Ardern Jacinda: Debate on Budget Policy StatementText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Debate on Budget Policy Statement[Sitting date: 12 March 2014. Volume:697;Page:16602. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):Just because you say it does not make it true. To have to sit through a speech from that member of the House Jami-Lee Ross claiming that Labour when it left office left an economy that was damaged is an absolutely outrageous statement unless of course you deem damage to be nine continuous Budget surpluses unless you consider damage to be zero net Crown debt or unless you consider damage to be the highest continuous economic growth since World War II.It seems incredible to me that that side of the House has tried to completely rewrite history when it comes to the economic management of New Zealand under a Labour Government. It is outrageous. It speaks to the lack of trust you can have in the way that that Government describes what is going on in the New Zealand economy today. What is not in doubt at all is that this is not an economy that is working for everyone. Everything that that member just said about the current economic status we are living under in New Zealand ignored what most New Zealanders are experiencing day to day. What he described was an environment where very few are doing well but a lot are doing a lot worse.What I want to speak to is how this Budget this debate this Budget Policy Statement could have been different; how instead of using just economic markers—as the last member did around GDP Crown debt net deficits—a Budget should ultimately be about people. A Budget should be about the outcomes for people. What is the most consistent measure that you get groups like the OECD or even Unicef talking about these days? They talk about how the true marker of a decent society is not those economic indicators but how your young and your old fare in a society. Those are the kinds of markers that we as a nation should be focused on.And how are they faring? Well even before Treasury corrected its miscount recently we now know that our older citizens—the ones for instance who are renting but are in their retirement—have a poverty rate amongst that group of 50 percent. Of our oldest citizens 50 percent who are in rental accommodation are living in poverty. That is a marker of our society. There are 285000 children living in poverty—27 percent. That is a marker of our society. Fourteen percent of children are living below 50 percent of the median income. That increased after we found out about Treasury’s significant error. Those children are living in severe poverty—not just poverty; severe poverty. A large number of them are in their most vulnerable years zero to 4 years. That is the period when those children are spending the longest—that is a marker.And how are those children faring under this economy? Rising power prices are impacting on those children. Rising housing costs—the average house price has gone up 24 percent under this Government. As much as that member talked about interest rates these are families that do not have the luxury of owning a home and who are suffering significantly under increasing rents. High food prices are impacting on those vulnerable children. These are the measures of a society but that is not what this Government is interested in. If it was it would measure poverty. It would show leadership on it. It would have a plan. It would target to reduce it. It would report on it. That is what the Labour Party would do.Labour has a bill that says when it comes round to speaking on the Budget we will put into the Public Finance Act that the Minister of Finance will have to report on how much progress they have made on child poverty. That is the marker that we are going to put up next to the current account deficits and GDP—how are our children in poverty faring? We will set a target to reduce poverty. We will build on our Best Start plan which helps every single child under the age of 3 in poverty. They will benefit from Best Start the weekly payment that we would introduce.Those are the kinds of measures of a society: whether you look out for your young and whether you look out for your old. Therefore that should be what Budget Policy Statements are focused on.