This week's political spotlight was dominated by John Key's controversial comments about the convicted criminals on Christmas Island, pushing the child poverty debate well off to the side.
See also: Who should pay to reduce poverty? Should it be you?, Who are New Zealand’s real rich? The results may surprise you and The inequality debate or why the modern left is failing
As headlines this week were dominated by John Key telling opposition MPs they were “backing the rapists,” an extremely important issue flew under the radar.
It was a parliamentary debate over child poverty, an issue a Roy Morgan poll earlier this year found was one of the most important issues facing voters.
Not long after the dust had settled from Mr Key’s controversial comments, Labour MP Jacinda Ardern had a sparring match with National’s Minister of Social Development Anne Tolley over the matter.
Although it didn’t reach the theatrical heights of an MP ambushing the prime minister on the way to Parliament, Mr Key screeching the word “rapist” across the house and MPs being asked to leave the building when relating their own experiences of sexual assault, Ms Ardern’s questions to Ms Tolley highlight a deeply worrying truth in New Zealand.
There is still no official set of measurements to define child poverty in New Zealand.
This was evident in question time on Thursday, and was evident in a debate in August between Mr Key and Green’s co-leader Metiria Turei, and has been evident for quite some time before that.
MPs run at each other time and time again, armed with statistics and heart-breaking stories of children going to school with no lunch.
Despite this, it’s difficult to get a clear picture of just how bad the issue of child poverty is in New Zealand.
So during question time, Ms Ardern posed the question Ms Tolley: “How does she define child poverty?”
A fair question. If the Roy Morgan poll is anything to go by, this is an issue most New Zealanders deem important.
“There is a range of decisions on key issues that would have a significant influence on how anyone would define poverty,” Ms Tolley answered.
“It would be more time than the Speaker would allow me to go through what those are.”
This answer didn’t satisfy the opposition and was met by jeering.
Ms Ardern, too, was clearly not satisfied, telling the Speaker she did not feel she received the answer to her “simple question.”
At this point, many would be sympathetic to Ms Ardern and would have been demanding a clear answer to this “simple question.”
Frustrating as it must have been for Ms Ardern however, Ms Tolley’s answer is probably as good as she could have given.
Why? Because unlike GDP or unemployment – whereby Statistics New Zealand regularly publishes data on whether the figures are going up or down – New Zealand has no official set of agreed upon measures that define what poverty actually is and how to officially measure it.
'Official' statistics
This didn’t stop the two MPs from referencing the most comprehensive poverty statistics document available in New Zealand – the Ministry of Social Development’s (MSD) Annual Household Incomes report, released in August.
Of course, the annual report has been used and abused so many times in the course of this long-running debate, it has a whole section devoted to “myths and misunderstandings.”
Ms Tolley says the report shows between 60,000 and 100,000, children in New Zealand are experiencing the most “severe hardship,” depending on where you draw the line.
Ms Ardern hit back by saying, based on income measures, “there are 305,000 children in poverty.”
But what does the MSD report actually say?
It, as a matter of fact, explicitly states that claiming it shows that there are, for example, 300,000 children in poverty in New Zealand is simply “not correct.”
“Though it is true this is one figure given in the range of income poverty figures reported, the Income Report does not support such a bold definitive claim that is misleadingly matter-of-fact,” it says.
The report says there an understandable desire to be able to say “there are X thousand New Zealanders in poverty.”
“To give some meaning to statements like that requires some reference point that readers can readily understand. To have them widely accepted requires a standard of measure which is at least plausible, and hopefully even better than that.”
It is understood that senior members at the MSD have become increasingly irritated at the way politicians and the wider media interpret the report.
Much ado about something
As previously reported, in 2012, a report by an expert advisory group on solutions to child poverty suggested a law to ensure regular measurement of child poverty.
The recommendations were made to the Children’s Commissioner, who then passed the recommendations to the then-social development minister, Paula Bennett.
But, this recommendation was never taken before Parliament.
So, should New Zealand have an official, agreed upon set of statistics that define what poverty actually is, so the debate is not clouded by uncertainty and a tsunami of statistics?
Depends on who you ask.
In December 2013, then social development minister Paula Bennett told Radio New Zealand she doesn’t believe there should be a defined line under which a child is considered to be in poverty.
“You could miss out on services for a whole lot of children who need them because they don’t meet an arbitrary line that some government has put in place,” she said.
She has recently confirmed she stands by those comments.
Mr Key seems to have a markedly different view, however, about the benefits of clear measures, having previously noted:
“If you don’t measure, monitor, and report on things, I don’t think you can make progress,” in The Dominion Post three years ago.
Despite this, the government has not given any indication it is willing to embrace a series of official measures that would capture the different aspects of child poverty.
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