By SUSAN ST JOHN
Using the Government's own information, three out of every 10 New Zealand children live in poverty.
Imagine you're one of them: you're malnourished because your family cannot afford to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, so you're tired all the time and it is hard to concentrate at school.
You're more likely to get sick, but you're less likely to go to the doctor because of the cost. You have little warm clothing, and no money for birthday gifts or for school trips and sport.
Under these conditions, it is hard to grow up to become a healthy, able adult.
If your family depends on government benefits, you're doubly disadvantaged. Only low-income families that receive no benefit income at all are eligible to receive the child tax credit ($15 a week a child).
About 300,000 of the most needy children are being punished because of the source of their family's income. While in opposition, Labour promised to address this discrimination, yet has done nothing about it. The Child Poverty Action Group has taken the case against the child tax credit to the Human Rights Commission and awaits a decision on its legality.
It is sobering to reflect that if we had treated retired people as badly as we have treated low-income children, many would be queuing at foodbanks.
A couple on New Zealand Superannuation got an extra $10 a week from the beginning of this month as this year's automatic benefit increase. It will help them to cope with the rising costs of transport, rates, milk and bread.
Low-income families, however, must wait for ad hoc Budget decisions on family support payments of which there have been none in the past seven years.
Since 1986, the poorest one-child young family has had a rise of only $5 a week in family support. Taking inflation into account, their family support should be about $74 a week. Instead, it is only $47.
In next month's Budget the child tax credit should be added to family support and then the whole amount properly adjusted for years of neglect.
Yet the Minister of Finance, Michael Cullen, says he will not do anything in the Budget to restore the lost buying power of children's benefits.
In the report of the finance and expenditure committee he said: "I have signalled that if we are satisfied that we are running structural surpluses, above what we have assumed in the last couple of years - not what is happening in terms of the cyclical aspect of the surplus but the structural aspect of the surplus - then I would be expecting next year's Budget to have significant measures in terms of family support."
So low-income children might get some compensation next year, perhaps, but only if something as ephemeral as the "structural surplus" materialises at a level higher than expected.
Sir Robert Muldoon used to say that the average person wouldn't know a deficit if they fell over it. What would the hard-pressed family know about a structural surplus? Would they appreciate that they have contributed millions of dollars to the structural surplus through putting up with ever-diminishing real benefits over time?
Dr Cullen also claimed, in a later interview with the Herald, that the souring of the economy is causing a rethink on social policy spending.
"The difficulty," he said, "is that a lot of forms of [economic] stimulation are structural, such as changes to family-support levels. You can't wind those back by saying, 'Oh gosh, the economy is picking up now, let's take that money back off you'."
To follow this logic the automatic annual increase in all social welfare benefits must also constitute structural spending. The purpose of family support is to provide some of the income security that families of his generation enjoyed. The problem is that it is failing to do its job. Child poverty is one of the most serious threats to New Zealand's prosperity, given the lifelong problems it causes.
In response to a Child Poverty Action Group report, Social Welfare minister Steve Maharey claimed there had been "large strides made since 1999 to improve the lives of low-income families".
He cited increased subsidies for under-6s' GP visits, and income-related rents. He blamed the National Government for neglecting low-income families during the 1990s, thus creating a serious problem for the Government.
Yet the Government has continued the culture of neglect - there has been little new spending in the past four years to tackle this massive problem.
Mr Maharey pointed to the $200 million for the meningococcal vaccination programme, but this can be interpreted only as evidence of the serious social consequences of the neglect of child poverty. It does nothing to address the root causes.
The cruel irony is that because child-related payments have fallen so far behind inflation, especially for the youngest families, whether working or on benefits, the Government will trumpet its catch-up spending, if and when it does it, as evidence it is taking child poverty seriously.
There will be a huffing and puffing from the Opposition about how it is wasting taxpayer money. People whose incomes were greatly enhanced by the tax cuts of 1996-1998 will tut-tut about giving more money to the feckless poor who really need a good dose of education about contraception.
Meanwhile, billions of dollars flow from the surplus to the Super Fund to protect the pensions of everyone over 65.
* Susan St John, who teaches in the University of Auckland's school of business and economics, is a member of the Child Poverty Action Group
By SUSAN ST JOHN
Using the Government's own information, three out of every 10 New Zealand children live in poverty.
Imagine you're one of them: you're malnourished because your family cannot afford to buy fresh fruit and vegetables, so you're tired all the time and it is hard to concentrate at school.
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