Ardern Jacinda: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Adjournment — Sittings of the House 
[Sitting date: 12 December 2012. Volume:686;Page:7492. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I am not sure just what happened there in that speech but I want to start at the beginning of mine by adding my thanks to all the wonderful staff who make this place what it is who keep it ticking along and who basically put up with all of us existing in this space particularly the forbearance of those who have to listen to all of our speeches here in this Chamber. I want to add my special thanks to the Labour team and extended whanau and all the work that they do—our research unit our media team the leader’s office and all of our executive assistants. They are very special people and I know I speak for my colleagues when I thank them sincerely for their work. 
John Key stood up as Prime Minister in this House and in his adjournment debate speech claimed that he had ended the year as he had started. That literally actually cannot be true. Based on some of the facts that we have before us things are actually much much worse than even when he started this year. And you know that things are bad things are terrible when a Government starts in order to try to prove that things are OK comparing its statistics and its figures with the 1990s and the last time that it was having an absolutely dismal time in Government. Not for everyone has this been a positive year. In fact for the majority of Kiwis particularly those who are most vulnerable including some of our youngest members of society this has been a very difficult year and there is no bright light on the horizon. 
It is telling that on the forecourt of Parliament today this last sitting day the Child Poverty Action Group’s youth wing—and I congratulate it on its initiative and its work—organised a rally on Parliament called “Bare your soles for child poverty”. It asked that for a brief moment politicians take off their shoes and experience what many Kiwi kids are experiencing on a daily basis: basic material deprivation. I do not say that in a flippant way. We know the figures. Material deprivation has gone from 15 percent to 21 percent under this Government. Those are basic enforced lacks—not having enough money to go to the doctor and fill your prescription so forgoing doctors’ visits when you are sick. That would explain the increase in preventable hospitalisations that we have seen in this country and the  
Children’s Social Health Monitor 
 released this week showed us that. 
The shame that this Government needs to face up to is things like Third World diseases rheumatic fever infectious skin diseases and kids ending up in hospital because their eczema has got so bad or because they have things like scabies but do not even have enough hot water or power in their homes to do a hot wash to get rid of it. This is Third World stuff and this our national shame—the National Party’s shame. We have 270000 children living in poverty. These are our most vulnerable children despite what Ms Bennett said when she produced her white paper that was meant to help vulnerable children then narrowed down the number she wanted to help to a few 10000 or 20000. There are 270000 children who need this House’s attention—270000. One in five children is growing up in the homes of parents who are reliant on Government support of parents who are on benefits because they cannot find work and they have an inadequate income to survive on. That is this Government’s legacy. That is how it is ending this year and I see no bright light in the forthcoming years to remedy that. For our kids it has been an epic fail of a year. 
Many—and I understand this—have asked us on this side of the House and have asked the Greens and asked the Mana Party “Why can’t you collaborate with the Government to try to resolve this situation for our most vulnerable kids?”. I answer them sincerely and frankly that we cannot lower our sights as low as that Government has set the bar. We cannot aim that low and until that Government raises the bar for what it will do for those children we cannot and will not collaborate with such low aspirations for children. But I know what that Government will say. I can hear it now. It will say that it has brought in its welfare reforms. That has been its response to child poverty. Show me how the Government has helped one child with its welfare reforms. I will tell you what they do. There is not one extra training opportunity in that bill. There is not one new job. There are more sanctions. We have already seen them. They have doubled under this Government to 57000 per annum and 377 families have had their benefits cut by this Government. How has that helped child poverty I ask it. 
There is more work testing but no more work. There are more obligations but again no response from the Government as to how it is going to improve people’s chances of getting employment. It is contracting out medical assessments. We have already got a chief medical assessor who likens Government support to a drug. Where is the dignity in social security when you have someone who uses references like that? It has put in what it calls its social obligations yet as a Government it shows no obligation to help Kiwis find employment—the most basic of roles for a Government. I imagine that what the Government will also throw up is that it has had the odd target in health. Well that is all very well but the Government continues to treat the symptoms and not the cause. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: A huge improvement. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: Why try to swab for rheumatic fever Mr Calder when you could spend a few thousand dollars insulating a house and save yourself tens of thousands of dollars down the track? Why not treat the overcrowded housing and the poor provision of social housing in this country? In fact let us go back to basics. Why not measure poverty? Why not measure poverty? This Government has refused to do even that. When you have a Prime Minister who says that what gets measured gets done and that you will not know whether you are successful unless you measure it you know there is no intention to deal with our national shame because the Government refuses to measure poverty. Unicef the OECD—everyone else seems to manage it but as RichiePoulton from Otago University has pointed out we have Third World diseases and we have Third World data. That needs to change. 
That brings me to my final point. If that Government does not want to help vulnerable children as a moral imperative maybe it will look at it as an economic one. We spend $6 billion to $8 billion per annum on child poverty yet the Government will not reprioritise what we spend in order to prevent children from having a miserable start in life as a consequence. There are things we can do and Labour has already presented part of its plan. Firstly let us demonstrate our accountability. Let us legislate a requirement to measure the five measures of poverty: relative measures static income measures material deprivation severity and persistence. Let us measure it. Then let us set targets to reduce it. I have a bill that the Government could pick up tomorrow if it wanted. I am not telling the Government how much it has to reduce it by; I am just telling it that it should at least aspire to do it. It is as basic as that. We should also be transparent about how much we have achieved: tell the public; report on child poverty. What a difference I have no doubt that would make. We urge the Government: surprise us take up that bill in its name and legislate to be accountable on child poverty. 
Secondly put food in schools. It is basic. It is a no-brainer. For the Government to claim that it is doing its part because it has got food parcels shows how desperate things are. Put food in schools. There is no reason regardless of whether that Government wants to blame parents or others that children should suffer as a result of the Government’s principle on food in schools. Thirdly adopt our policy of warrants of fitness for rental properties. Not all of the kids living in poverty are in State houses—in fact the majority are not. They are cold they are damp and they deserve better from us and we can and should set some standards for them. Finally income matters. You will not solve child poverty unless we look at income. The minimum wage needs to go up and we need a living wage. These are just the beginning of things that Labour would do in Government on behalf of kids. 
Next year must be the year for our kids. Despite Maggie Barry’s standing orders—we may not have experienced poverty in this House—it is absolutely our responsibility to do something about it. This Labour Party when in Government will. Until then we watch shamefully as that Government stands idly by and does nothing.