Ardern Jacinda: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Support for Children in Hardship Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 21 May 2015. Volume:705;Page:3531. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): There are many reasons why various members of Parliament come into this place or enter into politics. Child poverty has always been one of my main motivations and it is helpful perhaps in that regard that child poverty is one of those issues that are man-made. If we are looking for an issue where the Government absolutely can make a difference it is an issue like child poverty. But how to make that difference is the question that those who are interested in this area grapple with. Well helpfully the evidence—the numbers; the whole picture that is built out of those statistics—tells us exactly what we as politicians need to do. That is what makes this area so frustrating. There are 260000 children in need and we know exactly what we need to do to help them. I would liken it also perhaps to knowing where there might be a site of frequent car crashes—where there are continual accidents because there is a blind spot. You go begging to the Government to fix the blind spot. Well today the Government has put up a sign.Let us be clear that any extra support that is going into the homes of vulnerable families is absolutely welcomed. This side of the House welcomes the fact that the Government has today—in my mind really for the first time—genuinely acknowledged that there is severe hardship and poverty in New Zealand. But now that it has acknowledged there is a problem it has an absolute obligation and responsibility to do more because that is what the evidence tells us we need to do.The first thing we know from the numbers—the measures of persistent poverty—is that the longest period of time when hardship is experienced in a child’s life is actually when that child is first born. That we also know is the most critical time of a child’s life. Instinct will probably tell you that that hardship is most often going to be the situation of sole parents. It is harder for them to go to work because they are the sole caregiver and that poverty generally lasts for 3 to 4 years in those earliest yearsof that child’s life. So yes giving those families an extra $25 a week is a good thing but let us also be realistic. For a family with one child $25 is great. What about families with two children or three children? That payment is per family not per child. This is the point the Children’s Commissioner was right to make. It is ultimately roughly enough for a large pack of nappies for a week.In the Labour Party we looked at the evidence too. That is why when we developed the Best Start package we thought that we needed to give those families $60 a week that we needed to give that per child and that we needed to make sure it lasted for at least the first 3 years of that child’s life. That was what Best Start absolutely did. It was targeted but it was more generous. That is what the evidence absolutely told us to do. In the Labour Party we also recognised that that is one part of the picture. The second part of the picture is that there are families in poverty who are working. This Government has said persistently that the way to get out of poverty is to get into work. If only that were true but that is not what our economy is delivering for New Zealand families. Two out of five families living in poverty are in work.Not all work is born equal in New Zealand. Not all work is decent work. Not all work means that families are free from the burden of poverty and that is why we absolutely needed a Government today that acknowledged that—that looked at the evidence from the Growing Up in New Zealand report which said that some families are working multiple jobs just to survive. In part this bill potentially exacerbates that problem. Yes the Government is giving a bit of extra support in welfare for families but it is also placing extra work obligations on parents of children—no longer at the age of 5 but at the age of 3. That does not acknowledge the reality for many of our sole parent caregivers. Finding a job is one thing but we must point out that in this Budget there is nothing about creating work.Last year 41 percent of jobs in New Zealand were created by whom? Small businesses. They get nothing in this Budget. If you want to help families to find work then help the people who create the jobs that they move into. Finding jobs is one thing but making sure that those jobs are paying decently is another. Also making sure that the hours that you find in those part-time jobs fit in with your early childhood education care is another question entirely. Part-time work is often at hours that are not family and child - friendly. Again we need to be realistic about the kind of environment that these parents are going to be operating in. Labour has serious reservations about this element of the bill and this is exactly what we will be looking at in the select committee.It is also about the bigger picture. The evidence has always said that to tackle child poverty you need a plan. In the wake of this Budget the Children’s Commissioner has today said that this extra payment although good does not constitute a plan. A genuine plan that really wants to fix child poverty would make housing affordable. We know it is a fact that some families are using 50 percent of their income just to make sure that they have a roof over their heads and sometimes that roof is damp and it is cold and it is crowded. If we are genuinely addressing child poverty we need to make sure that housing is affordable and available to those families. That should have been part of the plan.We need to make sure that health care is genuinely accessible. Some of these families are experiencing such dire circumstances that even though it might be free for their child to go to the doctor the parent who is meant to take them has debt at their local clinic and so does not go because they know that they will not be able to get an appointment before paying their debt. I have heard of stories of families who have lost their jobs and whose kids have contracted scabies. Although they have managed to go and get the treatment for them they cannot even afford the hot water that is required to do the hot-water wash to rid the family of that affliction. Poverty is a vicious cycle and it never affects just one part of a family’s life.We would also be making sure if we had a genuine plan that we address the hidden costs of education and make it accessible. Labour was committed and remains committed to a full whole-of-Government plan. We have a bill in the ballot called the Child Poverty Reduction and Eradication Bill. It is all about making sure that the Ministers for housing education health social development and finance all have responsibility for a package that deals with child poverty. For us Best Start—that $566 million package—was only one part of the picture and for this Government this bill should be only one part of the picture.One extra thing: on child poverty a critical difference between us and this Government is that we are willing to putin place the target. We are willing to put a number to how much we are committed to reducing child poverty by. Why has that Government not done it? I know from having done numbers for ourselves how hard it is to genuinely lift a family out of poverty and this measure today will not do it. It just will not and we will report on how much we do on that target in every single Budget.I leave my final words for the place where this all started for me. I talk a lot about having spent a few years as a child living in a town called Murupara. The people in Murupara who found themselves in hardship found themselves in that place ultimately because their region and their town were dependent on forestry. In the 1980s that industry was absolutely gutted for them. That was what ultimately drove the poverty in that town. A measure like this today will not solve that problem for the people of a town like Murupara. We need ultimately an economy that works for everyone and that gives people hope. Today the Government acknowledged that we have a problem but sadly it did not fix it.