Bolder poverty action needed

The mire of child poverty in New Zealand looks to have reduced perceptibly. Enough, on the latest figures, for the Government to invite us to stand back a little and conclude that it’s evidence of gathering momentum; that we’re a nation on track to deliver the goal of halving child poverty in a decade.

In fact we’re on a track that remains only halfbuilt, the path ahead is anything but clear and, even now, we don’t really know where we stand – only where we were standing before the gut punch of the pandemic.

The figures aren’t fresh enough to capture the impact of Covid-19, or for that matter the success of cushioning measures like the $25 benefit increase, benefits being indexed to average wage increases, doubled winter energy payments and increases to abatement rates.

In any case, it’s the scale of unmet need that cries out most strongly from the latest statistics.

In particular, the abject lack of correction to the disproportionate way child poverty strikes across the community.

One in 11 Pa¯ keha¯ children lives in material hardship, but it’s one in five Ma¯ ori and one in four Pasifika.

We simply cannot behold those figures with the soft-focus view that it’s just a regrettable detail of an overall picture that’s gradually getting better for everyone.

It’s a specific failure that needs to be acknowledged as no less entrenched than it has been for ages. A case of so far so ... very far from being any good.

At least the data capture is better than it was.

And though it’s an uneasy thing to treat the appearance of any new set of bad figures as good news, that’s how we should regard the longoverdue appearance of the young disabled as a distinct category in the child poverty breakdowns.

Even though the figure is wretched – one in four of our disabled children lives in material hardship – this is not just a case of having yet another reason to feel bad. At least now we can monitor progress. Or lack of it, if the Ma¯ ori and Pasifika rates are anything to go by.

The Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) says what we are really seeing is proof that incrementalism isn’t working. Really, though, if we’re to avoid the folly of extravagant commitments to simplistic solutions, incrementalism is the best we can do. Many’s the government that has loaded up a silver bullet and promptly shot itself in the foot.

But incremental progress shouldn’t be timid. Children’s Commissioner Andrew Becroft urges the Government to be bolder in its measures.

After all, the result of the previous election was nothing if not a mandate for boldness on fronts such as this.

Becroft is talking, among other things, of increasing benefits by between 12 and 47 per cent, which is one of the recommendations of the Welfare Expert Advisory Group.

The CPAG points to existing, but woefully undelivered measures like more public housing, wildly contentious moves like rent freezes, and sticky concepts like ‘‘truly free education’’.

If not such steps then what?

The question is not rhetorical.

... if we’re to avoid the folly of extravagant commitments to simplistic solutions, incrementalism is the

best we can do. Many’s the government that has loaded up a silver bullet and shot itself in the foot.