Editorial: First identify the costs and causes of child poverty

Doug Laing

As another Waitangi Day rolls by, there must be some question over whether the purpose of the Treaty signed in 1840 was the same as the reason for which we are now encouraged to celebrate it.

If it were about sharing, and a few freedoms for all of us, then probably not, as is highlighted by the new Government's Child Poverty Reduction Plan, effectively a mantra aimed at guiding itself and other governments of the future over a good many years to come.

New Zealand should, however, be looking for earlier returns, but it is doubtful we will all be on the same page in any great hurry, given that one person's poverty is essentially driven by another's greed.

While we have people who desire wealth way beyond their needs and can achieve it then we will have people who will have debt way beyond their control, and can do little or nothing about it.

It's an irony that that remedy focuses on increases in household income, when the increased spending that goes with it is simply part of the vicious cycle. The term "reduction" that might be better applied - to such things as reducing household expense.

This matter was covered in the fine print of the Children's Commissioner's Solutions to Child Poverty in New Zealand, December 2012, where recommendations 46-48 of 78 in all cover "Problem Debt".

In short, it recognised vulnerable families and individuals are ripped
off, and that consideration needed to be given to saving them. Five years later, vultures still circle.

In one example of pre-Christmas prey, a mum signed with the door-to-door kind for a washing machine at a cost of over $4500 once all repayments are met, when the whiteware was available down the road for under $900.

One suspects the remedy — legislation to prevent such carry-on — might not cost nearly as much.