Jan Logie on Child Poverty in Nz

I call Jan Logie. Thank you Mr Chair. I believe every family should have enough to sustain themselves, and that all children in this country should be safe and able to develop to their potential. Supposedly to deliver that goal, this Government’s top-line Better Public Services target is reducing welfare dependency by 25 percent by June 2018. But despite all its media releases telling us how much money it has saved and how many people it has got off benefits, there is no way, on current projections, that it will achieve this target. Work visas match or outstrip new jobs, and job growth is projected to slow and unemployment is projected to increase. Government policies do not support beneficiaries getting into the workforce; they just tell them they need to do it. The Government has refused to pick up my member’s bill to provide workplace protections for victims of domestic violence, something that could significantly reduce the need for income support at all. The reality is that even the CEO of the Ministry of Social Development described this target of 25 percent as aspirational, and not in the sense that the Minister in the chair, Anne Tolley, suggested as a positive thing, but rather a “we’ll never make it” sense. Then there is the problem that the evidence does not support the Government’s assertion that getting parents off benefits, using its cruel sanction system, actually reduces child poverty. The Government does not measure the impact of its interventions on families or children. It cannot even tell us what happens to people once they are off a benefit, and it dismisses the growing number of children in relative poverty as irrelevant. Let me remind you that, as we have heard from previous speakers, this is the Government that says it is all about the data. It tells us that it is all about the outcomes and proving it can do it, yet it does not measure the things that matter. The CEO of the Ministry of Social Development told us that it thinks its case management system will reduce the number of people on benefits, despite the evidence that was presented to the select committee showing that it was not likely to. So it does not have the targets that are appropriate, it does not have the measures to improve any positive benefit, and then it tells us that a method is going to work to be able to achieve this that the evidence says otherwise. Then the Commissioner for Children clearly told us in their hearing that this is the wrong target if we want to improve the well-being of children. He told the select committee that we need to set four targets. One: to reduce relative poverty. Two: to reduce material deprivation and hardship. Three: reduce violence, and four: improve housing quality. If we set those targets, we would ensure that our children were safer and healthier and out of poverty. I think we might also need to add another target to that, if that is not too arrogant of me, to suggest that we have a target of ensuring people are accessing their legal entitlements. Because despite the Minister telling us that when she visits the offices she is hearing that everything is fine, that there is no problem, we do not actually have evidence to tell us that. In fact, what we had in this last year was evidence that despite two court rulings over a period of time, Work and Income refused to change its policy to abide by the actual law, that it refused to give people their legal entitlements that had been twice established by the court. We have no ability to be secure that people are able to access their legal entitlements. And I think that was reinforced again by the fact that last month in Auckland, community advocates helped over 700 people at just one Work and Income office over 3 days—700 people at one office who had not been able to access their legal entitlements. That, to me, is an indicator, and, at the very, very least, it is smoke. The Government should be taking that seriously and putting in systems to audit whether people are able to access their entitlements, because we are hearing so many stories, and there is growing evidence that they are not currently accessing their legal entitlements. If the Government was serious about addressing actual social harm and improving the health, well-being, educational outcomes, and life opportunities of our families, it would start by ensuring that people got their legal entitlements. Then, I think, it would start listening to the advocates for children and the experts in our society, and following the advice of the Office of the Commissioner for Children . But it is not serious and, as a result, child poverty remains entrenched. Children keep dying from living in cold, damp houses and from other low-income related diseases at a rate of more than one child a week, in this country that we used to call the land of plenty, where there are so many who still have plenty but who are not sharing. To go back to the Office of the Commissioner for Children, it was deeply disturbing to hear through the annual review process that the commissioner, who is tasked with the absolutely essential role of monitoring the safety of children in State care, say so clearly that his office does not have the resources to be able to do this properly, that there have been negative audit results where there were concerns for the safety of children, and that it is not able to follow up properly. This is in the context of a 56 percent increase in recorded offences against children in State care since 2009 and a 40 percent increase in *** abuse against children in our collective care, where the absolutely critical role of the watchdog of that system has been so underfunded that it is not able to do its job properly. That is a result of this Government’s policy—a Government that has promised, again and again, that this is not OK and that it would fix this. All we have had is report after report, an expert group, and a reduction in funding, and children have suffered in our collective care while that has been happening. It is time to move forward. Good change is 100 percent possible. It may not be achievable overnight, but it is achievable. The Green Party would institute policies based on expert evidence and a fundamental belief that family, community, and society can thrive when the safety and other basic needs of our children are guaranteed—when our society is in balance. Currently, the policies of this Government are out of balance. I look forward to the Green Party rebalancing the policies in this country in favour of our children and the future of this country, to give all our families a decent go to be able to sustain themselves.