Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour): I'd like to conclude this debate by just slowing down the tone a little bit and making my point with a brief story. My parents John and Patricia Andersen were school teachers in primary school for their entire working lives. They taught predominantly in poorer areas in New Zealand and predominantly in rural parts of New Zealand. They finished their over 90 years' teaching experience combined in a small part of Northland a place called Ngātaki which is 60 kilometres north of Kaitāia. When they arrived there the first thing my father noticed was that the sandpit was in disarray. It was not in a good shape for kids to be playing in. It was overgrown. So quick as a flash he ordered a trailer a high-sided trailer with some fresh sand to be dumped and put into the sandpit. He went online. He hadn't looked for sandpit toys for quite a while but he was stunned to find the array of amazing sandpit toys now available to modern New Zealand children. There were wheels that spun. There were different types of physics arrangements you could do to these amazing different sandpit toys. He spent quite a significant amount of money to have a really good range of sandpit toys. When the bell rang for the first interval and the kids were released they ran to the sandpit and they loved the toys. They played with them like never before. And when the bell rang again and they went back inside my father went over to inspect the sandpit and was astonished to find that every single toy was gone. The whole lot had vanished. So he called a special assembly to find out where the sandpit toys had gone and he called a couple of the main kids over to ask where they had gone. They dug down. They dug down about half a foot because they'd buried them. They'd buried them because they never thought they would get those toys again and they wanted to play with them. That story has always stuck with me because I've always wanted New Zealand to be the best place in the world to be a child and I am absolutely determined in the fact that I do not want to see a culture of poverty evolve in New Zealand. What has worried me over the past nine years before I came into this House was that that is exactly what we began to see happening in New Zealand: a divided society where children don't have the basics they need.That's why having things like child poverty targets is so important. And I would like to remind this House that time and time again under the previous Government it was put in the too-hard basket to measure child poverty. There was a refusal to meet international covenants to try and measure child poverty. The Prime Minister of this Government has taken a lead in that area. We have legislated targets and we have put into it as our annual reporting as part of the Wellbeing Budget that we will be measuring child poverty as to how that's tracking and we will show our success in that area and we'll be held to that by showing our account in that space. Number two—the Best Start payment. Let's look at that. It is $60 a week for the first year of a child's life and that will continue into the third year for those on lower and middle incomes. After that third year we're going to tack into a part that was a legacy from the previous Labour Government: 20 hours' free early childhood education—so important for mums and dads who want to get back to work but can't afford to pay for full childcare. It is so important.Paid parental leave is yet another one: 22 out weeks delivered by this Government with a promise to take it to 26 weeks by 1 July 2020. Can I remind members that that was vetoed. The financial veto was used under the previous National Government to stop that coming through. The Families Package—the Families Package delivers to 385000 New Zealand families with children another $75 in their pocket every single week to put food on the table to buy important things like nappies like shoes like schoolbooks. Those are the things that are announced—right down to the announcement today by the Hon Tracey Martin that has put money into intervening early into childhood and making sure that if there are learning disabilities if there are issues with our children's learning we are identifying those before they even get to school because we know we can change a child's life by making sure they can hear they can listen and they can learn. We are investing in our children's future. I'm proud to be a country that makes New Zealand the best place in the world to be a child and I'm proud of the fact that we have turned the ship around away from a culture of poverty. The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.