable but so that we are able to start investing in children in their youngest years and not just in our older generation. Both groups deserve our attention as politicians.But I want to talk in more detail about the Best Start programme because some of the members on that side of the House seem to have missed the point and the savings that can be made through this kind of investment. First starting with the Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty the Children’s Commissioner led this group. Business New Zealand was a member of this group. Even Business New Zealand acknowledges that businesses are going to suffer if their future workforce is not properly supported. Not even Bill English seems to have acknowledged that point that it has strongly made. Business New Zealand was a member of the advisory group that recommended that New Zealand return to a universal family benefit. We had one. We had one for many many years. Many members of this House grew up in families that received a universal family benefit. In fact most members of this House did because it was cancelled only in 1991 under Ruth Richardson. So most of us in this House benefited from that. It went to a mother primarily and it benefited children. It was a great part of our system. The expert advisory group recommended that we go back to that—that we return to a universal payment up to the age of 5. Labour has committed to bringing it in in year 1. There is no year that you can more justify than the first year for having such a near-universal payment. We say “near” because we did decide to put a cap in. We wanted to reach as many families as possible and this payment will but we did decide that in these particular times we needed to put a cap in place. The expert advisory group said to go even further than we have but we wanted to put in place the building blocks for a system that acknowledges that we need step change. We need to acknowledge that from 0 to 3 is not only the most important developmental stage for a child; it is also the portion of time that is the hardest for parents to juggle care and work in. Those are the years that we need to be supporting and that is exactly what we will do.The one thing that that side of the House refuses to acknowledge as well is that 60 percent of people do not get paid parental leave. Sixty percent of people are not eligible for paid parental leave. At the moment what can they do? Oh maybe there is the parental tax credit that Jenny Shipley chucked in just so that it would try to be a little bit of a sop to the people who missed out on paid parental leave. We need something that acknowledges that the vast majority of our families are not eligible for something that has broad support in this House. So why is there not broad support for a payment that acknowledges that important year in the same way that paid parental leave does but that goes further that reaches more people? I would like to hear the Minister of Finance’s view on that given that he seems to have an issue with paid parental leave as well.The Best Start package is not just about income. It is about education and it is about health as well but ultimately it is about saying that New Zealand children deserve our support and that parents deserve our trust and support for them to do the job that is theirs. Thank you.