Bidois DanDAN BIDOIS (National—Northcote): It is a pleasure to take a call on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. I must say it's not the first time that I've had to follow on from the dribble and the negativity of Marama Davidson from a speech that lacks substance or factual accuracy.But let me come to the bill which we are clearly supporting in the House today. I would like to acknowledge Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern for raising what is an important topic for us to discuss and debate in this House and a topic that we can all agree on as members of Parliament who want the best outcomes for our people and also to improve the chances for a better life. So I want to acknowledge the Prime Minister for bringing this bill to the House. I also want to acknowledge my colleagues on the Social Services and Community Committee and in particular the chair Gareth Hughes for your guidance through this submission process and also the officials for looking after the submissions and giving us good advice in this process.It is a pleasure to speak on this bill. It's something that I think we can all agree on in terms of the high-level framework but more needs to be done—rather than intent. More needs to be done on the action front if we're going to actually achieve a substantial reduction. So just to go through the purpose of the bill it's quite simple: to help achieve a sustained and significant reduction in child poverty. The key message that I want to make today is that we on this side of the House support the intent. We support the framework for child poverty reduction although we differ on the pathway to get us to a reduction in child poverty.So why do we support this bill? We support the targets the aspirations that we have to reduce child poverty. We support of course the range of new measures for the way to measure child poverty in New Zealand. As Peter Drucker a management guru once said you can't manage what you don't measure. And so I think that this bill reflects the desire of the House to in fact start measuring so that we can achieve a sustained reduction. The intent around having Oranga Tamariki action plans is something that this side of the House supports along with the coordination between ministries which we know is often lacking in many instances in order to achieve what are going to be great outcomes for reduction in child poverty in the future.But I want to tell the House very clearly that you can't legislate for poverty reduction in itself. For example out of all of the global poverty reduction—in 1981 42 percent of the world's population was in extreme poverty according to the World Bank data. With the latest data that we have from 2013 that number is down to 10.7 percent. That's a $1 billion reduction. Where does that one billion—not one billion dollars; 1 billion people I should say—come from? Of that one billion reduction in poverty 500 million comes from China so let's look at what China did in that time to understand what it takes to actually reduce poverty in the world. As we know under President Deng Xiaoping China went through a massive array of economic reforms encouraging private sector growth and through that reduced their poverty by 500 million people to 2013.We can talk about New Zealand in that case and I would refute the argument by Marama Davidson that the previous Government in fact increased child poverty. From the last five years the poverty figures—we had a substantial reduction of 85000 in the last five years. And so this idea that you can just put out a bill and that the Prime Minister can go to Europe and say What a game-changer this is for child poverty in New Zealand."—that is a load of nonsense. The only way to reduce child poverty—as we know from the China example as we know from so many countless examples—is to focus on a strong economy private sector growth and getting people into work. That is what this side of the House believes. We believe in focusing on jobs a strong economy higher productivity and incomes.My worry for this bill even though we are supportive of it is that that side of the House has no plan to grow the economy grow jobs or increase incomes. Let's see what they have. Let me go through what this Government is doing that will not reduce child poverty. Banning oil and gas exploration overturning tax cuts that would have made—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! This is a second reading speech.DAN BIDOIS: OK Madam Assistant Speaker. Let me come back to the report of the select committee because I believe that while the intent of this bill is good and that we are supportive of this bill so much more needs to be done and we're not seeing that from this Government at the moment.But as I said we had over 600 people in the select committee from this prospect and you know there are a range of changes that we've made including from one of my colleagues Sir Alfred—no sorry not Sir Alfred Ngaro; the Hon Alfred Ngaro who submitted a bill—Nicola Willis: We're getting a consensus on that.DAN BIDOIS: We're getting a consensus. We had a Supplementary Order Paper in his name around improving the data and making sure that the Ministers are required to report on child poverty measures in New Zealand. [Interruption] ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): Order! Order! Inside voices please.DAN BIDOIS: I want to talk about a visit that the Social Services Committee had to Australia recently where during that trip we went to the Australian Research Alliance for Children and Youth which is otherwise known as ARACY. What amazed me about that visit is that they did a survey of children and they asked children to indicate what matters to them. It was quite a large robust survey and as the members from the opposite side will recall the two top factors that came out from this visit were that love and the safety of your home were the most important two factors in a child's well-being. So I would caution the public of New Zealand to think that this is going to solve poverty. What I think that we need to focus on—and judging from the ARACY example in Australia—is communities and focus on making sure that children feel safe but also to focus on law and order because that no doubt is an extreme example of how in fact poverty can be reduced in New Zealand.So I would like to just conclude some of my remarks by saying that we are supportive of the bill that we've got before the House today. I would like to commend the Prime Minister for raising this. I'd like to commend of course the Social Services and Community Committee for their work and also Alfred Ngaro for his contribution throughout the time for this. But I would caution that so much more needs to be done in order to achieve what we all want to achieve in this House which is: are people better off leaving happier healthier lives? We're not going to get that from this bill. So this side of the House will be making sure that we hold that side accountable for delivering on these targets because quite frankly actions speak louder than words. So I commend this bill to the House.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call—five minutes the Hon Willie Jackson."