Bennett PaulaHon PAULA BENNETT (Deputy Leader—National): Mr Speaker thank you and thank you for the opportunity to speak on the Child Poverty Reduction Bill. Forgive me if I stand here first off and say how ironic I find it that the Prime Minister stands up and lectures us about taking the politics out of child poverty when one of the first things she did was remove the Better Public Services targets which actually got to the heart of the causes of some child poverty and child deprivation and didn't have anything to replace them with. She said We will one day." but actually politically had to take them out and take them away let alone let them continue to run until she could actually replace them with her own ideas. So she didn't have ideas. They were very very clear and specific targets that went to the heart of—for those that are in the first trimester of being pregnant setting a target that 90 percent of them would actually be with a lead maternity caregiver. I would have thought that was something well worth backing well worth getting behind. If the Prime Minister didn't actually think that was something that would help children then perhaps she could have let it go until she came up with some of her own ideas but she couldn't do it.Excuse me if I find it a bit rich to be told that this is the kind of panacea and that some Governments will be more ambitious than others like the feeling we got from her own would be—when actually it was the National Party that was more ambitious in the number of children that we could remove out of child poverty. We proved you could do it by seeing 85000 fewer children in poverty and yet all we've got so far is bluster blunder and the talk of what might happen not the actual evidence behind it.We have an opportunity; it is right to do it right. We have an opportunity to make some significant changes as we constantly should be as a Parliament as we have an obligation to be doing as members of Parliament for the children of this country. But this is a bill that has significant risk and has significant opportunity. The risk is that if this bill is enacted as it currently stands it will do nothing and it will help no one. It will do nothing and it will help no one. It will simply be another well-intentioned piece of legislation that has absolutely zero impact on the families who are genuinely struggling every day. I'm sure the Prime Minister does not want to play the political spin game with the most vulnerable children in New Zealand and I'm sure that she has good intentions but one thing we know after nine years of working on these problems in Government is that good intentions count for very little for those children that are actually in their homes; it is your actions that will actually count.At the moment this bill is an empty symbol of this Government's need to show how caring they are but it achieves very little. On one level it sets targets for child poverty reduction but my colleagues here in the National Party believe they are too low. Where is the ambition for our children? Where is this new ambitious Government that told us it was all going to be so much bigger? That is why the National Opposition plan to support this bill to the first reading but make absolutely no obligations of supporting it to a second reading. We have some key amendments that we will be putting forward and that we feel will dramatically strengthen it and really change the lives of New Zealand's most vulnerable.The first thing is the targets. The targets are too low. To go out there and say that it's something like 70000 over 10 years to be doing the—and we might get to 50000; it's too low. It's just simply not ambitious enough. Work out your priorities. Work out what needs to be done in your next Budget. Put that into place. Look at your debt levels. Look at what needs to be done. Follow a great example actually of two previous finance Ministers under National and know that you actually can put more money genuinely into tens of thousands of New Zealanders' homes that need it.But poverty is just one problem that these children face. They face such a range of issues that have often been intergenerational and over a long period of time—and this bill does nothing to address the needs of those children in that way—family violence drug and alcohol abuse mental health problems untreated health problems and poor housing to name a few. We had a plan in place addressing those very issues. We had targets that the Public Service had to measure themselves against. We pumped literally hundreds of millions into them. We saw crime coming down fewer on benefit and actually things improving. Now we see the eye off that ball and instead a lofty bill full of good intentions but with no actions or no substance actually behind it.We want to see Better Public Services targets introduced into this bill and we will be presenting a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) along that line. We want to see that we get into the heart of things like pregnant women getting access to the health outcomes and support that they really and truly need that there is better housing and that there are fewer people on welfare and living in decades of deprivation.We want to support place-based initiatives. If we are serious about making change in those families' lives who are most vulnerable we have to devolve power—which means money—back into our communities so that they can be self-determining on how that actually is spent what programmes work the best and put the most money into that and over a much longer period of time. To do that you need social investment. Forgive me if I sound like I don't quite believe all of the words that the Prime Minister was saying around taking the spin politically out of this stuff when actually we can't see the evidence behind the initiatives that she wants to run. We can't see the backing on what actually really we do know will work.We haven't heard that support for social investment which literally means that you're getting the right funding into the right organisation that gets to the right people that gets into the heart of what the issues really are over a much longer period of time and can prove to those that are paying their taxes and working hard that the money is well spent and when it is actually able to present the evidence that it is not quickly enough you can change and move another way. This bill does nothing for those children that are living in Kaikohe at the moment actually getting support from a place-based initiative and worried whether or not that will still be run or will it go like charter schools.Excuse me if I find it just a little bit rich from a Prime Minister that tells me "Put children first." in the same week she is telling us that charter schools have got to go. So the kids that they care about need to be put first but not the children actually that are in charter schools and are for the first time for many of them getting an education that they can relate to at a place that they want to be every day and are achieving at levels that they and their family hadn't seen before. So to stand here now and say to take the politics out of what's happening around children I think just speaks volumes.We will be putting forward three different SOPs one around actually setting some real targets that go into the heart of the Public Service and to those families that most need that support and really get into that deprivation stuff. We will be putting forward an SOP around social investment because as the Prime Minister said if you can't measure it you can't measure whether it's working right—you can get in there sooner and you can make a genuine difference and that's what the social investment approach actually believes in.We will also be saying that the targets that the Labour - New Zealand First - Green Government are setting here are simply not ambitious enough. This can't be as good as it gets for the kids that need us most and quite frankly I am quite disappointed at the lack of ambition by this Labour Government.So as I say we'll see it to the first reading. We want to work with this. Let's take the politics out and work together to improve this bill for the good of all of our children."