Donald Rod: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
Donald Rod: Debate on Budget Policy Statement 
[Volume:623;Page:18892] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 Child poverty was today’s No. 1 issue at question time and so it should be—and not just because our children are our future I say for the benefit of Mr Prebble and Mr Hide. I will refer to Mr Prebble’s rudeness to submitters at the hearings on the Budget Policy Statement although I was not going to do so. I was quite embarrassed by the way he treated genuine submitters from organisations like the Public Health Association the Sustainable Energy Forum Unicef and the Council for International Development who were there to participate in the democratic process and who were genuinely trying to contribute to the Government’s Budget preparation process. Mr Prebble accused those worthy submitters of being lobby groups and complained that his mates in the Business Roundtable and Federated Farmers were not getting more time to make their submissions. Well I am grateful that all the submitters who asked to be heard did get equal time because that is exactly what they deserved. 
There is a fundamental flaw with the Budget Policy Statement process—and I hope Mr Prebble is listening to this because he might even agree with this concern. It is a good thing that the Government produces its Budget Policy Statement each December. It is a very comprehensive document that enables the whole country to see what direction the Government is intending to take with the next Budget. It also provides as a bonus a December Economic and Fiscal Update which is always revealing. I will come to that shortly. Submitters have the opportunity to make a submission on that statement. We were blessed with a wide range of submissions and some were very constructive. There were only 11 submissions but it was very much a case of quality rather than quantity. 
But the problem we have is that the Minister of Finance does not have to listen to those submissions. In fact he can literally ignore them. They fall on deaf ears. He is not required to be there when the submitters make their submissions and he is not required to respond in writing to those submissions. Neither I am afraid is the Finance and Expenditure Committee. What happens is that despite submitters going to a lot of trouble to put in their thoughts on the Budget Policy Statement and despite the fact that we give those submitters a small amount of time to say what they have to say when we produce a report on the process it by and large covers only the issues that MPs raise with the Minister. I for one know that I ran out of time in my 5 minutes to raise all the issues that I would have liked to cover with the Minister. 
So it means that the Minister is not obliged to respond to all the issues that we raise and neither is our report obliged to cover all the issues that we raise. For example despite a very comprehensive submission from the Council for International Development on New Zealand’s appalling level of overseas development assistance there is not a single mention of that in the report. More to the point the Government has not had to respond to the call by the council to stop shirking its responsibilities as an international citizen and increase our level of overseas development assistance to the 0.7 percent that the New Zealand Government has committed to over and over again. This commitment goes back at least as far as the conference in Johannesburg when Rob Storey on behalf of the National Party committed to that figure. So that is a real problem. I think the solution is that the Minister of Finance should be required to respond to the issues raised in the submissions. 
 One issue he certainly should be required to respond to was the submissions that we had on child poverty because despite the Government’s sterling defence today of its actions it is not doing enough to reduce child poverty. Child poverty is a crucial issue not just because our children are our future. Obviously if we do not set them on the right path in life our own security is under threat. But let us be civilised rather than selfish in our attitude towards our young people; after all the mark of a civilised society is how we treat our most vulnerable—and our most vulnerable citizens are the children who are growing up in poverty in New Zealand. 
Let us face it: this Parliament and successive Governments do not have a good track record when it comes to tackling child poverty. Labour and National—and I should say ACT as well—prefer to squabble about getting New Zealand’s conventional economic performance into the top half of the OECD. I do not see anywhere near as much heat let alone light shed on the fundamental issue of the upbringing of our children. 
Today National’s Judith Collins tried to undermine the recent Unicef report which reveals that New Zealand’s level of child poverty is actually the fourth-worst of the 26 countries in the OECD. We are ahead of only Italy the United States and Mexico and that is because the report covered the period to the year 2000—in other words when National was in power. National’s performance was appalling. Children growing up in poverty actually increased by 2 percent during those failed years of a National-led Government. 
But it is not just National that should be indicted for allowing the number of children growing up poor to increase. From 1990 to 1993 the National Government was on its own but from 1993 to 1996 it had an arrangement with Peter Dunne and his former United New Zealand Party of that time. Despite everything that United Future says about being family-friendly child poverty got worse in New Zealand. Then of course it was the turn of Winston Peters and his wide boys from 1996 onwards and again child poverty continued to deteriorate. When that party fell apart it was ACT that National relied on until it was tipped out in 1999. 
All those parties—National ACT New Zealand First and United Future—are culpable for what happened. Labour is right to crow that it is doing something about child poverty but it is only half right. For a start it spent 5 years focused on economic performance instead of on our young citizens in need. During that time the Government literally built its surplus on the back of those poor kids. During that time child poverty did not get any worse but neither did it get much better. 
Only now is the Government finally implementing its Working for Families package but in the process Labour is deliberately discriminating against children who are growing up in beneficiary families. How will those children feel when the kids next door get new shoes and a bike to go to school when their parents cannot afford to provide them with a basic nutritious diet? 
Let us face it a basic nutritious diet is one of the building blocks for our young people. Today everyone is talking about the need to increase productivity but how will we increase productivity when kids are still going to school without a full stomach from a decent breakfast and at lunchtime kids are not provided with a decent lunch? At the same time we expect them to learn and we expect them to be able to have a command of reading writing and arithmetic let alone a whole range of social skills. That is simply not possible and not fair and this Government is not doing enough about it with its Working for Families package both in terms of its extent and its scope. 
We are left with a situation right now of employers—and I met a few last week—saying to me that they are having to run adult literacy classes for their staff because children are leaving schools without those basic skills. The Government has the responsibility to make sure that no child leaves school in this country without those basic skills. 
The Government also has some other responsibilities to ensure that we do have an educated productive civilised workforce in the future and a key area is the whole area of energy sustainability. Unfortunately unless I get an extension I will not have enough time to cover that issue but suffice to say the Budget Policy Statement does not do enough to face up to that reality.