Susan Glasgow: Child poverty in NZ not ‘sexy enough’ topic for electioneering

Increasing living costs are hitting Kiwi households harder than the official inflation rate implies. Photo / Getty Images

Opinion

OPINION:

Promising to ease the pressure on Kiwi families living below the breadline makes for good headlines, but at ground level, it’s an ugly reality for struggling families at crisis point and those who suffer the most – our nation’s greatest asset and our future – our children.

New data from Stats NZ shows that increasing living costs are hitting Kiwi households harder than the official inflation rate implies, with rents hiked, the cost of food up more than 13 per cent and many other basic living costs increasing, especially for lower-income households that are already struggling.

It’s around two weeks now until New Zealand’s next general election and it’s mystifying to me that the most important issue we are facing right now as a country – the thousands upon thousands of poverty-stricken children in our country who are missing out on many basic necessities of life – isn’t front page news every single day and dominating our television news each night.

Sentiments are expressed, mostly earnestly, but the one in five children living in often horrifying poverty just don’t appear to be featuring boldly in any party electioneering. In fact, these kids may well be a topic not “sexy enough” to be discussed around New Zealand’s newsrooms, corridors of power or lunchrooms mere days from an election crucial like no other to the future of this nation. Is it because these kids aren’t old enough to vote so they don’t matter?

Instead, we’re obsessed with whether the country likes Christopher Luxon; why Winston Peters might be a ‘king-maker’ yet again, Chris Hipkins getting Covid, and whether the All Blacks are going to be slaughtered in the Rugby World Cup.

In the next 24 hours alone, 77 children will be admitted to hospital purely because of where and how they sleep ... that’s 28,000 children every year.

Is Winston Peters’ metamorphosis more important than kids without shoes, or a bed to sleep in, who can’t afford school camp, learn how to swim, play sports, strum a guitar or are bullied because of school uniforms that don’t fit? Are tax cuts more important than 10-year-old Daryn in the deep south, who sleeps in a powerless sleep-out with his two younger brothers on a thin wedge of damp foam topped by mouldy old blankets, and dreams about Batman duvets, soft mattresses and real bedrooms for his siblings?

Every day, Variety faces the burgeoning need from those seeking help head-on. We support more than 7000 kids who receive Kiwi Kid sponsorship from more than 4000 generous sponsors across the country. Over the past turbulent year, our waiting list has almost doubled to more than 2000 kids hoping to be matched to sponsors who are extremely hard to find.

Annually, Variety surveys our caregivers so we can understand their lived experiences and the true “face of poverty”. Almost 2300 caregivers responded to the 2023 survey – a nearly70 per cent response rate. The overwhelming majority were female and, on average, had three-and-a-half kids, 4.7 people in the household, and more than three-quarters rented their homes from either public or private landlords. More than a quarter have moved at least once in the past two years ... sadly a fifth of those have moved more than five times.

Susan Glasgow is chief executive of Variety.

Eight-year-old Matt (Auckland) has relocated three times with his mum and six siblings since 2021 – attending three different schools. There’s no extra money to send Matt to school camp, let alone buy him a sleeping bag, so he will miss out. He cries himself to sleep in the bed he shares with three of his brothers because he just wants to be like the other kids in his class.

Nearly three-quarters of our caregivers are sole charge parents and the majority are not in paid employment. Distressingly, more than 65 per cent say they earn less than $50,000 per annum in their households.

Living below the breadline is a reality for James (7) every day. He lives with his mum and four siblings in Wellington and is teased at school about his ill-fitting uniform. His mum can’t get a job because two of her children have special needs and James sleeps with his siblings because she can’t afford to buy them a bed each.

Nearly a third of Variety caregivers say their children don’t have a bed of their own, and up to half say they didn’t have enough bedding and blankets to keep them and their children warm last winter. Half of caregivers reported taking their child or children to the emergency department at a public hospital in the past year.

Te Aroha (6) and her sister Ricci (5) live with their dad at the weekends and during school holidays. They don’t have beds at his place and have to find somewhere to sleep ... chairs, the couch or a pile of clothing in a corner are common “beds” for the girls. The house has no heating or insulation, and both girls have been hospitalised with respiratory complications because of the effects of black mould in their bedding.

These examples are real and show the true “face of poverty” in New Zealand. But these children seem to be on the forgotten lists that make up government statistics, fawned over by bureaucrats who say they have child poverty under control. Tell that to the mum of 15-year-old Teuila, who despairs as she cuts her daughter’s long hair short to save the family money on shampoo ... against her strict cultural norms.

Perhaps you don’t believe that there are kids like Davina (14), who has never once been to the movies, a Warriors game, the zoo or even beyond the Auckland regional boundary. She has never had a birthday party or a new item of clothing, her parents can’t afford sports fees and she lives in a tiny Kainga Ora house with her eight siblings. Oh, and did I mention she’s being treated for cancer? Why are stories like Davina’s not on the front pages of every media outlet in the country every single day?

Those of us at the coalface of child poverty in New Zealand agree that this country is treading water on the issue but getting more tired with every swell. Our children are the flotsam and jetsam of the rising tide of poverty – tossed between political parties like unwanted driftwood. But please take note: at some stage, very very soon, a tsunami will appear on the horizon, everyone will panic and say they weren’t warned, and I will sit at my desk in the Variety office and shake my head at the futility of it all.

Don’t forget the children who are having their childhoods stolen by poverty when you tick that box on October 14 – I implore you. It will be the most important vote you’ll ever make.

· Susan Glasgow is chief executive of Variety – the children’s charity in New Zealand.