Prime Willow-JeanWILLOW-JEAN PRIME (Labour): He kaupapa taimaha tēnei hei kōrerotanga māku nā te mea e kōrero ana e pā ana ki ō tātou tamariki he taonga tuku iho rātou. He kōrero tōrangapū kei roto i tēnei Whare e pā ana ki ō tātou tamariki. Kua hōhā au ki ētahi o ngā kōrero engari kua tū au ki te tautoko i tēnei pire i tēnei rā. He uri ahau nō Te Tai Tokerau.[This is a difficult issue for me to talk about because it is about our children who are after all precious beyond words. People are playing politics in this House and it is our children who are at the centre of it. While I get fed up with some of the talk I stand here today to support this bill. I am a child of the North.]I am a child of Te Tai Tokerau born and raised in Northland. It is my tūrangawaewae—home for my whānau. Northland is where 49 percent of our children were identified as being born in the bottom two most deprived deciles—the highest child poverty rate in the country. Northland is where families are and have been for a long time struggling living in real poverty in severe poverty. So when I hear challenges from the other side of the House to go and spend some time in Northland I'd like to remind that side of the House that I live in Northland. I see poverty every day. I am from Moerewa. I recently visited Kaikohe—last Thursday in fact—where we were running a stall on the street to fund-raise for the distribution of menstrual cups because my community has period poverty. We are experiencing real poverty. I'm glad the other side of the Whare has finally acknowledged that poverty is a real thing and that they are all of a sudden so committed to addressing poverty. I welcome them to work with us to eradicate child poverty in our country.I struggle as I stand here today and I think about my communities in Northland who are currently flooded-in in their homes with the severe weather and I'm reminded of a story by my local GP where he has seen on numerous occasions the same baby being brought into his clinic because that baby has been bitten by rats. When the floodwaters rise on both sides of the township of Moerewa the rats come up on to the land. They crawl up through our substandard housing and they bite the babies during the night. This family cannot afford rat bait. It is over $100 for a bucket of rat bait from our local stores. These families cannot help themselves. They simply do not have the money. I talked about period poverty. It is something that came up in the election. I was visiting a local school. I was made aware that girls are missing school because their families cannot afford the sanitary products to manage their periods every month. I was shocked. I could not believe this level of poverty. We immediately started doing something about it by partnering with My Cup NZ a social enterprise to distribute cups into our local community. Our girls are missing school. The number one reason why they are truant is because their families cannot afford sanitary products. They are now failing at school.These absences from school are resulting in failure. I saw the statistic that there are over 300 young people in Kaikohe which was mentioned earlier who are neets". This is hard work for our Government to now deal with—to alleviate poverty to alleviate the deprivation in Northland. I look forward to the work that all of the Ministers are doing and that is going to go into developing a strategy to promote the overall well-being of children which will include a particular focus on the reduction of child poverty.That's what is in this bill. That is the work that we are going to do. And I hope that it does also address that we are the rheumatic fever capital of New Zealand. These are Third World diseases in our country. I challenge the voters in Northland. What will it take—pussy eyes and distended stomachs?—before we stop playing politics with our children and we do something about this?We are resilient but do not use that to justify doing nothing. Māori and Pasifika are overrepresented in the poverty statistics. Just under half of the children in poverty are Māori or Pasifika and rates of poverty and persistent and sustained poverty for Māori and Pasifika children are around double the rates for Pākehā.I support the purpose of this bill. I encourage everybody in the House—the descendant of Tāreha who is no longer here—to support this bill. The purpose of the Child Poverty Reduction Bill is to encourage a focus by successive Governments and society as a whole on child poverty reduction to facilitate political accountability against published targets to require transparent reporting on levels of child poverty and to create a greater commitment to the action on the part of the Government to addressing the well-being of all children and the particular needs of children in poverty and those at greater risk.We are going to do that through this bill by requiring Governments to set 10-year targets on a defined set of measures of child poverty and periodically setting and publishing three-year targets and importantly developing and reporting on a strategy to promote the overall well-being of our children which will include a particular focus on reducing child poverty. And importantly we're going to include this in the Finance Act so that on Budget day we have a report on how the Budget will reduce child poverty and how the Government is progressing towards its target. To increase accountability and independence from the politics the bill is also going to require the Government Statistician to report independently from the Government trends in the range of measures specified in the bill. We are challenging the public to hold us accountable to this very ambitious piece of legislation and our very ambitious goal of reducing child poverty in this country.In my maiden speech I referred to the words of Dame Whina Cooper where she said "Take care of our children take care of what they hear take care of what they see take care of what they feel. For how the children grow so will be the shape of Aotearoa."—for how the children grow so will be the shape of Aotearoa.I campaigned on the belief that not one more child should live in poverty not one more family without a home and not one more young New Zealander without a dream. There shouldn't be politics in child poverty reduction. I thank the Prime Minister for her leadership on this issue. I thank this Government for being ambitious in setting ourselves targets setting ourselves a framework in which we will be held accountable by the public of New Zealand. And with that I commend the bill to the House.Bill read a first time. Bill referred to the Social Services and Community Committee."