MEDIA RELEASE
Open Letter to Ministerial Committee on Poverty from Deborah Morriss-Travers
9/12/2015

Make My Future Fair: ensure an adequate standard of living

Hon Bill English; Hon Steve Joyce; Hon Paula Bennett; Hon Hekia Parata; Hon Jonathan Coleman; Hon Anne Tolley; Hon Te Ururoa Flavell; Ms Marama Fox MP

Make My Future Fair: ensure an adequate standard of living

UNICEF New Zealand is calling on the Government to act with urgency to lift children out of poverty and ensure their right to an adequate standard of living is upheld. As your work on Budget 2016 commences, we urge you to demonstrate leadership in the interests of children by prioritising them – especially young children – for additional Government investment in both household incomes and in-kind support.

We acknowledge the range of important work underway across Government to achieve Better Public Service targets and improve outcomes for some children. We consider there is an unprecedented Government focus on children and we welcome this. However, we wish to highlight the needs of children in homes with very limited incomes – specifically those in sole parent homes reliant on welfare benefits. Many of these families are living in severe poverty, with significant impacts on the health of their children. Government data shows that 70 percent of the children living in severe material hardship are in sole parent homes and children in sole parent homes reliant on welfare benefits have poverty rates 6-7 times higher than working families and of the children living in poverty, more than 60 percent of them are in homes without work.1

UNICEF NZ is concerned that policy is designed to keep benefits low as an incentive for people to participate in work, without adequate consideration of the harm done to children. Even when the economy is strong, around 17 percent of children live in homes reliant on benefits. Regardless of parents’ employment status, failing to protect these children from poverty-related harm is costly to our society and economy in the long-term. We consider that investing in these families by increasing their incomes will improve their health and their ability to participate in their communities, therefore also increasing the likelihood they will seek work.

We are also very concerned about the lack of affordable, quality housing for some families, the fact that 12 percent of children live in homes with serious cold, damp and mould problems2and 16 percent are living in overcrowded conditions.3 Every year there are 40,000 hospitalisations linked to socio-economic status and much of this is due to poor quality housing and the inability to heat homes. It is unacceptable for children in New Zealand to suffer from poverty-related illness at rates much higher than other developed countries; and for particular groups – such as Maori and Pacific children – to carry the burden of poverty and illness.

Experience over the past thirty years confirms UNICEF’s view that Government policy has the single biggest impact on child poverty rates, not economic growth alone. Developing policies using a child rights approach which is informed by children’s best interests has multiple benefits for all population groups. Government has an important leadership role to play in creating the social and economic conditions for children to thrive, as well as working in partnership with local government, businesses, Iwi, schools, churches, communities and wha-nau/families.

We recommend urgent action on the following:
• Indexing welfare benefits to median wages in the same way as NZ Superannuation.
• Ensuring families are receiving all of the support they are eligible for, including the Child Disability Allowance.
• Reviewing and increasing the Accommodation Supplement to reduce very high outgoings to income.
• Simplifying and improving Working for Families so that the poorest children receive support and tax credits are indexed to median wages.
• Continuing to retrofit Housing NZ properties with insulation and heating, to ensure they are safe for children to live in and insisting on good quality private rentals properties for children.
• Building more social housing and improving access to quality, affordable homes while ensuring greater security of tenancies to reduce family transience.
• Setting targets to significantly reduce severe and persistent poverty over the next five years.
• Developing a multi-year plan, with cross-party support, to ensure sustained investment from Government and communities to improve the standard of living for children.
• UNICEF NZ remains committed to working with the Government to find pathways out of poverty for New Zealand’s children and to fulfilling the rights of all children as set out in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Yours sincerely
Hon Deborah Morris-Travers
National Advocacy Manager UNICEF New Zealand

1 Bryan Perry, Household incomes in New Zealand: Trends in indicators of inequality and hardship 1982-2014, Ministry of Social Development, Wellington, August 2015
2 Bryan Perry, The material wellbeing of new Zealand households: trends and relativities using non-income measures, with international comparisons, Ministry of Social Development, Wellington, August 2015
3 www.childpoverty.co.nz

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