In the blue corner

All children regardless of their background should have access to a good education so that they have the best opportunity to succeed. Kids should be healthy, skilled and motivated lifelong learners. It is concerning to learn that more children aren’t attending school due to their family experiencing hardship.

We should first start by acknowledging the amazing work that KidsCan does in providing valuable support to vulnerable children so they have improved educational opportunities.

In 2017, the Prime Minister claimed she wanted New Zealand to be ‘‘the best place in the world to be a child’’ and promised to halve child poverty.

However, three years on, that promise has proven to be nothing more than hollow words as there are now 4000 more children living in poverty under her watch.

Seven out of nine child poverty indicators have increased and there are now 15,000 more children growing up in benefit-dependent homes since Labour took office.

In the last financial year $480 million was paid out in hardship grants.

What is worrying is that Benefit advances have to be paid back, so what’s really happening is twice as many Kiwis are being plunged into more debt because they’re unable to cope with everyday costs.

Tax after tax is being piled on. Families are paying $200 a year more on average in petrol taxes and rents have increased by $50 a week across the country.

Households have to ensure their money is being well spent, and governments should too. Families should also be able to keep more of what they earn.

We want to keep the cost of living as low as possible, because we know high costs create challenges and stress for families. But we also know more money doesn’t necessarily mean better outcomes.

Instead of just handing out cash, our welfare system should take a ‘‘social investment approach’’ where social services are targeted at the people who need it most.

We should also create a Social Innovation Fund so that promising initiatives and programmes tackling longterm social challenges have a chance to prove their success.

It is also important to reinstate targets that the current Government scrapped which focused public agencies on reducing welfare dependency and increasing the numeracy and literacy of children, which will help break the welfare dependency cycle.

National’s Social Services Discussion Document shows we’re the party with the ideas and ambition to make a real difference to children’s lives, including getting their parents back to work so that fewer children are living in poverty, they achieve more and grow up seeing the importance of earning a living.