Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Jacqui Southey: Save the Children Advocacy and Research Director on New Zealand's Child poverty stats

Transcript

Jacqui Southey: Save the Children Advocacy and Research Director on New Zealand's Child poverty stats · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: There has been no change to child poverty in the
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: last year. Data released yesterday by Stat's New Zealand shows
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: that seventeen point seven percent of all children are in
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: poverty and that is based on household income after housing
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: costs have been paid. So Save the Children New Zealand's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: advocacy and Research director as Jackie Southy, who joins me now, Heather,
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Jackie Kilder Andrew, did you have any confidence that maybe
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the figures will be better or were you expecting this?
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: We were expecting this. We've we come off the back
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: of a period of very high living costs, high inflation.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: We're also seeing that there's a lot of financial strife
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: out there and people have lost their jobs. People are
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: really feeling the cost of living, and we know that
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: we're in a recession. So we didn't expect a rosy picture.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Are you expecting it to get rosier or do you
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: think this will continue on in the medium term.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Well, Unlessie makes significant changes to the way that people
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: can access housing and that make it more affordable, whether
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: renting or owning a home, and also lift the lowest
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: incomes of the lowest income families, particularly for soule parent families.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: This is not going to significantly change.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: So seventeen point seven percent of all children are in
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: poverty based on household income after housing costs have been
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: taken out of the equation. So does that show that
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: the housing costs are the real issue in this country?
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. We can see that the families on the lowest
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: thing comes to spending more than forty percent of their
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  Speaker 2: income on housing, and that compares to twenty percent as
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: a national average. And so quite simply, it's not affordable.
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: It doesn't leave enough money to pay for the other
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: necessities in life, such as the energy costs, food costs,
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: to be able to service your car and make sure
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: you've got a decent car, money to get you where
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  Speaker 2: you need to go.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: So look, I had an interview earlier this morning where
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: I was talking to a guy about the cost of
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  Speaker 1: building and it's gone up forty four percent over the
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  Speaker 1: last four years. Housing is not getting any more affordable.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: We know this is the problem. We have been trying
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: to fix it for an AID. So do you have
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: any great ideas about how the government could tackle child poverty,
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  Speaker 1: because so far, with all the will in the world,
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  Speaker 1: it hasn't worked.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: But I think we've seen some changes in the way
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  Speaker 2: we build houses and the sort of houses we need.
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  Speaker 2: You know, for a long type of decades, we were
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  Speaker 2: building very big homes, multi bedroom, very expensive, and we've
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: seen that people have gone towards and more less the
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: kits at home and that they've really improved in quality.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: They're more compact, they're cheaper to build, and you know,
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  Speaker 2: that's a potential way of solving our issues as looking
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: at how can we build smaller, better, good quality homes
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: but are definitely more affordable. And the other thing is
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  Speaker 2: we need to look at the lowest incomes and that's
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: for our sole parents families. They're struggling on forty six
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: thousand per annum disposable income and that's absolutely shockingly low
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  Speaker 2: by any measure for a family to be trying to
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  Speaker 2: live on in this day and age. Amongst the costs
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: that we face for fase a.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: Living, Jackie, you face a challenge. Thank you for all
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  Speaker 1: the work you do. Jackie is Save the Children, New
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  Speaker 1: Zealand's advocacy research director.
• 3:02
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• 3:05
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• 3:08
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