Sunday 26 August, 2012
Q+A: Shane Taurima interviews Deborah Morris-Travers
Q+A understands Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group’s report will urge:
• Landlords Warrant of Fitness
• Universal Child Benefit
• More meals in schools
Expert says she “expects” strong recommendations around housing, “including a WOF that regulates the quality of
housing.”
Meals in Schools an “obvious thing to be doing” to help children learn and deal with social environment.
Morris-Travers backs universal child benefit and hopes it’s in EAG report: payments need to be universal and aimed at
very young children.
Netherlands study shows that focus on getting the poorest into early childhood education works.
Says Netherlands spends more on poor children, ensuring they are healthy and educated. That means greater productivity
and a stronger economy.
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Q + A – August 26, 2012
DEBORAH MORRIS-TRAVERS
Interviewed by SHANE TAURIMA
SHANE Deborah, good morning to you. Thank you for joining us.
DEBORAH MORRIS-TRAVERS – Every Child Counts
Kia ora, Shane.
SHANE Let’s start with how big a problem do we actually have?
MS MORRIS-TRAVERS It’s a significant problem. We have just over a fifth of New Zealand children currently living in
poverty, and more importantly, when you look at what's happening for Pasifika and Maori children, we have 40% of
Pasifika children and 27% of Maori children in poverty. So that inequality is clearly unjust, but also it’s rapidly
becoming unsustainable. Already we spend $6 billion picking up the pieces of child poverty. And because those
populations – Maori and Pasifika – have more children and have their children younger, that $6 billion is rapidly going
to balloon out of control. Poverty in New Zealand constitutes malnutrition; it means living in really cold, damp housing
that makes children very sick; and it also means that very often these children are not participating early childhood
education, so their education outcomes are worse than other children.
SHANE So you’ve been looking at the Netherlands for solutions. What's one recommendation
from that study that the government could pick up today and make a real difference to the problem you’ve just described?
MS MORRIS-TRAVERS Well, there are a number of excellent recommendations, but I guess what I would say is that they do
a very good job at prioritising disadvantaged populations to be in early childhood education, and they’re also very good
at ensuring that childcare is in place that enables parents to be able to work. They invest in their population so that
their population is healthy and educated and, in turn, that means that they have a higher rate of productivity and a
much stronger economy than New Zealand has.
SHANE There is another big report due out next week, and we understand there's a
recommendation for a warrant of fitness for rental properties. Is that a good idea?
MS MORRIS-TRAVERS Yeah, I really hope there’ll be some good, practical recommendations coming out of the Expert
Advisory Group on Poverty, and I would expect there to be some very strong recommendations around housing, including a
warrant of fitness that regulates the quality of housing, and of course we also need to improve the affordability of
housing. I think there are other practical and immediate things that we could be doing for children in poverty too - for
example, providing meals in schools. And in the longer term, I think we need to have systems change that enables us to
provide more universal support to children, perhaps through something like a child benefit. We need both short-term—
SHANE Which we also understand will be part of next week’s report.
MS MORRIS-TRAVERS I’d be really pleased if it was in there, because, again, it’s something that happens in the
Netherlands and in many other countries, and our current financial support for families is not as generous and as
universal as it needs to be. We need to recognise the particular needs of families who have got children in them, and
especially those families who have got very young children, because in the first 1000 days of life, the most important
physical, mental and emotional development happens for children. Those children need to be in warm houses and have their
nutritional and educational needs met.
SHANE Can I just ask you about another recommendation we understand to be in the report,
and that is around meals in schools? Is that something else that you would support?
MS MORRIS-TRAVERS Yeah, well, I think that it’s quite an obvious thing that we can be doing to ensure that children
are fed and therefore able to pay attention to their school environment and be sociable in the school environment too.
There are studies coming from the Child Poverty Action Group that clearly show that where children arrive at school
hungry, they are much less able to deal with the challenge of the school environment. So I think that it would be a very
simple and wise investment to ensure that children are adequately fed in school.
SHANE Deborah, I’m sorry to cut you off, but very very quickly, what are the chances of
these solutions being picked up in your opinion?
MS MORRIS-TRAVERS Well, I would really encourage all political parties to maintain an open mind to the
recommendations that come from the Experts Advisory Group. Over the next few weeks, there’ll be an opportunity for the
public and social providers to comment on those recommendations, and I would urge all political parties to develop a
consensus around child poverty. This is an issue of national significance, and we must address it.
SHANE Deborah Morris-Travers, thank you very much for joining us this morning.
ENDS