Minimum pricing only hurt the "vested and competing interests" of "big alcohol".
"The largest importer of alcohol into New Zealand is not a privately owned family company, it is Mitsubishi Corporation. Large international corporates are the ones who make our RTDs and that is where the growth has been. Their marketing specifically and purposefully targets young people. This is wrong and we can say so."
He said the Government was poised to act on child poverty but was unsure of public support, despite the issue coming to the fore in recent years.
Conference attendees were encouraged to engage with the community and lobby central government as it rewrites social welfare legislation.
Dr Wills said he was optimistic the Government's next budget would take action on child poverty but solutions were "highly values driven".
Government policy was to blame for a dramatic increase in child poverty when social welfare benefit rates were cut in 1991. Child poverty in beneficiary families increased from 25 per cent to 75 per cent and remained at that level. "Exposure to poverty, particularly severe and persistent poverty when you are young, has profound impacts on cerebral development. That then means that children arrive at school not ready to learn.
"Decile 1 teachers tell me typically about a third of children arrive in new-entrant classes with language of a 3-year-old.
"If that is how you start school your chances of leaving with a qualification are very poor ... you are much more likely to go on to have adult physical and mental health problems, to be workless, benefit-dependent and so forth."
He said child poverty, like family violence, obesity, teenage pregnancy and conduct disorder was a classic "wicked problem", a social policy term for difficult multi-faceted problems.
"The stakes are high and if we get it wrong, as we are currently, then we destine those children to very poor outcomes."
Professor Innes Asher of the Child Poverty Action Group said the trickle-down theory was "well put out to pasture". Child poverty had not reduced when the economy was doing well. "It is often stated by our political leaders that paid work is the way out of poverty. Of course it is, if the work is well paid and secure, but it isn't for many families.
Wills to donate pay rise
Children's Commissioner Dr Russell Wills plans to give away his salary increase, saying it is unfair bosses get rises while workers don't.
"The Remuneration Authority gave me a 10 per cent increase in my salary this year," he said.
"The next day the State Services Commission (SCC) wrote to chief executives in the public service saying to keep wage increases to an absolute minimum - 2 per cent should be the maximum."
He plans to donate his increase to the Office of the Children's Commissioner.
"I can't look my staff in the eye and say I can't give you any increase - we've had no baseline increase in five years - and accept a 10 per cent increase in my salary. So I am giving it back."
The SCC said the rise was necessary "but I just think it is wrong".
"If chief executives had to face their employees and in two consecutive sentences told their employees what they were getting this year and what the staff were getting, I think we might have a different outcome.
"I really like the idea of pegging chief executive salaries to the minimum salary in an organisation. I think that is a terrific idea and this whole thing makes me furious."
Social investment would improve the economy, he said.
"If you want to have a market for goods you need to have people who can afford to buy them.
"If you are born into poverty your brain is not developing neural pathways that form cognitive, social and emotional pathways. Those kids are going to leave school without qualifications and unable to work. So if you want a market and you want people to work for you, you need to invest in those children so that you have a market and a workforce."
