Ardern needs to do a better job on poverty

YOU tell us (ODT, 5.10.20) Prime Minister Ardern wants rheumatic fever, a poverty marker of overcrowded Victorianera slum conditions, to vanish from New Zealand. And she goes on at length to remind us of the causes and vagaries of this debilitating and avoidable childhood disease.

I voted for Ms Ardern in 2017 as she pledged to fight child poverty in New Zealand, and to markedly increase our supply and quality of affordable housing.

Notwithstanding her personal commitment to this as Minister of Child Poverty Reduction, the result has been a disappointing failure.

I’m deeply thankful to the Prime Minister for doing whatever was necessary for us to ‘‘eliminate’’ Covid19. Now it’s past time we did the same for child poverty and rheumatic fever — a condition she calls a national shame, and which others have called a national disgrace.

Allan Portis

Waverley

[Abridged]