Turei Metiria: Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Turei Metiria: Income Tax (Universalisation of In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 07 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6398. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
METIRIA TUREI (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I want to thank all of those who have spoken in support of the Income Tax (Universalisation of the In-work Tax Credit) Amendment Bill over the last few weeks and are voting to send it to the Social Services Committee. I understand that 60 members of the House tonight will vote in favour of the bill—very nearly a majority of Parliament. It is not quite enough but a good start and better than we have seen in the past. I want to thank also all of those New Zealanders who have supported this bill in their various ways and supported the campaign to end child poverty. 
The Green Party has long believed that the in-work tax credit is unjust. The reasons for keeping it in its current form are facile. Worse they damage individual families and children by trapping them into poverty and damage community cohesion by creating an arbitrary and unreal separation between those who work and those who rely on a benefit. It is unjustifiable. 
I recently saw two graphs showing the trend of child poverty from the mid 1980s to today from both Australia and New Zealand. The New Zealand graph is unsurprising. Child poverty rose radically during the late 1980s and into the 1990s particularly during the National Party’s vicious attacks on beneficiaries. Child poverty reduced slightly in the 2000s with Working for Families but it remains worse now than it was in the 1980s—that is a greater percentage of children now live in poverty than did in the 1980s. In Australia over exactly the same period of time in a similar economy and culture the rates of child poverty have continued to decline and decline. The two images of New Zealand and Australia child poverty rates are vastly different because they tell two different stories about how children are valued in the economy by the political decision makers. 
In Australia there is a comprehensive set of child-related payments of significant amounts. The payments are for the children and they apply to a family regardless of whether a person is in work or on a benefit. Australian families get something like NZ$330 a week for two children aged between 5 and 13 and more if the youngest child is under 5. If the child is newborn families get a one-off payment of A$5000 to help cover the costs. 
In New Zealand the same two-child family is subject to highly complex and discriminatory criteria for Working for Families. They get something like $216 a week for their children only if they satisfy hours of work criteria and are not on a benefit. If they are on a benefit or have simply lost work they get only $156 a week. Low-income parents with a newborn in New Zealand who do not meet the stringent requirements for paid parental leave get at most an extra $1200 parental tax payment. Parents who are on a benefit get no extra financial assistance at all for their newborn babies. 
In New Zealand families with children have been deliberately stripped of decent income support either through benefit cuts deliberate wage-reduction policies or by discriminatory Working for Families tax transfers that value some families over others. The name “in-work” for this particular child payment is simply a justification to deny the child payment to New Zealand’s poorest children. In doing so the Government saves itself some $450 million a year. The accumulative loss of income for low-income households since 2006 is $2.5 billion. That is $2.5 billion that is money taken from the mouths of New Zealand’s poorest children. 
These are political decisions. Solutions to poverty are absolutely determined by political action to put children at the centre of the Government’s economic decisions to value their dignity and security by guaranteeing the essentials: decent benefits good wages and affordable homes. No provision of services or charities can eliminate poverty; it can only help ease the worst effects and that is desperately needed. But child poverty is a political issue. Child poverty is an economic issue. The Green Party proudly puts children at the centre of its political and economic decisions. We ask that this Parliament does the same. I commend this bill to the House.