PM Jacinda Ardern and National's Simon Bridges meet on child poverty

National Party leader Simon Bridges and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photos / Mark Mitchell

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and National Party leader Simon Bridges have held their first face to face talks as Ardern seeks cross-party support for child poverty legislation.

The pair met this week to discuss the Child Poverty Reduction Bill and emerged saying the talks had been useful and they wanted to work together on it.

The bill will require a government to set targets for reducing child poverty against a range of measures such as income and material deprivation as well as to report on child poverty as part of the Budget.

Ardern said the meeting was "useful" and she would continue to talk to Bridges about it.

"He has several [amendments] that he wished to discuss and I was keen to look at as well. I want cross-party support for this bill so I welcomed the chance to talk to him about it."

Bridges said it was his first such meeting with the Prime Minister and was "a good discussion".

National had supported the legislation at the first reading but wanted three amendments, including continuing with National's "social investment" approach, which uses detailed data to identify and target at-risk families for support. It also wanted "Better Public Services" targets reinstated. Labour has scrapped National's mechanism of such targets but has set its own three and 10-year targets for reducing child poverty.

He said the PM had promised to write to him about it.

"I'm hoping this is an issue that is bigger than politics and we can collaborate on it.

"We're saying to the Prime Minister, 'look. effectively National wants to collaborate with you but to do that we think you've really got to do more. You've got to get under the hood'.

"'You've got to get deeper into this issue than just some economic measuring and look at real indicators of what's happening on the ground and in homes, whether it's education, crime, social deprivation and also looking at our social investment approach'."

The talks were welcomed by Children's Commissioner Andrew Becroft who told RNZ the joint aproach was "fantastic news".

"This is an issue that needs to be de-politicised and the subject of an agreement."

The Child Poverty Reduction Bill is now before a select committee and the first submissions have begun. Its second reading is expected to be in August.

Ardern has already set the Government's 10-year and 3-year targets. The 10-year target was to halve the number of children living in poverty.