stand part n favour, Aye, the contrary, No. The Ayes have it.
Members, we come to the debate,
part 2 debate, on clauses
schedule 3. I call the Hon PM. Madam chair, a
pleasure to kick
off the debate around part 2, the substantive part
and the part I imagine
where members will want to contribute. Mine will
be brief. To acknowledge the
statements that were made both by
the Hon Alfred Ngaro and Marama
Davidson from the Greens around
the drivers of deprivation.
Davidson from the Greens around the drivers of deprivation. I do think
it's absolutely fair to say we need
to take into I a
count the totality of the environment that children
are coming from when
of the environment that children are
the totality of the environment that children are coming from when we
consider deprivation and
material hardship, which is why the
bill includes the
includes the wellbeing strategy, the place where we look at the
wider issues, where we look at the
impact of depth prix on things like access
to education, the quality of
housing, access
housing, access to healthcare, and all of those
additional issues, but in terms of the drivers of
deprivation, the measures
themselves give us a little indicator
to putting aside what we already
know about inadequacy of income,
what we should know as
about inadequacy of income, what we
tells us a bit around the before and half housing costs, giving us an
indication of whether or not,
for instance, housing is driving some of
the issues we're seeing within
households. So the
measures themselves help. The
persistence measure also tells us a message,
particularly when you see some
of the indicators telling
us that children as at a children age
the indicators telling us that
again, we know we need to improve the
but when you see that children under a certain age, for instance
but when you see that children under
are experiencing that more persistent poverty, that
tells us a little bit around the impact
of the expense of childcare costs
and early childhood education
childhood education and the eligibility of care givers
to balance roles of work and
care and the incomed a
quaycy of sole parents. The measures give us an
indication around the drivers of
deprivation at one level. I accept
there are many levels to that. The
measures themselves are
quite helpful tools to government. I just
wanted to acknowledge that. Of
course, part 2
of the bill establishes both the
measures, the targets and the reporting. I want to
acknowledge that the targets
been very careful around giving some flexn't in that regard is of course
if there is a
change of government it will be their prerogative
as to how they want to utilise
those targets. There is a requirement over
certain core primary
functions, having targets set out and others
that remain an option
for the.gov of the day. That is because
there's an ultimate hope here that we
will see this legislation as a framework
endure, that it won't
just be the tool of one government, but the tool
of many. Members will know
that outside of the four
primary measures, which are made up of two
income, one hardship and one
measures, which are made up of two persistent measure, we also have the
material hardship measure,
made up of the more direct measures of
living conditions for households,
and the persistent poverty measure,
which is where
multiple years are spent in income poverty or hardship.
There's
There's six supplementary measures in the bill. Those are included to
allow further comparisons. It
allows us to report on changes in
the depth and severity of poverty. That's
the area where there is
more flexibility. Overall, though, our
hope is that the suite
taken as a whole will enable governments of
every persuasion to be able to
use
using the measures as an indicator of where the greatest need is. I'm
happy to contribute from
the Chair. I call David Seymour. Thank
you, Madam chair, I have to commend
the PM, at least in this case, the
Minister for Child Poverty Reduction, for bringing this bill
to the House and making child poverty a
priority in the way that she has. It
is an enormous shame
that we live in one of the wealthiest societies in
human history and yet we're still