Proposed Merger a Backward Step

The proposal by the National Party, as reported and supported by United Future, to merge the Families’ and Children’s Commissioners is the latest example of anti-child policies that have led to New Zealand’s poor performance in relation to its children.

“It bodes ill for New Zealand children that one of our major political parties still doesn’t see their problems as pressing enough to warrant separate attention,” said Ian Hassall, Every Child Counts spokesperson and New Zealand’s first Children’s Commissioner.

“The Children’s Commissioner is there to stick up for children because their interests are often ignored or sidelined. The argument being put up is that attention to families will solve the problems facing children. It won’t. What if we applied the argument to other age groups? Older people or working-age men wouldn’t put up with proposals that their interests would be met through attention to their families,” he continued.

“Everyone belongs to a family and support for families is good policy but specific problems need specific attention. Many solutions to problems affecting children are bound to operate through their families but in looking for a solution we have to start at the beginning, with the problem.

“There is a whole raft of issues affecting children in New Zealand today. Disguising them as ‘family’ issues may make them look politically safer but it won’t help to solve them,” Ian Hassall concluded.

Every Child Counts is a coalition including Barnardos, Plunket, Save the Children, Unicef NZ and AUT’s Institute of Public Policy, supported by more than 325 other organisations and thousands of individual supporters. It will be providing informed comment, sometimes critical, throughout the election campaign, identifying poor policy proposals from any political party from a children’s perspective.

The public are invited to demonstrate their support for the nation’s children by adding their names to the Every Child Counts campaign at: www.everychildcounts.org.nz

ENDS

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