Time the Chief Minister had another jaunt to New Zealand

Chief MInister Howard Quayle MHK will be much too stretched preening himself for the media today as he delivers the State of the Nation address to worry too much about poverty so I thought I would help him out. ‘The boss’ seemed to be having difficulty getting his head around the concept so I thought why not send him to New Zealand?

Howard famously trotted off to New Zealand for a jaunt some years ago when he was Health Minister accompanied by short-lived DHSC CEO Mark Charters (aka Father Fintan Stack) so its an obvious choice to resolve his ‘poverty conundrum’.

According to this BBC report the New Zealand government is making an all out assault on child poverty and aims to slash the problem by 50% over the next decade:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-45819681

They also seem to have determined some benchmarks by which poverty can be determined e.g. household income 50/60 per cent below the national average so that's something for ‘Mr Statistics’ (aka Chris Thomas MHK) to get his teeth into when he’s not ‘chomping’ down in the Government Offices subsidised canteen.

One of the first things of course that New Zealand Premier Jacinda Ardern did when taking Office was recognise there was a problem and not talk it down. It would be a help if Howard Quayle adopted the same mantra.

Another interesting concept is that the Treasury Minister in New Zealand must factor in the impact his budget is expected to have on child poverty reduction and how they have been doing so far. That's going to become a legal requirement. This of course will be a new concept for Alf Cannan MHK if we had it here because normally Alf only factors in the impact his budget has on improving the wealth of the Chamber’s members. Meanwhile he ladles the stealth taxes on the poor with impunity.

Yes I think a trip to Auckland for Howard would be well worth the airfare if on this occasion he does pay attention to the job in hand!

Bernard Moffatt