Ardern Jacinda: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Ardern Jacinda: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 14 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4345. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I appreciate the Minister for Social Development outlining for us some of the reasons behind the dramatic increase in child protection notifications that we have seen in recent times—and they are dramatic. I know she acknowledges that and the different reasons for that but I still have grave concerns over the workload that our Child Youth and Family and our front-line social workers currently have and whether or not in essence 50 new social workers is enough to deal with the massive demand that we have. 
It is timely that we are here in this Chamber discussing the state of children given that the summary of submissions on vulnerable children was released today. I look forward to responding to that in further detail—it looks like you are about to interrupt me Mr Chair for the dinner break—when we come back— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has in fact come for me to leave the Chair. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Kia ora tatou no reira tena koutou tena koutou tena koutou katoa. Honourable members the House is in Committee on the Appropriation (2012/2013 Estimates) Bill and it is resumed. Before the dinner break the honourable member Jacinda Ardern was speaking and addressing the Committee. She was debating Vote Social Development and she has 4 minutes remaining if she wishes to seek the call. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: Thank you Mr Chair. I was indeed addressing the Committee before the dinner break and I do want to come back to the issue I was touching on which was introduced by the Minister in the chair the Hon Paula Bennett and that was the issue of vulnerable children and the release today of the summary of submissions on the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. There has been an overwhelming response I think it is fair to say to the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children. Thousands of people have responded to the call on what it is that the Government should do in response to the issue of children’s well-being in New Zealand. 
I applaud all those who took the time to be a part of that discussion. Contained in those submissions are themes that I want to touch on. One was the issue of universalism. It was the Minister herself who asked whether we should start targeting services in a more concentrated fashion towards those children whom we the State consider to be at risk. An overwhelming message from submitters was that we need to exercise caution in doing so because in fact even the notion of vulnerability is very fraught. All children by default almost are vulnerable by their very nature. So narrowing the targeting of services is a fraught business and we need to exercise caution there. 
Submitters also raised the issue of bipartisanship. They want parties to work together. The primary reason for that I think was to see enduring solutions around child poverty and children’s well-being generally. That is something on which I as Labour’s spokesperson on social development again extend the offer that Labour extended when Annette King was our spokesperson—that we are happy to work with this Government on issues relating to children’s well-being. But I do so with the one disclaimer: we think the bar needs to be raised. 
The green paper highlighted the issues that the National Government wants to focus on when it comes to what it perceives to be vulnerable children: information sharing mandatory reporting and the way the agencies are engaging with families. Our contention has been that we need to take a much broader approach when it comes to the well-being of children. We need to look at issues like income adequacy poverty housing health and education. These are all things that we know have an impact on children’s well-being or otherwise and to ignore those and simply hone in in the way that this Government has is at our peril and to the detriment of our children. In fact we pay for it down the track. 
If I were to pick out one issue in particular that the Labour Party as part of its core fundamental values on fairness and social justice is concerned about it is the issue of child poverty. I asked the Minister in question time today a very simple question: “How many children in New Zealand are currently living in poverty?”. The answer was that we do not have an official measure in New Zealand. If Unicef is able to produce a scorecard by which it measures every OECD nation on what it considers to be a fair and reasonable measure of child poverty surely this Government—if it claims that poverty is a priority issue—would have at least an interest in knowing how many children in this country are living in poverty. But the message that we got back from the Minister today was that knowing how many children are in poverty is not a priority. 
If she does not want to know how many children are living in poverty how is she possibly concerned with even getting them out of that situation? Forgive my cynicism but if this Government is unwilling to at least put a figure on this issue or even try we are never going to at least see a target around the 270000 children living in poverty.