In the year ended June 2022, 10.3 percent of New Zealand children were living in a household experiencing material hardship - unchanged from the previous year. Photo / Getty Images
In the year ended June 2022, 10.3 percent of New Zealand children were living in a household experiencing material hardship - unchanged from the previous year. Photo / Getty Images
EDITORIAL
One in nine Kiwi kids misses out on what most reasonable New Zealanders consider essential - things such as fresh fruit and vegetables or a warm home.
Each instance of this is unforgivable. What is even more damning is that this is not new.
Child poverty rates for theyear ended June 2022 were unchanged from the previous year, according to figures released by Stats NZ yesterday.
”Child poverty statistics have not changed compared with last year,” general manager social and population insights Sean Broughton said. ”Compared to the baseline year, the year ended June 2018, eight of the nine child poverty measures have had statistically significant decreases.”
Almost unbelievably, the Government is attempting to interpret this intolerable situation as “continued progress”. Minister for Child Poverty Reduction Jan Tinetti yesterday declared: “Despite the most challenging economic conditions in a generation or more, actions taken by the Government have ensured that New Zealand children have not fallen backwards”.
The minister then cited Government initiatives such as Covid-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme, doubling of Winter Energy payments and increases to Working for Families and benefit levels as helping poverty rates continue to “track down”. This attempt to claim victory out of obvious defeat from a minister warranted with a portfolio marked “reduction” is a textbook political obfuscation.
Minister for Child Poverty Reduction Jan Tinetti. Photo / Sylvie Whinray
There is no doubt this Government has initiated measures it believed would help the situation. Further measures coming, such as Family Tax Credit and Best Start payments, due to begin on April 1, will certainly be beneficial to many low- and middle-income families.
There are calls from the Green Party to lift social welfare benefits to liveable levels, expand Working for Families, and double Best Start and make it universal for the first three years. But these are, once again, measures that will assist few in real straits and benefit more who are not.
Impoverished families and their children have fallen through gaps and we - our government, their agencies and us, as a civilised country - have failed to catch them.
The problem is, too much attention is still paid to middle New Zealand, where the need may exist but is lesser. This is also territory where voters amass, and therefore matter. The theory of lifting all boats together fails when some are underwater. More specifically targeted measures are needed to resource community groups in touch with these kids at the bottom of the heap.
Parental choices may be to blame but are no excuse for a nation. These children did not choose their parents; or their plight.
The Child Poverty Reduction Act 2018 sought to depoliticise the issue by making real data more transparent. This may have led to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child discovering and calling out our shameful neglect.
New Zealanders need to stop asking what political parties are offering for themselves and demanding to know what will be done for these wretchedly desperate children.
