The Greens have dismissed the Prime Minister's claim their KiwiSaver plan for kids is unaffordable, saying it'll cost about the same per year as what we're spending on sending troops to Iraq.
Co-leader Metiria Turei wants every child to have a taxpayer-funded $1000 KiwiSaver kick-start, with the Government matching savings up to a certain level and giving bigger top-up contributions for those living in poverty.
It's estimated to cost $224 million over the first three years, which John Key says is "massively expensive" and unfair to kids from better-off families, who though eligible, won't receive top-ups as generous as those given to disadvantaged children.
"It would be essentially saying for one set of kids we're going to set you up with this massive nest egg and for everybody else, you're on your own," he said on TV3's Paul Henry programme yesterday.
Appearing on the programme this morning, Ms Turei said the cost was "one-thousandth" of the total Budget, and a fraction of the cost of the Government's tax cuts.
"He makes choices about the money he spends. He spent $4 billion on tax cuts for the very wealthy. He can choose to invest in our kids," says Ms Turei.
"When we announced our Kids' KiwiSaver scheme, he said there wasn't enough money in the Budget to do it. It would cost the same amount in the first year as it cost to send the armed trainers to Iraq. We can make choices that invest in our kids, if we wanted to."
Mr Key also disputed research showing more than 250,000 Kiwi kids live in relative poverty, saying it was only "60,000 to 100,000".
"The definition that he's using to get to 60,000 to 100,000 children is a definition of poverty that nobody in the Western world uses, nobody in New Zealand uses, nobody in the OECD uses," says Ms Turei.
"There are at least a quarter of a million kids living in poverty in this country, by any reasonable and legitimate definition of that – and they need investment now. They need a Prime Minister who's genuinely committed to it."
The strong words come as the Government seems to be backtracking from earlier claims the Budget would focus on alleviating child poverty. Social Development Minister Anne Tolley in December said National was "working on a comprehensive plan bringing together cross-Government agencies" to tackle the issue, and Mr Key the same month named lifting children off the New Zealand Deprivation Index one of his goals for 2015.
Instead, Mr Key says getting the Government's books back in the black is the priority – a goal National is expected to fall short of for the seventh year in a row.
Ms Turei won't rule out working with National on developing alternative plans to tackle child poverty, but doesn't expect them to come to the party.
"I keep offering National ideas… and they simply won't do it because as you've seen, they simply are backtracking away from their commitments."
Read more:
- Child poverty targeted in Budget
- $1B needed to fix child poverty - expert
- Charity: PM needs to do more to stop child poverty
- Greens promise $1B to tackle child poverty
3 News
source: newshub archive
