Bradford Sue: General Debates 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Bradford Sue: General Debates 
[Sitting date: 15 October 2003. Volume:612;Page:9195. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
SUE BRADFORD (Green) 
: 
 Next week on Sunday 26 October New Zealand officially observes something called Children’s Day. According to the Associate Minister for Social Development and Employment (CYF) Ruth Dyson in a letter sent out to all of us today Children’s Day is “an annual day set aside to celebrate our children”. I would like to challenge the Government to take some meaningful steps towards really celebrating our children not just in words and colouring books but also in dollars. The Green Party’s good polling this week—up 4.2 percent to 9.2 percent—comes not only on the back of our strong stand on GE but also as a result of our opposition to things like the proliferation of pokies in our communities and our determination to end child poverty. Labour has dropped in the polls and again I am sure it is not just on account of GE but also because Labour is not meeting the expectations of the many people who voted for it hoping that the rich-poor gap in this country would be closed not widened. 
The  
Room for Improvement: Current New Zealand Housing Policies and their Implication for our Children 
 report released last month by the Child Poverty Action Group showed graphically that despite a growing economy and falling unemployment poverty and overcrowded housing continue to increase. That report followed the revelation only a few days earlier in the Christchurch  
Press 
 that large numbers of Christchurch children were being fed by their schools because they were suffering from malnutrition. The Budget this year was characterised once again by the absence of assistance for the children of New Zealand despite earlier tentative promises from Labour that at least family support and family assistance would be restructured to provide more resources for families—sometime. 
Mr Maharey has also been promising major reforms to the benefit system—sometime. The Budget offered nothing again. How long do we have to accept this while at the same time we seem to be able to afford to donate $34 million towards a rich man’s yacht race and to set up a $28 million Families Commission replicating work that is and could be done elsewhere? Benefits have never returned to anything like the equivalent pre-1991 levels. The minimum wage remains at the miserable rate of $8.50 an hour barely enough to support a single adult much less a family. Income-related rents have been a tremendous boost to many families but with the State housing waiting list topping 12000 now and with many still living in atrocious and/or unaffordable conditions they provide only one part of the solution. Dr Cullen now presides over an “embarrassment of riches” as the  
Sunday Star-Times  
put it this weekend. The forecast surplus has risen by a quarter to $5.6 billion in the year to June. While this money has been plunged into the Superannuation Fund capital spending and the repayment of debt surely by next year’s Budget something can be left over for children and families. 
I have a bill sitting on the Order Paper that legislates for a universal child benefit at the minimal rate of $15 a week for the first child and $10 a week for second and subsequent children. If implemented even at this pitifully low level it would cost about $500 million or $600 million a year. I realise that Labour’s first reaction will likely be to veto my bill on the grounds of unaffordability. I call on Labour to have a serious think about what all our children deserve and to think about not only reforming family support and family assistance but also about providing a universal child benefit so that at least all primary caregivers will have a little more to spend on things like food clothing and school trips. The Government can afford it. It is simply a matter of priorities and of political will. 
This morning our newly appointed Commissioner for Children Cindy Kiro gave a moving speech at a Littlies Lobby function here at Parliament. Ms Kiro said among other things: “Why should we accept that children grow up in poverty in this country? I simply do not accept this premise. Every household in this country raising children and young people should have the support of our society to raise them.” I congratulate our new commissioner on her clear-eyed courage in laying down this challenge. I just hope that our Labour Government will listen to her.