Given the rate at which Mr Davis' government is promising to spend money in all sorts of areas it might well be that mental health services won't improve, but his faith in other departments is misplaced.
No one is going to argue against the right of every child in this country to live in a warm, dry home, to have access to a good education, the opportunity to gain the skills that will lead to employment and the health services that should be available to all in a First World country. The question is how the government goes about making change from Wellington.
Politicians can lead a horse to water but cannot make it drink. And a lot of horses in this country are seemingly intent on refusing to do so.
Certainly the government can build houses, although its pre-election promise already seems to have been a little optimistic. And it can ensure that schools are staffed with well-trained teachers at an appropriate level.
It can fund training programmes, and it can encourage employers to take on apprentices. It can also fund primary and secondary health services at a level that enables every New Zealander to avail themselves of those services as needed.
What it cannot do, at least without a huge shift in political and public attitudes, is compel parents to raise their children in a manner that gives them the best chance of exploiting the opportunities that are there for every child's taking.
It cannot compel parents to put their children's needs first. It cannot force anyone to set a good example to their children, to ensure they have every chance to benefit from the effectively free education that is theirs for 13 years.
It cannot coerce them into anything that will give their children the best chance of reaching adulthood ready to make their most of their lives, and to contribute to their community and country.
Misguided efforts to provide for kids whose parents can't be bothered, by politicians and charities alike, are doing more harm than good. Too many parents have come to the not unreasonable conclusion that if they don't feed their children, someone else will. If they don't clothe them, someone else will. If they don't teach them civilised behaviour, someone else will.
Too many parents have abdicated responsibility for raising their children to the state or a plethora of charities. And until that changes, Mr Davis' aspirations will not be achieved.
Every negative social statistic in this country can be traced back, eventually, to poor parenting. There will always be exceptions — some children who have absolutely no excuse for behaving badly have done so in the past and will do in the future; some who genuinely need help don't get it — but if every parent did their very best for their children, if they put their children first in how they spend their time and income, we would see a huge improvement.
Instead what we see is a great swathe of parents accepting the invitation to step back and hand their kids over to someone else to raise. Until Mr Davis changes that, our prison population will continue to grow.
Some years ago the writer was told by a teacher at a small Far North school that for some time three or four kids had arrived each morning without a lunch box. A week after the fruit in schools programme arrived, none of them were taking their lunch.
Every last parent had apparently decided that if the government was going to feed their kids, they had no need to bother. A foolish, if well-intentioned attempt to solve a small problem had very quickly created a bigger one.
The big 'out' for some parents, of course, is state-sanctioned insistence that they are impoverished, so no one expects too much of them. What can they do? They're poor. It's not their fault that their kids are hungry, poorly clothed and don't go to the (free) GP when they need to. They, and their children, have been failed by a society that rewards the rich and punishes the poor.
At the start of this school term a Kaitaia parent bought shoes for her new entrant son. She went to The Warehouse, and paid a total of $7.50 for three pairs. However limited any family's income might be, that does not represent an insurmountable barrier to any parent who wants their child to wear shoes to school. (And what happened to bare feet?
It's not that long ago that shoeless kids were the norm rather than the exception).
Some weeks ago this newspaper quoted a nutritionist who claimed that a wholesome school lunch could be made for a little over $2. There might be a problem in some families where basic nutritional skills are wanting, but one does not need to be Jamie Oliver to feed a child properly, three times a day, for very little money.
The fact that many children are not fed properly is likely to have more to do with constant reminders that their parents are so poor that they have no choice but to let someone else feed them than genuine inability to put food on the table.
Poor parenting can also be credited for the apparently growing number of children who start school showing the effects of trauma or exposure to drugs. At least some of the same parents who cannot afford to feed and clothe their kids can, it seems, afford to buy alcohol, cannabis and methamphetamine.
Living on a restricted income has never been easy. The writer knows this from personal experience. The fundamental issue, however, is the importance parents attach to their children's future. Until Mr Davis finds a way of encouraging parents to put their kids first he is whistling in the wind.
If he really wants to reduce the prison muster, without raising the bar for admission, he might ask his Minister of Education what he plans to do about kids whose futures have been destroyed before they 'celebrate' their fifth birthday and enter an education system that is not equipped to receive them.
He might also ask his Minister of Social Development how she plans to encourage a greater degree of personal responsibility amongst parents, and the Minister of Police if he has thought about using existing laws to compel some parents to accept accountability for the most egregious juvenile criminal behaviour. It beggars belief that the law, as it is currently applied, demands a much greater degree of accountability from the owners of animals than it does of parents.
If he doesn't want to do that, he might like to look at plans for a new prison or two.
