KEY POINTS:
Six mainstream churches have rejected advice from the Electoral Commission that they should register as third parties to run a $100,000 campaign on social justice before this year's election.
The churches are distributing 50,000 copies of the first of five leaflets, on child poverty, coinciding with the Budget this week.
Methodist Church president Brian Turner said the Electoral Commission recommended that they should "err on the side of caution" and register as third parties under the new Electoral Finance Act. But they decided not to.
"We don't see it as electioneering or promoting any particular party against others, so we didn't see the need to register," he said.
The leaflets and 2500 posters are being sent this week to Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, Presbyterian and Salvation Army churches under the auspices of their umbrella group, the Council of Christian Social Services.
The posters show children on a greenstone pendant, with the words: "Our Children, Our Treasure. Yet up to one in five of our children ... live in poverty."
The figure comes from official forecasts in 2004 that 20.5 per cent of children would still live in families earning below 60 per cent of the median income when the Government's Working for Families package was fully implemented in 2007.
A Salvation Army report in February found that 23 per cent of all children lived in families depending on means-tested benefits last September, three-quarters of them on the domestic purposes benefit.
A Government report made public this month said the DPB and family support for a sole parent with one child had fallen from 85 per cent of average net earnings in 1986 to about 52 per cent in 2006. The benefit was cut in 2001 and has slid further behind wages since then.
The churches' leaflet urges local churches to act directly by "supporting activities at a lower decile school in your area, volunteering your time to help with some form of family support or youth work, or being a good friend to families who may be isolated or in poverty".
It also encourages them to ask politicians two questions: "Do they have explicit policies about lifting children out of poverty? Do they have clear policies about provision of social services to help children in need?"
Mr Turner, a Christchurch Methodist minister, said the Working for Families programme had been geared at low and middle-income families.
But families on benefits had been left behind.
"I'm hopeful that the Budget will address income levels, not just tax cuts," he said.
"I personally am quite a fan for lifting GST on food as a means of helping the greatest number, but that is not a position this joint churches campaign has promulgated as such."
Anglican Archbishop David Moxon said the campaign started with children because they were the most vulnerable.
Later leaflets would be on older people, housing, poverty in general and "community-based solutions" to social issues.
Electoral Commission chief executive Helena Catt said she gave the churches the same advice that she gave to any group planning election-related advertising - that the definition of an election advertisement was still "a large grey area" and it would be "safer to list [as a third party] than not".
The Electoral Finance Act defines an election advertisement as anything which encourages people to vote for any party or candidate.
* PARTY POLICIES ON CHILD POVERTY
ACT: Address welfare and the economy - more jobs, helping beneficiaries into work, mentoring and more generous support for the truly vulnerable.
GREENS: Lift the minimum wage to $15 an hour, raise core benefit levels, institute a universal child benefit and accelerate the provision of state, council and community sector housing.
LABOUR: Sustainable paid employment, Working for Families and introducing full funding for community organisations providing essential services for families.
MAORI PARTY: Universal income tax cuts for very low income families and a universal benefit for parents raising children, whether they are working or not.
NATIONAL: Education and employment, more initiatives such as the breakfasts in schools.
NZ FIRST: Free health care for under-6s, parent support and guidance programmes and expansion of programmes such as Family Start and home-based support.
PROGRESSIVE: Full employment, affordable homes for all and compassionate social policy.
UNITED FUTURE: Working for Families, an urgent review of benefit levels to ensure they take into account recent price increases on essential items and the inclusion of income splitting as a family tax option.
