Every year, the Children's Commissioner Dr Russell Wills issues an update on child poverty. Until this year, the commissioner could have been forgiven for thinking his annual pleas fell on deaf ears in the Beehive. But the Budget delivered in May this year made an attempt to reduce the problem.
Benefits are to increase by $25 a week for families and tax credits by $12.50 a week for low-income earners with children. Working families will also receive a higher childcare subsidy. The relief will take effect in April, so it is too soon to know just how much help it will be.
Nevertheless, they ought to have figured in some way in the Children's Commissioner's latest report issued this week. After all, the annual series is called the Child Poverty Monitor and it is subtitled "tracking progress on reducing child poverty in New Zealand". It is not the work of the commissioner's office alone: it is compiled in partnership with the University of Otago's Child and Youth Epidemiology Service and the J R McKenzie Trust. A reading of their 80-page report would search long and hard for any reference to the programmed benefit increases. In fact, its latest data is from 2014, already a year out of date.
The commissioner, whose term ends next year, has done a fine job raising public consciousness on the problem.
For that he is to be commended. But there does come a point at which people tire of constant reminders of its scale. Even the beneficiaries advocate, Sue Bradford, commented yesterday it was time to hear the commissioner lend his weight to practical solutions. But he sees his role as limited to contributing to a climate of public opinion to which governments will respond. In fact, the main suggestion that has come from his social policy advisory group is child poverty should be annually measured against a reduction target. Measuring seems to be all that is suggested.
