Jacinda Ardern told us all that the reason she got into politics in the first place was because she wanted to do something about child poverty. Since then she’s been found wanting, and yet another report tells the tale of her failure. It is her failure because she is the Minister Responsible for Child Poverty Reduction:
A new Government report into the lives of the country’s poorest children has shown no measurable improvement in housing conditions, preventable hospitalisations, or food security.
Reducing child poverty has been a hallmark issue for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, who appointed herself minister for child poverty reduction. In the lead up to the Covid-19 pandemic, tens of thousands of children had been lifted above income and material hardship since 2018.
The latest Child Poverty Indicators report, published by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (DPMC) on Thursday, showed that over broader measures including potentially avoidable hospitalisations and regular school attendance, any improvements were marginal or uncertain due to patchy data.
And the uncounted effect of the Covid-19 pandemic continued to loom over the Government’s ability to improve the lives of more than one in 10 children who live in poverty and hardship.
Stuff
Labour has often claimed that they’ve lifted tens of thousands of children out of poverty, yet the very reports that measure this say otherwise. The Prime Minister was shifty in her response:
“Most children and young people in New Zealand are doing well. However, there is still a group of children for whom life at home is quite different,” Ardern said, in a statement accompanying the report’s release.
“Many of the issues facing children, young people and their families are complex, stubborn and intergenerational, so we know change will take time, and will require sustained action across government and across our communities.
“While it is too soon to assess the longer-term impacts of Covid-19, we know it has given rise to major challenges in the lives of our most vulnerable.”
Nothing she has done has made any measurable or demonstrable difference. If she thinks they just need more time when they keep on doing the same thing then it appears she is as deluded as I suspect she is.
The problem Ardern has, like most of her ilk, is that they dream of controlling the levers of power, and actually think they are levers that can be pulled like a 19th century train system. They still even say that there are many levers they can pull in making announcements and statements. What they’ve failed to realise is that pretending to pull levers, and saying you’ve pulled levers, doesn’t actually make any levers, real or imagined, move. This is the same mentality that has mired them in the quagmire of Kiwibuild and light rail.
Add reducing child poverty to the lengthening list of failures of this government and Jacinda Ardern.
If Jacinda Ardern could reduce child poverty simply by taking selfies with children then she’d really be making huge inroads into the problem.
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