Post-Cabinet Press Conference: Child Poverty Legislation

Tuesday, 30 January 2018, 6:06 pm
Article: Joseph Cederwall

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern held her first post-cabinet press conference for the 2018 year this afternoon, following the meeting of cabinet.

Ardern announced the details of the Government's new legislation aimed at setting accountable and transparent standards for assessing progress on reducing ‘child Poverty .

The discussion centred around what the Government hopes to achieve by the introduction of this new piece of legislation the Child Poverty Reduction Bill.

Prime Minister Ardern noted that this was a personal issue for her as reducing child poverty was one of the main reasons she decided to enter politics.

She also highlighted the fact that this bill deliberately does not include specific targets around child poverty, rather it seeks to drive a significant and sustained reduction in child poverty that lasts beyond successive governments.

The Bill is aiming to do this by providing a framework for measuring and targeting child poverty which Ardern hopes can achieve cross-party support and last beyond the current Government. The Bill sets in law four primary, and six supplementary measures of poverty and material hardship. It requires the government of the day to then set targets to reduce child poverty.

Ardern outlined that this approach aims to get beyond the debate around how to measure income poverty and material deprivation by focusing on well recognised international standards and requiring successive Governments to set their own targets.

This represents a change in position for the Prime Minister, who admitted that she initially favoured an approach enshrining targets in the legislation. Ardern says she changed mind and removed these targets as a result of consulting with numerous advocates working in the area in order to ensure the bill remaina bipartisan and lasts beyond the current political cycle.

The Government targets, The first Comprehensive Child Well-being Strategy will be available in time for the public to submit on them, alongside the Bill, as part of the select committee process. This will include both three year and ten year targets.

Ardern sees this Bill as a foundation for future governments and a way for the public to hold them to account on this issue.

The increased data collection required for the measures will come at a cost as there is some data not currently collected, however this will be sought through the budgeting process.

Ardern also discussed the action already taken to reduce child poverty and hardship through the ‘Families Package’ and believes this will increase the incomes of many families by meaningful amounts. However, she also stated that more will be required beyond this work already done to meet targets.

Summary
The Bill specifically requires governments to:
• Set ten-year targets on a defined set of measures of child poverty and periodically set and publish three-year targets.
• Develop and report on a strategy to promote the overall wellbeing of children, which will include a particular focus on reducing child poverty.
• Report, on Budget day, how the Budget will reduce child poverty, and how the Government is progressing towards its targets.

“The Bill requires the Government Statistician to report, independently from government, trends in the range of measures specified in the Bill in order to give a comprehensive picture.

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Joseph Cederwall

Freelance Writer

Joseph is Co-editor of Scoop and Editor of The Dig. Joseph is an editor, writer, and social entrepreneur with an interest in open and participatory media and business models. In 2019, Joseph founded The Dig. Joseph has qualifications in law and anthropology and previously practiced as a lawyer in the Immigration and Human Rights field. He is now applying this background to the practice of ‘reverse anthropology' using a framing of indigenous worldviews to deconstruct the dominant worldviews and cultural myths of Western society. Joseph has a longstanding interest in the commons, participatory democracy, social justice, and human rights. He was a co-founder, and founding Director of ActionStation Aotearoa - now NZ's largest online movement-building organisation. Joseph is also a Director of Freerange Publishing Cooperative, and a long-time contributor to Enspiral - a non-hierarchical collective of freelancers and ventures dedicated to collaborative business practice and purpose-driven enterprise. He lives in beautiful Taranaki and enjoys watersports, permaculture, tai chi, music, and being in nature.

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