A group of child welfare organisations have launched a campaign calling for the needs of children living in poverty to be a top priority of parties campaigning for the general election.
Launching today, Five to Thrive has identified five issues where urgent change is needed when it comes to the welfare of Aotearoa’s tamariki. They include investing in children’s early years, affordable and healthy homes for every child and lifting children and their families out of poverty.
Twenty per cent of children in New Zealand live in poverty after housing costs, according to the group.
The organisations behind the movement are Barnardos, Te Kahui Mana Ririki, Whānau Āwhina Plunket and Save the Children New Zealand.
Dr Claire Achmad of Barnados says they’re imploring everyone in Aotearoa to really make it count in the upcoming election and get all of the basics right for all children.
“This is the moment that we listen as a country. We come together and collectively say, 'you know what, enough is enough'. We really do need to prioritise the wellbeing, the rights and the lives of our tamariki, our children of our families and whanau.
“Not only are they the present of our country, they are the future. The decisions that we make today really do have that impact well into the future on that intergenerational basis.”
Her comments come after a damning UNICEF report ranked New Zealand near the bottom of wealthy counties for wellbeing of children.
Around 50 per cent of families who are living in poverty in New Zealand are working families.
Jacqui Southey of Save our Children says adequate incomes for families should be top of mind when voters are looking at political parties' policy.
“That does mean lifting welfare payments. When we legislate the welfare payments so low that they cannot pay for the basics like housing and food, electricity for children to be able to do well at school we’re condemning these families to live in poverty.
“It has got to change. We have got to lift incomes. Also we need families to earn the living wage as a minimum.”
Southey says anyone who thinks raising welfare payments will incentivise unemployment is wrong. She says many people living in poverty in New Zealand are actually working.
"It's not just families on the benefit living in poverty.
"People actually want to work, they want to have good jobs but everybody has times in their lives when it's not possible to work."
She says the problem is not that New Zealand doesn't have enough to give, but that it is not equally shared.
"Some people have far, far, far too much, I'm talking about the top 10 per cent here that own 59 per cent of the entire wealth of New Zealand and yet we've got 47 per cent of New Zealand living on just two per cent of the wealth. That is incredibly unequal."
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