English: poverty figures unrealistic
Campaigner says ‘modest’ benefit rise would be huge help for some but still a one-off Honour roll tribute to campaigner
Finance Minister Bill English has hit out against the figures used by anti-poverty campaigners to measure child poverty, as he defends his Budget announcement to increase benefits.
However, Professor Jonathan Boston of Victoria University rebutted the minister’s claims, saying Mr English “doesn’t understand how poverty measures are calculated”.
Mr English said during an interview with TVNZ’s Q+A programme yesterday that anti-poverty campaigners like Professor Boston and the Children’s Commissioner used an unrealistic set of measures to quantify poverty in New Zealand.
“I mean, the measures that those groups use — if everyone’s income was doubled overnight, we’d still have the same poverty today as we did yesterday, because they’re using relative measures,” he said.
“We are focusing not on some theoretically perfect world but on the reality of the lowest income families, with relatively limited resources.
“We have targeted those lowestincome families, and while the poverty experts may think it makes no difference to those families, where the margins are $5 or $10 difference between success and failure, $25 a week is going to help them.”
It was clear from his comments that Mr English did not understand the measures, Professor Boston said.
Despite the benefit increase being modest, it would make a big difference to some families, he said.
“I am very pleased that the Government has finally adjusted benefits after almost half a century of no movement, so this increase is welcome, but we need to recognise that it is modest and it is a one-off,” he said.
Mr English denied the $25-a-week benefit increase figure was misleading, saying it had to be looked at “family by family”.
He told Q+A. it was “possible” more money would go towards poverty in the future.
“But we’ve still got to implement this first step and we still want to persist with our social investment approach, because while we know that the path out of dependency is to get a job, there’s a lot of people . . . who at the moment aren’t able or capable of getting a job without considerably more support and without action that breaks the cycle of violence, criminal convictions, alcohol addiction, low income.”