Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Deputy Leader—Labour): I feel like it is timely that I can stand at the end of that contribution from Denise Roche and completely concur with the sentiment at the conclusion of her speech—timely also because she was speaking to housing issues. I really do think that that will be a key point of debate this election as it should be. My colleague Phil Twyford will speak to that issue sometime soon because housing truly is fundamental to us as the Labour Party the people's party because it fundamentally affects absolutely everything. As much as I am the spokesperson for children I cannot look past the impact of unaffordable housing and of poor quality housing on a child's health and well-being and on their family's discretionary income their ability to put food on the table and help that child fully participate in their school and education and in their community generally. So it affects everything.The issues that I want to speak to though relate more directly to elements of the social development portfolio that affect children. We do of course now have a Minister for Children a role that we have applauded for having been created. It is something that we had as a policy for some time. We equally had matching that policy the idea of creating a ministry for children something we as a Labour Party still stand by. We saw with much disappointment that the opportunity of creating a separate department was in a way squandered when the Minister decided to apply a very narrow approach to her work with children and child well-being by creating the Ministry for Vulnerable Children rather than a ministry for children. I think that speaks fundamentally to the differences in the social development portfolio generally between Labour and National. National has via its social investment approach taken the view that unless it can prove that there is a particular data-driven outcome it is not worth investing. On our side of the Chamber our view is that there are social and societal gains to be made by early intervention and early investment that may from time to time come in the form of universal services; that may reach beyond a particularly heavily targeted group; and that will not wait for someone to be in dire straits be it their mental health situation or be it the vulnerability of a child before we provide support services in a community because that essentially waits for harm to happen before we look to provide any intervention.I want to give a real-life example of where we have seen the Government's approach versus Labour's approach. For over 20 years now there has been a programme called Parents as First Teachers (PAFT) operating in New Zealand. It was attached to Plunket originally. The idea was that yes everyone in New Zealand gets their contracted visits—I hope that is not something that social investment will change. Every New Zealander is entitled to visits from Plunket nurses. It is a world-class service. But they identified that there were some families that would benefit from additional support. They might not be as this Government would predetermine. They may not be families that necessarily have another family member in prison or someone on a benefit or some other marker that the Government has determined is the only rationale by which you can ever get social services. They might however be isolated. They might be rural young have English as a second language or have something—just something—that may trigger some need in that family. The Plunket nurses use their professional discretion—their professional discretion via that universal service—to say these are families that could do with additional support.Parents as First Teachers was that additional support. The Government decided it did not target families that were vulnerable enough and cancelled it. I saw firsthand the accounts from families that stood as testament to the worth and value of that early investment. Where was the evidence to say that those families did not need that support? Where was the evidence to say that the need existed here and that should be mutually exclusive to the need that exists over here? But that is what this Government's model of so-called social investment is. It is a narrowing of the scope. It is essentially an exercise to try to reduce down the investment in people the investment in community. We fundamentally disagree with such a narrow view of well-being because it will result in simply greater need manifesting further down the track in our view. The Government's decision was to take money out of Parents as First Teachers and put it in Strengthening Families. Yes there is value in Strengthening Families but Strengthening Families triages a much higher-risk group. PAFT existed to stop families moving into that high-needs group. It was a totally short-sighted move.My additional view and the view of the Labour Party would be that if you genuinely want to have an effect on some of the things that the Government has targets around—infectious skin diseases preventable illnesses like respiratory diseases and bronchiectasis—then you would target the cause of those preventable hospitalisations. What are the causes of them?Clare Curran: Housing.JACINDA ARDERN: Housing.Hon Ruth Dyson: Cold damp houses.JACINDA ARDERN: Gold star to Clare Curran. Gold star to Ruth Dyson. Cold damp overcrowded houses: that is fundamentally the cause of those issues. Actually when we use the word overcrowded" often you might actually have sufficient bedrooms but families will reside in one room because that is the one room they can afford to heat. That then causes the spread of disease and infection. It is our view that if you want to make a fundamental difference then yes you will have plans around housing—well around reducing homelessness and overcrowding and improving the quality of housing—but why not target material deprivation? The Children's Commissioner suggested it. There is value in it. Surely we can agree it is an international measure. Why not actually target income poverty itself as the driver of so many of these social ills? That to us fundamentally demonstrates the Government's view around the notion of social investment: that the Government is the only one that can come in and save these families when actually a huge proportion of New Zealand families would need nothing to do with the State if they had the dignity to do the job themselves through decent wages decent incomes and the ability to look after themselves with dignity and respect. They do not need us to come to the rescue. A huge number of families do not need us. They just need a Government to back their ability to earn a decent wage. That is what they need and that is what is missing in this portfolio.What did we see last Budget? We saw finally acknowledgment though that we have a child poverty issue in New Zealand. The Government's response to that instead of looking at some of those bigger systemic issues was to provide a pot of money and say to officials: "Here is your pot of money. Choose how you distribute it." We know that because that is what came out at the Social Services Committee. That is what generated the $25-a-week increase for those on benefits. I will counter the rhetoric that exists that this was the first time benefits were raised in decades. That is totally incorrect. That is totally incorrect. The Labour Government when it introduced Working for Families introduced the family tax credit. The most extensive part of Working for Families was the family tax credit and it went to families on a benefit. There is a fundamental misunderstanding of that policy package. So it is totally incorrect to say that that $25 was the first increase.It is also incorrect to claim it made a difference because when you have a 40 percent increase in rents in Auckland in an 8-year period you can bet your bottom dollar that 25 bucks is gone already. During the Mt Albert by-election I had someone come and tell me that they had just received a 20 percent increase in their rent. Snap: that is that $25 gone—gone.Hon Ruth Dyson: And more.JACINDA ARDERN: And more—absolutely. What we need this election is some honesty from this Government about what really will create change for these families. It has touted that it might do something around Working for Families. I think we just need a little honest reflection. In 2010 National froze the threshold for abatement. In 2012 it increased the abatement rate and it changed the income thresholds for Working for Families. In 2015 it increased the abatement rate again. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been taken out of Working for Families because of this Government's adjustments to that scheme and now we have the Minister claiming that that is probably where we are going to see some wins for families out of this Budget. I would remind New Zealanders that just like we saw for KiwiSaver this Government has tinkered and tinkered and tinkered again and squeezed families on middle incomes and low incomes via its changes in Working for Families. Do not be under any illusion that what we see in this Budget will necessarily be generous when you take that into account. Do not be under any illusion that the Government has well-being genuinely at its heart via something like social investment."