Poverty bill will create a merrygo-round of rules and reports

Iwas a little surprised to see the Government has introduced a bill on child poverty. During the last years of the evil Key/English administration, barely a week went by without a news story, TV documentary or breathless angst on National Radio about the 40,000 homeless and 200-andsomething thousand kids living in poverty.

These have thankfully ceased. So, naturally, I assumed that the problem had been solved.

It seems not. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has stated that she wants to be assessed on solving child poverty and has introduced a bill to ensure that we measure the level of this pernicious evil.

The Child Poverty Reduction Bill is magnificent.

For a start it commits a government to outlining 10-year objectives for tackling this scourge. Which is nice because anyone with any understanding of history appreciates how well five and 10-year government plans usually work out – especially when the average life-span of a government is well under 10 years.

The bill establishes certain principles, including that ‘‘children’s intrinsic value and inherent dignity are acknowledged’’, which of course only applies after they are actually born. Killing them in advance of their birth is still permissible and this government wants to make this practice even easier.

Child poverty will continue to be measured on a relative basis. The bottom 20 per cent of income earners, essentially, will be classified as poor, which has the merits of creating a never-ending problem that will require the oversight of an ever-growing and interventionist government agency.

One bright spot, to be fair, is a provision for the minister to identify objective measures of poverty based on actual, rather than relative, hardship. This is to include a reference to a child’s health, education and housing.

Alert readers will notice that the state has a near monopoly on the first two and heavily regulates the third, and generally does an appalling job on all three.

Poor results in these areas will, however, not result in a reassessment of the merits of a failing state system. Rather, they will provide an impetus for ever more rounds of intervention, reporting and regulation.

The Government has ordered a Royal Commission into the abuse of children in state care. Past behaviour is typically an excellent guide to future behaviour.

Perhaps the Government can take a step back and acknowledge that although their intentions are always noble – and I have no doubt that the Prime Minister is genuine in her desire to help children in need – this bill is destined to have the opposite effect.

Anyone with any understanding of history appreciates how well five and 10-year plans usually work out.