Government refuses to half child poverty for less than 1% of GDP

By
Martyn Bradbury
-
51
557
What smug certitude at costing billions more on Ferry's you threw a tantrum over looks like

It has billions for tax cuts we can’t afford, but not less than 1% of GDP to end child poverty…

Louise Upston rejects official advice $3b a year needed to fix child poverty

The coalition government disagrees with advice provided by officials that $3 billion a year is needed to reach the country’s child poverty reduction target.

Minister for Child Poverty Reduction Louise Upston said the government was taking a different approach to the previous Labour government.

She told RNZ the government was focused on growing the economy, improving health and education outcomes, and getting more households into work to bring down child poverty, rather than welfare payments and tax credit changes, which she says were pursued by the previous Labour government.

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Under that previous administration, a long-term goal of mid-2028 was set to reduce the number of children experiencing material hardship from 13.3 percent to 6 percent.

That target was announced by then-Child Poverty Reduction Minister Jacinda Ardern in 2018, and a shorter term goal of 9 percent was set for June this year.

A ministerial briefing from Treasury, released to RNZ, shows officials in April this year did not believe the poverty targets were “realistically achievable”.

Documents showed year-on-year progress was not on track and meeting the targets “would require investment in the region of $3 billion per year”.

Officials presented Upston with two alternative targets for 2028 that they believed could be achieved.

However, Upston told RNZ the government “disagreed with the advice and this approach, as it would further entrench long-term welfare dependency and the number of children growing up in benefit-dependent homes”.

…let’s be very clear, poverty is a political decision!

National argue they won’t spend this money to half Child Poverty because they will grow the economy, yet NZ specialises in ensuring those who benefit from economic growth don’t pay much tax…

NZ’s lack of a capital gains tax means the richest here pay vastly less than elsewhere

New Zealand’s richest taxpayers are paying just a half to a third the tax rates paid by equivalently richest taxpayers in other developed countries, largely because we don’t have a capital gains tax and they do, fresh research shows.

…look at how degraded our social infrastructure to deal with poverty is…

Christchurch care and protection facility ‘chronically under-resourced’

  • An Oranga Tamariki care and protection residence was “chronically under-resourced” and had a “poor” culture when it closed due to a series of allegations, an investigation found.
  • A snap closure of the residence was announced following concerns ‘excessive force’ had been used against children.
  • The findings include that the staff ratio on the floor was ‘inadequate and unsafe’.

…we have millions for David Seymour’s vanity projects but we don’t have money to alleviate poverty???

If only this Government treated the people with the same aroha and affection they show cigarettes, guns and far right economic policy.

If the Left want to properly fund our social and physical infrastructure, they must tax the rich.

There are 14 Billionaires in NZ, and 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals worth $50million each, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry!

We need more Drs, more nurses, more teachers, more Police, more State houses, more infrastructure NOT LESS!

We need to debate for a bigger capacity State using the example Covid just gave us.

We need more Scientists, Drs, nurses, teachers, Police, more State houses and more infrastructure alongside policy that directly subsidises the cost of living like removing gst off food, free dental, free public transport, free food in schools and we will fund that extra increase through targeted new taxes to rebuild the capacity of the State.

The obviousness of our need for a Ministry of Works that actually builds shit is painfully clear to everyone by now.

Take Police in NZ, we have a pathetic 203 police per 100 000 NZers!

Compare that with 212 in England, 264 in Australia, 318 in Scotland, 349 in Germany, 422 in France, hell even Fiji at 227 has more Police per 100 000 than we do!

We don’t have the capacity to create a functioning State that lives up to our expectations in a liberal progressive democracy because we won’t tax the rich to find that infrastructure!

Taxes aimed at speculators and the wealthy to fund services for the egalitarian country we want NZ to be.

Let’s have the courage to actually argue and win over our fellow citizens for solution based policy that actually builds the capacity to have the extra drs, nurses, firemen, police, and teachers.

Let’s champion policies that subsidise people’s cost of living by redistributing from the few to the many!

Bernard Hickey has argued, “We could have gotten $200 billion in extra tax revenues if only there had been a fair tax system which meant that capital gains were taxed at the same rate as every other type of income.”

In a liberal progressive democracy, it doesn’t matter what role you play in the complex super structure of our society and economy.

It doesn’t matter of you are a garbage collector, a dr, a nurse, a drain layer, teacher or tradie – if you all stopped doing your jobs the system can’t work.

Everyone deserves to share the collective harvest of civil society with public services and policies focused on the public good enshrined in the intrinsic civil liberties each individual has.

Wealthy individuals who become mega rich thanks to the landscape generated by those values are required to pay more back into the system they have benefited from beyond the bare necessity of ruthless accountancy practices.

These rich pricks have designed the system for themselves, ‘you can’t tax unrealised capital gains’ the Right scream, like bullshit we can’t!

If it means the mega rich have to sell a mansion or two to pay the tax bill, so fucking be it!

The obligation of the Government is to regulate Capitalism so that we the people benefit from the competitive dynamics of competition!

The disgusting right myth is that NZ is an over taxed, over regulated economy when that is total bullshit! Our top tax rate is the 39th highest in the world behind all the Scandinavian countries plus Germany, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France and South Africa!

Australia’s top tax rate is 47cents!

Our GST rate doesn’t even get us into the top 50 and our corporate tax rate is 40th while Government spending against GDP ranks 56th!

And we are voted easiest to do business by the World Bank!

Total hours spent at work per year (OECD):

Germany- 1330
Denmark- 1346
Japan- 1598
Australia- 1683
Canada- 1644
UK- 1367
New Zealand- 1739

I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!

 

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51 COMMENTS

  4. Growing the economy will not help anyone except the rich and landlords .Not one kid will be lifted out of poverty by growing the economy for the top 10%.Over the last 40 years the economy has grown but so have the number of people living in poverty as we found when they were rounded up and moved into motels when covid struck .Until then we had very little idea of the enormity of the situation and the current government is now sweeping it under the collective carpet by throwing those people out onto the street again without giving a toss about where they end up .Trickle down is a myth proven time and time again in NZ .We have a gush upwards instead as more of our wealth ends up in fewer hands .I note the house ponzi scheme is starting to unravel as banks are now baulking at lending on new builds because they are now way too expensive and the urban sprall that Bishop wants is looking shaky .I noticed yesterday that very small sections in Te Awamutu are listed for over $500k and at $4000 a sqm to build hoses will be over $1.1million on completion which is plain stupid .Also of note one bank is predicting the growth of new arrivals will be zero next year so the government will have to find a new cash cow .The era of continual growth is about to end .

    • Tax payers money that kept people employed and businesses afloat, National have undone all of that and more. Throwing Tax cuts around like confetti for those that don’t need it. Idiots.

      • If a business needs government help,to keep going it needs to look at its business plan to see if it is intact worth support. Labour hired thousands of workers for the public sector to make them look good but did it add anything to the countries wellbeing..
        Jacinda made big promises re child poverty but achieved little. While these children are going to need help to stop them sliding into crime the truth is they were born into poverty to parents that could never give them the start they are due . Education needs to be aimed at these people to not become parents until they can support their own children. When did it become the norm for the state to feed children rather than the parents

        • “If a business needs government help,to keep going it needs to look at its business plan to see if it is intact worth support.”

          Yet National are forcing workers to work in a CBD where businesses are failing. Is that the business plan you are calling for? National have gone full blown narcissists.
          Poverty is worse under National and they have created a recession.
          Labour were on the right path, National have fallen off the road.
          Why your parents were allowed to create you is beyond comprehension given your right wing political views…”Labour hired thousands of workers for the public sector to make them look good”. Yet you’re happy for National to hire consultants and commissioners at a cost of millions to make them look good.
          The doctors can’t do their jobs because they have to do their own back of office work and record numbers of kiwis have left for Australia because of unemployment and Nationals policies.

          Interesting how Luxon disintegrated because the ANZ boss stated we need a CGT.
          Arrogantly dismissed her because he would personally be affected and it would hurt his property portfolio of which he has given himself a healthy rebate each year with little regard to people dealing with poverty. In fairness to Luxon though, he never promised to do anything about poverty unlike Jacinda.

  7. We have Seymour and Luxon saying less is more when it comes to government. Less tax is more economic activity. Essentially they are saying run the country without a plan. Who would give these clowns a job running a business (cook straight ferry). If government is for the people for everyone Fricken Luxon CEO is borrowing money and giving it to the competition the richpricks. That makes him a hostile director.

    Forty years of neo-liberalism the country is richer in absolute terms but the percentage of people in poverty has increased and our per capita wealth has decreased compared to comparable countries. That’s policy failure.

    The only politician trying to do anything about economic growth is Winston his poverty target is for unemployment to be at a level the Labour Minister can know all the unemployed by name. https://youtu.be/MMidKo8LVkU?feature=shared

    Former BNZ director Rob Campbell calls poverty a feature of the neoliberalism system

    “the demonstrated fact that most whānau experiencing poverty are not simply beneficiaries but many are, where able, employed. They will often be pushed into unemployment or deeper into precarity but they are not simply dependent on government spend. They get the pay the system offers and face the food, rent and other living costs which the system offers. Their poverty, to repeat, is not a bug in the system but a feature of it.”
    https://www.nzherald.co.nz/kahu/why-would-the-government-gamble-on-an-outsider-when-it-comes-to-whanau-and-child-poverty-rob-campbell/D2LBOVGUQ5CCJIJ6GMR5J7GXAI/

    • The Press.
      NZ banks ‘some of the most profitable in the world’
      https://www.thepress.co.nz/business/350094635/nz-banks-some-most-profitable-world?

      Ah…
      The evil natzo coagulation of oily criminals have spent 88 years in government either by stealth or by blatant, overt, lobbyist influence and that has brought our beautiful AO/NZ to its knees as is evident by the natzo’s and their hyper wealthy, swindling elite with our politic and our economy in their deep, dirty pockets as I write. And all the while hundreds of thousands of Kiwi’s suffer without excuses or for reasons being given.
      ANZ Boss.
      rnz. The Siphonaptera-flea of choice.
      ” Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,
      And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.
      And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;
      While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.[2] ”
      ‘Time has arrived’ for a capital gains tax, says ANZ boss Antonia Watson
      Can I just say: FUCK the anz boss antonia watson!
      One of the four most profitable banksters in the world second only to Cananda’s banks. Care to comment Ant?
      Who THE FUCK thinks her opinion’s worth anything in our real-world of absurd costs and fuck all returns?
      https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/in-depth/528917/time-has-arrived-for-a-capital-gains-tax-says-anz-boss-antonia-watson
      She’s the Jonk’s replacement leather clad tug-ready headmistress now desperately trying to head off an inevitability; that the truth will out.

      Here’s my fucking opinion.
      Royal Commission of Inquiry right up her back passage from where she thinks the sun shines daily.
      Aunt Daisy
      “Good morning, everyone! Good morning! It’s a lovely day in Wellington and I woke to find the sun shining up my back passage. ”
      wikipedia:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aunt_Daisy
      Maud Ruby Basham MBE (née Taylor; 30 August 1879 – 14 July 1963), usually known as Daisy Basham or professionally as Aunt Daisy, was a New Zealand radio broadcaster from 1930 to 1963. Her various nicknames included “New Zealand’s First Lady of the Radio”, “Everybody’s Aunt” and “The Mighty Atom” due to her ‘radio activity’ but also a comment on her small stature.[1]
      See, that took me about 20 minutes to write. And not all that time was spent writing. Some of it was spent glaring at the neighbour and his fucking lawn mower mowing innocent little lives into oblivion while spring’s springing.
      20 minutes. That’s 1200 seconds. That’s $216,000.00 dollars for twenty minutes worth of criminal activity! That’s how much the four now foreign owned banksters are stealing from you AFTER FUCKING TAX! over a 20 minute period x 24/7/36 fucking 5.
      And because those fucking foreigners are australian one can assume they’re also choking us back so’s we don’t take the lead in exporting our PRIMARY industry agrarian produce. An advantage we used to enjoy! You see what I fucking mean! ?
      bob the fuck! You’ll have to read my fucking mind little thing because TDB wouldn’t allow me to write what I’m now thinking here.

    • Strange you should say that as those 6 years we had growth of up to 7% and were amongst the lowest indebted governments in the OECD .However the rate of private house hold debt cracked 148% of GDP .Thats about $500 billion as they went on a spending spree as they were drunk on low interest rates .Now that spending spree by the private sector is now biting them on the arse .

      • gordon, don’t put facts in front of Bob the idiot he will have an anxiety attack. He only does bluster, bullshit and ex National MP sex offenders.

        • My understanding of economics my academic achievements in economics prevent me from saying any more except you should both be embarrassed by your ignorance.

          • You are politically bereft and your understanding of economics is a complete failure given you can’t even see National have created a recession( you need to look that one up).
            You should be very embarrassed, however your complete arrogance is overshadowed by your ignorance Bob the idiot.
            One day you’ll mature.

    • Willis is a strong advocate of Bill English’s low wage economy. It crippled NZ and Labour corrected it in just 6 short years. Now Willis has crippled us again causing a recession. Now her dictatorship style is to force workers like slaves to pander to a failed neoliberal experiment. A sad inditement to a once flourishing country.

    • No, a World wide Pandemic and a Global recession made things worse, no different to what happened during the GFC. NZ would have had the same outcome whatever Govt was in power as did every other Country…except we were spared the high death rate and Hospital overloads

      • Slave labour is not the solution Jules and National are responsible for the recession. Other countries are doing remarkably well and Willis ‘s low wage economy is not the way out of a recession.

  10. That’s Cruella de.Upston for you refuses to answer questions getting fatter by the day on the tit of the taxpayers.” Let them eat cake” comes to mind and just look what happened to the purveyor of this historic utterance.

    • National in just 11 months spent in Government making things catastrophically worse, undoing the brilliant work Labour implemented.

      • Please tell me the brilliant work that Labour did, bullshit!

        I am on the left, we don’t really have a left party anymore, the Greens and Te Pati maori are the closest.

        I get tired of comments suggesting Labour were marvellous, they were utterly gutless on many fronts including on taxes which appears to be their biggest problem.

        • You’re on the left ” bullshit “.

          Ask the public sector and those struggling to find jobs under Labour compared to National in answer to your question. It’s not hard to find the positive if you choose to look.
          Yes not imposing a CGT was a mistake but stopping free money to landlords was just one of the brilliant pieces of work.

  12. This from No Right Turn..

    Priorities.

    ” As for child poverty, Upston thinks it will be solved by “growing the economy, improving health and education outcomes, and getting more households into work… rather than welfare payments and tax credit changes”. In other words, the usual capitalist magical thinking that if you make rich people richer while shitting harder on the poor and gutting health and education, everything will magically get better. National applied such cruel “solutions” in both of their previous times in government, in 1991 and 2012, and their efforts are why we have a child poverty problem in the first place. Do they seriously expect us to believe it’ll be third time lucky? Or are they just spewing bullshit to cover for the fact that they do not give a shit about anyone other than the ultra-rich?

    https://norightturn.blogspot.com/2024/09/priorities.html

  13. Biggest cause of poverty in NZ is the cost of housing/rents.

    For 30 years both sides of politics wanted higher house prices and so restricted housing land supply to do that, also boosted demand thru favourable tax settings and immigration.

    How many posters here ever argued for freeing up inner-city height restrictions or loosening density controls in suburbs?

    • With high priced, poor quality housing, inflated by a speculative housing market, and poor Government Housing Policies for the past 40-50 years.

    • National are freeing up land and encouraging building as they see the need but there are so many lon this site that condemn them because the homes are not quarter acre plots but modern apartments like the rest of the world has .

      • Sure Trevor. The government has totally stitched up the largest builder of state houses through a bullshit report from another god bothering con artist. He’s was paid half a million by his mates. This government is a disaster

    • ” Biggest cause of poverty in NZ is the cost of housing/rents. ”

      NO!

      Its a symptom of a much larger problem beginning with exploitation of working people who work but can’t support themselves to live to work not even work to live.

      Now start again.

  14. Average prices in Japan $250-$425K their property market collapsed 40 years ago and never recovered. In Japan they build houses for people to live in, they are not speculative investments like here in NZ, which favour the well healed top end of town.

      • Think about that statement as we are heading that way fast and banks are now baulking at the stupid cost to build new houses .$500K FOR A 360SQM section is plain stupid so urban sprall may be a thing of the past .

    • The only way the housing crisis will be fixed is if the government did an industrial scale State housing build. They could cut the price significantly by purchasing in bulk. But then neither of the two big parties have the stomach to do this. GUTLESS GUTLESS GUTLESS GOVERNMENTS THAT WE HAVE HAD FOR YEARS So we will go on and on having this problem because of course builders build for profits and sometimes they are fat and the cost of the materials has gone up and up.

  15. With high priced, poor quality housing, inflated by a speculative housing market, and poor Government Housing Policies for the past 40-50 years.

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