National leader Bill English has this morning been highly dismissive of the Government's soon to be revealed child poverty reduction bill, speculating it will ignore the underlying social causes behind poverty.
The Labour-led Government will today reveal legislation to measure and set reduction targets for child poverty on the first sitting day of Parliament for 2018.
But the impending Government bill was dissected by Mr English as focusing exclusively on income levels as the cause behind poverty in New Zealand.
"I think they're just going to legislate to have targets," Mr English said.
The National leader has anticipated the Government’s child poverty legislation will ignore social causes. (Source: Other)
"Now we already have a whole lot of measurements of child poverty but it looks like they're just going to focus just on incomes and of course that's only half the story with any kind of poverty, including child poverty, because the other side of the story is the social dysfunction that locks people into long term deprivation.
"But they've abandoned the tool kit, or they say they're going to, the Government has for dealing with long-term welfare dependence, recidivist criminal offending, long-term health and disability problems.
"They're going to legislate for half the story and forget the other half which is really important."
Mr English said National recommends legislating both to increase incomes for the lowest income families, and also setting targets for the public service to deal with "hardcore social dysfunction" in families.
It's one of the final pieces of Labour's 100 day plan. (Source: Other)
Mr English said the government has abandoned any legislative efforts to deal with this social dysfunction in their new child poverty bill.
Reducing child poverty was a key campaign pledge for Labour and Ms Ardern has taken personal responsibility for it.
She's expected to release today a bill which will show how child poverty is going to be measured and set reduction targets.
The Treasury will be responsible for tracking progress, which will be reviewed at budget time each year.
"The fact that we're going to have to report on how we're doing in the budget will shape the way that we look at child wellbeing issues every time we write a budget," she said on Monday.
The legislation is one of the final pieces of Labour's 100-day plan and today details of the legislation will be made public.
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