Ardern Jacinda: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: General Debate[Sitting date: 16 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6687. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): Amongst all of the other distractions this week members may be forgiven for having missed that it is in fact as my colleague Annette King pointed out Social Justice Week and I think that is an opportunity for us to discuss and debate as a Parliament how far we have progressed or potentially how little progression we have made in that space in recent years. In fact it is disappointing and it should be disappointing to every single member of this House that there has not been even one media report for instance—that I have seen—on the fact that just a month ago we saw figures come out that showed our child poverty statistics in New Zealand have jumped from 260000 children to 305000 children. That is a jump of 45000 children in just a year. That is based on the Ministry of Social Development’s own data. As much as the Minister for Social Development stood up in question time and tried to claim that I was disingenuous for using those figures they are the figures that even Unicef has used. If you analyse the data going back to 1991 you will find that that was the last time we saw a jump as significant as this one in terms of child poverty figures.It is hard of course to rival the 1991 figures. That was of course the time that National produced the black Budget and slashed benefits and now of course it is crowing about having been the Government that is now putting in place a minor—a minor—boost to benefits of $25 a week.Hon Anne Tolley: Ha ha!JACINDA ARDERN: Anne Tolley laughs but this is the reason that I call it minor. It is because Labour introduced the family tax credit which significantly boosted benefit numbers—that is something that the National Government ignores.The second reason that I am pushing back on that Minister is that Labour produced the Best Start policy.Hon Anne Tolley: They can’t take it. They hate it.JACINDA ARDERN: It was a benefit that increased by $60 a week per child and it went to children on benefits too Ms Tolley. That would have made a significant difference.Hon Anne Tolley: The Labour Party just hates it.JACINDA ARDERN: And Ms Tolley I am going to correct you. Labour does not hate the increase you have introduced. We hate that it was disingenuous we hate that you did not introduce it right away we hate that it was not per child and we hate that it was political because if you were not being political then why will you not introduce a child poverty target? Why is it that a Government that can measure unemployment rates child abuse rates and rheumatic fever rates can measure how many people have moved on to benefits and off benefits and can measure how many people have moved overseas and have come back from overseas—it measures almost everything—refuses to accept measurements on child poverty? And why does this continue to be a frustration for the Labour Party? Because what gets measured gets done. Sure sometimes some of those targets get manipulated. We have seen that when it comes to justice. But what gets measured gets done and this Government will not accept official measures on child poverty.As much as the Government argues—and I have heard Anne Tolley use the same argument that Bill English and Paula Bennett have used all the way through. Their argument has been that there are too many measures. Do you know what Ms Tolley? We agree—we agree. In fact internationally it has been accepted that there are roughly five and the Children’s Commissioner has agreed that there are five. He has even conducted his own set of measures because we have a lack of them currently accepted by the Government. So we have agreed on five measures. We have even drafted a bill on what it would look like to put them in place so we can finally start targeting child poverty because it matters. The Government continues to refuse. In fact I tried to remove any questions of numbers today and I just asked the Minister a simple question: is poverty too high? What did we get? “I can’t answer.” Minister I would hopethat having seen children die because of cold houses in this country having seen children go to school hungry having seen infectious skin diseases and preventable hospitalisations regardless of the politics you would admit that child poverty is too high. So Ms Tolley if you want something I hate I hate that you cannot even acknowledge that.