Think of the children

I love the way left-leaning journalists can write articles that have no basis in reality whatsoever. I guess that is why they call them opinion pieces. David Cormack has recently become a parent, and now he wants the whole country to drop everything to look after his daughter. It doesn’t occur to him that the best tool he can give her is the ability to look after herself.

Three years. That’s what you get as a Government to earn our support. Three years. It’s not a long time to make lasting change. But one thing three years is long enough for is to shape the life of a child. And that’s clearly the vision of Jacinda Ardern and her Government.


The Prime Minister made it clear in the lead-up to the election that her vision was to make New Zealand the best place in the world to raise a child and that the wellbeing of New Zealand’s children would be her reason for being.?


The families package has helped tens of thousands of New Zealanders with more money coming into their bank accounts.
The Government also immediately increased paid parental leave to 22 weeks and that’s increasing further. There’s a Best Start payment of $60 per week and increased social services that all came about because of the cancellation of National’s tax cuts.

There is no evidence whatsoever that these measures have made even the slightest difference to actual poverty. A bit more money in the bank is nice; but rents are increasing faster than ever, power costs have increased, and if the government had actually made some inroads into building some of those 100,000 houses instead of just talking about them, the chronic housing shortage might have started to ease by now. Although the media only reports on such things when National is in power, it is a certainty that there are more people now sleeping in their cars than there were two years ago. So much for New Zealand being the best place in the world to raise a child.

Impressively the Government isn’t just focused on short-term wins, they’re looking longer term and working on something more embedded, something that lasts, something better. The first Wellbeing Budget will be delivered in May and I expect this to have a strong child poverty and wellbeing focus while later this year, New Zealand’s first Child and Youth Wellbeing Strategy will be released.

The Wellbeing Budget is already a joke; it’s placing values on things that don’t matter, such as talking to a neighbour. If the government actually focused on keeping the economy strong, it would have the money for all of its social policies.

If this Government really wants to be a force for good, then force through some good. Go big. Put in a new tax bracket for people earning over $120,000. Make corporations pay their fair share. Penalise tax evasion like National penalised beneficiaries.

You want to look after children and give them the best possible start in life? Then start being a Government that pays for things that make a real difference. Collect enough tax so we can give every person insulation and heating for their home, and books, and food. Enough so that we can transport people around in a way that doesn’t ruin the environment. These aren’t luxuries that only the rich should enjoy, they are bare necessities that make living bearable.

A Newspaper.

Here is the thing I just never get with socialists. He wants higher taxes, particularly on rich people (for your information, David, people earning $120,000 a year are far from rich, and most people who have children and earn less than $50,000 a year pay no tax at all), so that the government can provide rich people with insulation. It never enters his head that many ‘rich’ people live in uninsulated houses.

It also never enters his head that, if we increase taxes further, we will drive people overseas and as our pool of taxpayers reduces, there will be less money to provide for those who have nothing.

David Cormack is prescribing a socialist utopia. He wants to turn us into Venezuela, where everyone is equally poor, and everyone, including those who used to pay tax, are forced to scavenge on the streets to survive.

What kind of a world will that be for your daughter to live in, David?

Jacinda Ardern has done nothing to alleviate poverty, but she talks about it a lot. If there were Nobel Prizes for talking about what you want to do, she would win hands down. But talk is cheap and action is missing. That is the truth about the government we have at the moment.

Show me a socialist government that has ever made people’s lives better. There are none, and the government of Jacinda Ardern won’t succeed either.