Salvation Army warns people will remain in 'desperate situations' if poverty not addressed in Budget

The Salvation Army says Budget 2021 is "critical" to the people it sees struggling on a daily basis. 

Lieutenant Colonel Ian Hutson told Breakfast the church and charity was putting a lot of weight on the Budget. 

"This Government has got the mandate and we think if it doesn't happen now, then it's going to be tough for a our people going forward."

He said the Salvation Army wanted to see an injection of money into emergency accommodation and more wraparound support for people staying in these motels. 

"People need much more than a roof over their head. Obviously emergency housing isn't the total answer ... but it's what we've got and it is desperately needed."

If such issues weren't addressed in this budget, Hutson said people were going to continue to struggle. 

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"In a way this bugdet is a critical moment and if this some of these things aren't done then we foresee people are going to remain in the kind of poverty we're having to deal with on a daily basis, people in quite desperate situations." 

Hutson said the Government wanted to deal with child poverty, so it needed to be addressed by the Budget. 

"If this budget doesn't do something substantial to deal with it, we believe we're really making a choice to stay with poverty long-term."

Hutson was also joined on Breakfast by AUT professor John Tookey, Bernie O'Donnell from the Manukau Urban Māori Authority, and School Strike 4 Climate founder Sophie Handford, who had their own wishlists. 

Tookey said he wanted the Budget to address the housing crisis by getting more people into construction, grants for first-home buyers and shared equity schemes.

"Everything and anything that can contribute to the development of capacity to be able to resolve the problem," he said. 

O'Donnell said he wanted to see areas of training for Māori and Pasifika people to upskill and to ensure they were earning a decent living. 

He said the only worry the authority had was promises of the Budget "getting lost in the bureacratic system" and wanted to see the money going where it actually needed to go. 

"It's happened in the past and it's got to stop."

Handford told Breakfast the Government's pre-Budget announcement of $67.4 million over four years to decarbonise the public sector by 2025 was "a start".

"We have the opportunity and the responsibility to do so much more to truly transform not only the public sector, but the entire Aotearoa to create a vision of climate justice."

She said she wanted to see fossil fuels phased out through this budget, public transport decarbonised, active modes of transport incentivised, sustainable farming promoted and climate education.