This week's Budget will do little to address Northland's appalling child poverty problem, an expert in the field says.
Associate Professor Mike O'Brien, Social Security Spokesman for the Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG), made the claim during his post-Budget analysis meeting for Northland social service agencies and Whangarei CPAG members yesterday.
CPAG says nationally 22 per cent of children were living in poverty, but the figure was even higher for Northland, where 49 per cent of children were identified as being born in the bottom two most-deprived deciles - the highest child poverty rate in the country.
Mr O'Brien, who was speaking at the first Whangarei Youth Space event in the new Cafler Park centre, said the only Budget item that he could see that would directly affect poverty was extending free doctors' visits and prescriptions to all children under 13. Previously it was limited to children under 6 and the announcement is expected to benefit about 400,000 children nationally - more than 13,000 in Northland - when introduced from July, next year.
But Mr O'Brien said in an area like Northland with its huge geographical issues, for poor people living in isolated rural communities, free doctors' visits were no use if you could not access them because of distance or inability to afford to get there.