Ardern JacindaCHILD POVERTY REDUCTION BILLFirst ReadingRt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Minister for Child Poverty Reduction): I move That the Child Poverty Reduction Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services and Community Committee to consider the bill.It is both my honour and also I believe my duty to present this bill to the House today. I'm on record as having stated that child poverty and child poverty reduction is one of the reasons that I was motivated to get into politics and ultimately into this House and my view on that issue remains absolutely undiminished to this day. It is why as Prime Minister I also hold the role of Minister for Child Poverty Reduction—that is how strongly I feel about this issue. It is why we initially proposed this legislation and why we prioritised it. We want to make sure that we make significant substantial and sustained action to reduce child poverty and hardship in New Zealand.Now I don't believe that I need to recount the many images and stories that exist that anecdotally have quantified child poverty in this country for some time. They're in the images of the empty lunch boxes of the child doing homework by torchlight. I'm confident that those images have spoken to each and every member of this House and that we don't question the existence of poverty in New Zealand—because it is real and it is debilitating.As the Children's Commissioner's expert advisory group reported It means for instance a much higher chance of having insufficient nutritious food going to school hungry wearing worn-out shoes or going barefoot having inadequate clothing living in a cold damp house and sleeping in a shared bed." No matter what numbers we talk about that is ultimately the face of poverty in Aotearoa.Yet I know and many of us believe this is not what parents want for their children. Many sacrifice every cent they have to try and give the best future to their kids possible. So long as families and whānau live with inadequate income this cannot be a debate in this House about blame but is instead one that starts to talk about fixing the issue and ensuring that families finally get their dignity back.Now every Government present and future should be absolutely dedicated to the notion that children should get the very best start in life free of poverty and hardship. I believe that that sentiment actually has long been shared in this Parliament because there shouldn't be politics in child poverty reduction. I believe that we are better than that and the public ultimately has the right to expect better than that of us. Parties across this House have already pledged to act on child poverty in different forms something that ultimately we should all celebrate but that is why I am seeking cross-party support of this bill today.The essence of this bill is to try and build enduring political accountability consensus and action on the issue of child poverty and to reduce it. It sets out in law a range of widely accepted income and hardship benchmarks for which we can be measured against and will report on; a requirement for successive Governments to themselves set targets around those measures; and ultimately a requirement to produce a strategy—the piece that actually details what a Government will do to take action on child poverty but also on child well-being more generally.Now all of this closely matches the member's bill I had in my name in 2012 which was all about establishing measures so Governments could be held to account. Measurement will always be an important starting point. It's not the whole picture but it's an important part of it. Currently we do see debate around child poverty rates. They're often contested by policy makers and commentators citing different measures and often assuming that they're directly comparable. Confusion over measurement can undermine public confidence. It diminishes the understanding of the issue diminishes public accountability and debate. It ultimately doesn't get us anywhere. That's why this bill addresses to resolve that issue by setting four primary measures and six supplementary measures against which our performance—a Government's performance—can then be judged.The measures that are in this bill accord with international standards and scorecards and they'll be familiar to anyone for instance who is familiar with the Child Poverty Monitor or for instance the Ministry of Social Development's detailed income reports. The bill includes both income and hardship primary measures and I'll detail them quickly now. The first is low income at less than 50 percent of the median disposable household income without deducting housing costs. The second is the same 50 percent income measure but this time after deducting housing costs and against a fixed reference year. That enables us to unambiguously show how incomes have changed year to year but importantly also to show the impact of housing costs which is a particular issue for New Zealand at present. The third measure is material hardship—that tells us about whether or not a child's basic needs are being met within their household—and the fourth measure is persistent low income or hardship. That one is an entirely new measure.Now taken together they give us a good insight into the experiences of Kiwi households families and their children but also give us a good way of determining what policies will make a difference to those families. Successive Governments will then be required to set both long-term and short-term targets so they can be held to account. The persistence measure the new one I mentioned that's going to be particularly important because we know now through good work like the Dunedin study the harmful and sometimes long-term impact of being exposed to child poverty particularly in the early years. This risks cycles of poverty becoming repeated through generations. That's why it is so important that we get that persistent poverty measure right and we target our Government policies where they're needed to try to address that generational impact. Sadly we don't currently have a suitable database and benchmarks and that's why this bill actually requires the Government Statistician to create one. Targets will then be set against those once that information is available.But that's not all. We've also put in place supplementary low-income and material hardship benchmarks. The reason we have those additional elements is they'll help us better measure our progress against other countries. It recognises that actually different groups experts and future Governments will have their own view on what constitutes child poverty and it gives us a more rounded picture of what's going on in New Zealand as a whole.Now why does all of this matter? It matters because we all want to know I believe what is happening for our most disadvantaged children so that we get our policies right. Governments present and future though will not be required to set particular targets. That's based on a view that there will be legitimately different views around what is ambitious and what is not. Targets themselves are purposely therefore not included to maintain that neutrality. The Government Statistician however must independently of Ministers and Government report annually on the rates of child poverty against the primary and supplementary measures.I do want to flag here that currently the start dates for the bill are based on when we'll have some of that initial income reporting available. My preference is that we actually bring our start dates forward from where the bill currently has them. I seek the view of the select committee and the public on that preference given it's not currently in the bill. Of course we've also put in a requirement that the Public Finance Act will be the mechanism at each Budget by which we will be required to report on our progress in the House.What I want to acknowledge is that although we will make sure targets are available for the public to comment on the targets set by this Government are the most ambitious targets we have seen any Government set for poverty. A 5 percent rate has not been achieved by New Zealand that I can see in the records ever—ever. If the last Government believes that they can achieve that then please by all means vote for this bill and support those targets because the honest truth is we've never achieved them before and if we do we'll be amongst the best in the world. Finally the well-being strategy is a requirement because we acknowledge this bill itself doesn't change anything except our political accountability and the public's ability to hold us to account. The strategy makes all of the difference. I commend this bill to the House I commend it to the Opposition and I ask for your support."