Child Poverty Action Group’s (CPAG) Issac Gunson is outraged by recent findings from the Salvation Army’s latest State of the Nation report into social wellbeing, saying that poverty is a policy choice.
“Immensely disappointed, but in no way surprised that government policy has led us here,” says Gunson.
“Everything is a political decision. The existence of poverty is a political decision, whether through direct action or inaction... we need to be making this a very critical election issue this year to demand action and to really push and make sure that politicians understand that we won’t stand for this any longer.”
Economist Matt Roskruge echoes the sentiment, arguing that structural failure is a key driver as income and support systems fail to keep pace with the cost of living.
“It’s incredibly sad to see these figures coming through, but what we know about the economy is that it has been soft and struggling for a number of years now,” Roskruge adds.
“What the report’s basically telling us is that material hardship for our tamariki is back to where it was in 2018. So, a lot of that work that was done to try and improve material hardship has been undone”.
The Salvation Army released the annual report on Wednesday, containing findings that children in material poverty have increased to 1 in 7 children, with tamariki Māori making up over 70,000 of the numbers in 2024, about 1 in 4 children. Unemployment had increased all around, and up to 10.5% for Māori.
The CPAG maintains that benefits are still too low and a full-time minimum-wage job is no guarantee for a family with two or more children, who may have little buffer for rent rises or sickness.
Gunson says the increase in children in material poverty is related to the inadequacy of income for whanau.
“The government can preach and talk about fiscal restraint and fiscal responsibility and all of that, but if they’re going to just be pulling money back, not putting out any money to help young people who are in incredibly disadvantaged situations, that’s not really fiscal restraint. That becomes a cost to the justice sector in the future, to the health sector in the future,” says Gunson.
Despite targets set by political parties in 2018 to halve child poverty by 2028, any progress made has since stalled as of 2024 and is said to be reversing.
Now, in an election year, health and well-being are expected to be a main topic of discussion in coming months.
