Archived 2005 Children's Policy - Every Child Matters

Note: This was the policy released for the 2005 election. An updated policy for the 2008 election will be released shortly.

VISION

We are the guardians of the earth for our children. They are our future, so we must give them the best possible start to life.

Each child should have the opportunity to grow with joy, be fully supported by their family and be an integral part of our society. Each child deserves a secure base from which they can express their creativity and discover life as an adventure.

A child's journey starts with good antenatal and early childhood care. Full emotional and material support from parents and family allows a child to grow in self-confidence and self-esteem. Parents are the first teachers, and then early childhood education centres and kohanga reo play a crucial role in personal development. Education at primary and secondary schools should assist each child to make the most of their own natural abilities, as well as giving them skills to find work, follow their dreams and participate fully in society.

But these ideals are hollow rhetoric unless we start from the uncomfortable reality that many children in NZ simply cannot aspire to these experiences. Many children are born into poverty. Many are alienated from their families. Many have disabilities.

For children living in poverty, violence or loneliness, life is grim. The first step in offering them a better life is to help their families cope materially. Money alone cannot guarantee a happy childhood, but without enough money, children can be ground down and left with little hope.

To help children, the Green Party wants first to help parents. The following actions are starting point to make sure all New Zealand children receive the best possible start in life:

SPECIFIC POLICIES

1.Giving every child the best possible start in life — regardless of the income of their parents.

The Green Party will:

1. Work towards eliminating child poverty in New Zealand by 2010. As a first step to achieving this, the Green Party will urgently develop indicators to measure poverty and regularly monitor poverty levels, especially for children.
2. Introduce a Universal Child Benefit of $15 per week for the first child and $10 per week for every subsequent child. This non-income tested, taxable, payment to the primary caregiver would be similar to the Family Benefit that was scrapped in 1991.
3. Review and reform family assistance policies. International research has shown that family assistance policies play a crucial role in reducing child poverty rates. The real value of family assistance policies has decreased as successive governments have not increased income thresholds. The Greens will undertake a major review of family assistance policies, and in particular:
   
   1. Ensure family assistance payments keep pace with the cost of living.
   2. Review targeting provisions and adjust abatement rates to reduce poverty traps. Remove barriers to work for those on benefits who are moving into work or those in work seeking to increase their wages.
   3. Abolish income-tested stand-down periods for benefits, as these are acknowledged to adversely effect levels of child poverty.
   4. Remove discriminatory policies to ensure families in and out of work are treated equitably. (e.g. some family assistance policies such as Child Tax Credit and the proposed In Work Payment discriminate against beneficiaries and those not in the workforce) and incorporate such tax credits into the Universal Child Benefit regime proposed above.
   5. Increasing the minimum wage to at least $12 an hour, with annual cost of living adjustments thereafter, to alleviate the unnecessary subsidising of the earnings of low-income families through targeted income support assistance such as Family Assistance and Accommodation Supplement.
4. Reform Paid Parental Leave Legislation to:
   
   1. Extend paid parental leave of 14 weeks to parents in the workforce, including the self employed and those working for an employer for less than 12 months.
   2. Increase payment to 100% of wages up to a maximum of the average male wage.
   3. Fund the scheme jointly by government contribution and an employer levy based on payroll (similar to ACC).
5. Support the provision, without the imposition of a work test, of benefits to single parents and partners of beneficiaries whose primary responsibility is caring for dependent children.
6. Oppose the introduction of any provision that financially penalises single parents who give birth while in receipt of benefit.
7. Repeal section 70A of the Social Security Act, which penalises single parents who refuse, or fail, to identify in law the non-custodial parent of their child or who refuse, or fail, to make a child support formula assessment application. While we believe that that non-custodial parents should be required to take financial responsibility for their children, we believe this would be more effectively achieved through a review of the Child Support Act, together with more effective education of children and young people about the responsibilities of parenting, rather than by financially penalising some of the most vulnerable families in our society.
8. Provide accessible and affordable support and education programmes for parents. All parents should have access to programmes that will support and develop their parenting skills.
9. Provide additional support for parents in the first year of each child's life. Review and increase resourcing of programmes such as Plunket to ensure that every child is seen regularly in their first months of life.
10. Make the first $5000 of everyone's income tax-free. This would have a direct impact on child poverty by giving low-income families more money in their pockets, and reducing the poverty trap.
11. Support a full and wide ranging public debate on Universal Basic Income. As a first step, more research is required on how a UBI would be applied in NZ. The UBI recognises the value of caring for children and the many women and men who stay at home full time to look after their children and other dependants.
12. Work towards setting benefit amounts at a level that is sufficient for all basic needs.
13. Work towards full employment that provides a decent income.

2. Making sure that parents have the opportunity to spend time with their children.

The Green Party will:

1. Encourage a child friendly culture in workplaces, businesses and public places wherever possible. These initiatives could include: facilities to allow mothers to breastfeed; ensuring children are able to communicate with their parents, and where possible pre school care for employees' children should be available close to or within workplaces.
2. Investigate tax incentives for employers who provide facilities and equipment for the purpose of making their place child friendly.
3. Bring forward the introduction of four weeks annual leave a year and investigate moving to five weeks.
4. Work towards a shorter working week. Many parents struggle to find time to spend with their children due to the demands of employment. We would initiate a public debate and establish a Taskforce to conduct research into the future of work, including consideration of a 35-hour week, issues of over and under employment, and strategies for raising the incomes of those on low wages.
5. Give parents with young children the right to work flexible hours which meet family needs. The Greens' flexible working hours legislation, currently before select committee, will ensure all parents have the right to negotiate with their employer for greater flexibility in their working hours and in their work location, especially during school holidays and when children are sick.

3. Creating a safe, supportive, nurturing, non-violent environment for children to grow up in.

The Green Party will:

1. Outlaw the use of physical force in the discipline of children. We will repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act so that parents may no longer use reasonable force to discipline a child. This is in line with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
2. Work with schools and communities to create a culture that does not tolerate any form of bullying or intimidation and ensure all school and early childhood centres have policies, practices and programmes to create a school culture that is inclusive and supports the elimination of prejudice, racism, bullying and violence.
3. Support and fund initiatives that create positive school and societal violence-free cultures, e.g. QPEC (Quality Public Education Coalition) Values in Schools Programme, GSE's Eliminating Violence Programme, the Peace Foundation's Cool Schools Programme, and the PPTA's Safe Schools Programme for queer students, whanau/family, and teachers. (See Education Policy for further details).
4. Work towards making it safe for children to explore the world outside the front gate. We have one of the highest rates of child pedestrian deaths in the western world. Reducing the speed and volume of motorized traffic is the single most important step we can take to creating child-friendly streets. As a first step to improving child health and safety on our roads we will:
   
   1. Introduce vehicle emission standards to reduce children's exposure to airborne toxics.
   2. Reduce exposure to traffic noise in areas of significant pedestrian activity.
   3. Work with local authorities, schools and communities to make walking and cycling to school more attractive for children and parents, e.g. through "safe routes to school" projects, and cycle lanes.
   4. Lower maximum speeds in areas of significant pedestrian traffic such as routes to schools, hospitals and shopping areas, including setting 30km/h speed limits near schools and parks.
   5. Help more schools to set up innovative alternatives such as "walking buses" where adults walk groups of children to school.
   6. Work with appropriate agencies to improve the safety, quality and availability of school buses.
5. Reduce levels of violence that children are exposed to on TV. To achieve this we will:
   
   1. Ensure violent programmes are scheduled for after 10 p.m. at night (and strictly enforce this through the Broadcasting Standards Authority).
   2. Require the Broadcasting Standards Authority to monitor the amount of violence on all television channels through annual surveys and report the findings to Parliament each year.
   3. Require the Broadcasting Standards Authority to monitor and enforce the TV codes of broadcasting practice on the portrayal of violence, in particular the requirement that channels avoid screening programmes containing gratuitous violence (that which is not justified by the context).
   4. Implement the recommendations of the Working Group on Television Violence (for which the Greens secured funding).
   5. Require TVNZ, as a publicly funded channel, to take a lead in reducing the amount of violence on television by:
      
      1. Developing guidelines on violence for producers and programmers.
      2. Committing itself to not screening programmes that contain gratuitous violence
      3. Not screening violent programmes before 10 pm. at night.

4. Supporting quality television programming for children.

Children on average watch about 2 hours of television a day. Television is a major influence on children's lives and their sense of identity. It is important that they can see a variety of quality television programmes that are made specifically for New Zealand children that reflects our cultural diversity and acknowledges the special place of Maori as tangata whenua. The Greens will:

1. Introduce a minimum number of hours of children's television that free to air television channels are required to screen. A children's programme is one which is made specifically for children or groups of children within the pre-school or primary age range, which is appropriate for New Zealand children, enhances their understanding and experience, is well produced and entertaining.
2. Substantially increase funding through New Zealand On Air for children's programming. (Only 2% of programmes on free to air television are New Zealand made children's programmes).
3. Prohibit commercial advertisements during pre-school and school age children's television.
4. Ensure the TVNZ Charter is applied equally to TV2. This is the channel that young people typically watch.
5. Require TVNZ, as the publicly funded broadcaster, to take a lead in screening locally produced children's television programmes.

5. Improving childhood health by ensuring our children have a safe and healthy environment in which to grow.

Children currently face ill health as a result of poverty, poor diet, poor housing, lack of exercise, poor or late diagnosis and treatment and exposure to pesticides and toxins. The Green Party will:

1. Work towards free healthcare for all children. The Green Party is committed to increasing access and improving services for all no matter where they live. This care should include primary health care and dental care.
2. Encourage breastfeeding as the ideal nutrition for babies by educational programmes, offering legal protection to breastfeeding mothers and ensuring workplaces make provision for breastfeeding mothers. Give regulatory force to the World Health Organisation's Code of marketing for breast milk substitutes.
3. Ensure all parents have access to a adequately funded and staffed health information helpline (such as Plunketline).
4. Make child and adolescent mental health services a priority. These services must be improved and extended in line with the recommendations of the Mental Health Blueprint.
5. Work with iwi and Maori to ensure that all Maori children are able to access culturally appropriate care and treatment in both primary and mental healthcare services.
6. Work with Pacific Island peoples to ensure that all Pacific Island children are able to access culturally appropriate care and treatment in both primary and mental health services.
7. Research the needs of other ethnic and cultural groups to assess their needs for culturally appropriate health services.
8. Work towards healthy affordable housing by:
   
   1. Ensuring there continues to be a public role in the provision of affordable housing at a rent of no more than 25% of household income.
   2. Shifting the standard tenancy conditions towards more secure and predictable tenure arrangements and provide a simple legal framework for long-term tenancies as well as short-term tenancies.
   3. Implementing the National Housing Strategy, provide appropriate resources to expand the provision of state housing and third sector housing, and create a legally binding duty on the public sector to ensure housing needs are met. The impacts of overcrowding and poor quality housing on child health are well documented. Any work on housing must take into account the well being of children and the interdependence of housing with other issues.
   4. Improving energy efficiency in homes and create drier, warmer, well-insulated homes through an expanded household energy efficiency program (see Energy Policy for full details). Much childhood ill health is due to poor housing conditions such as cold, damp and overcrowding. Providing warmer, drier homes will assist chronic conditions such as asthma.
   5. Encouraging the formation of broadly based regional housing forums as a means of jointly developing, implementing and monitoring housing policy at their local level. (See Housing policy for further details)
9. Reduce respiratory diseases in children by reducing car pollution through mandatory vehicle emission testing and cleaner diesel and petrol.
10. Reduce the harmful effects of alcohol and drugs on children by:
    
    1. Banning broadcast alcohol advertising.
    2. Compulsory health warnings on all alcohol products.
    3. Taking an integrated harm reduction approach to drug and alcohol education for parents and treating parental substance abuse as first and foremost a health issue.
11. Improve children's diets by:
    
    1. Ensuring all New Zealand produced food is GE free and any imported GE food is comprehensively labelled.
    2. Undertaking high profile, multi-media nutrition education campaigns aimed at parents and children.
    3. Encouraging better eating by ensuring nutrition, cooking and gardening are taught in all schools and better eating programmes in all schools and early childhood education centres (see Education Policy for full details).
    4. Promoting healthy foods such as fresh fruit and vegetables, and positive nutritional messages on television, and providing free fruit in all primary schools.
    5. Prohibiting advertising around Children's TV programmes.
    6. Amending National Educational Goals to ensure that all schools have a policy ensuring that only healthy food and drink is sold in schools. Researching the increase in and impact of sponsorship, advertising and promotion in schools by companies promoting food that does not meet nutritional guidelines on children's eating habits.
    7. Extending nutrition and ingredient information labelling to fast food, take-away and delicatessen food.
    8. Reviewing all maximum residue limits for pesticides and additives and setting them on the basis of children's tolerances, not adult ones.

6. Providing quality education from early childhood to tertiary.

The Green Party will:

1. Work to ensure all children have access to quality, affordable early childhood and school education. We support improved resourcing for community based not for profit centres, including kohanga reo, Pacific Island language nests and other culturally appropriate options, and increased support for other centres where community based centres can not adequately provide the services needed.
2. Increase as a proportion of GDP, Government's investment in education at all levels including early childhood, primary and secondary. We support the teaching profession and would lower teacher: pupil ratios.
3. Assist children who have special needs to have all the assistance and support they need to get the best possible education.
4. Fund special needs children's according to need rather than based on the school roll.
5. Work towards te reo being taught in all schools.
6. Increase the number of Maori advisers and resource teachers and invest more in the development of Maori resource material.
7. Support diversity and choices in education (e.g. Steiner schooling, homeschooling, correspondence school, kura) provided high standards are maintained and the core curriculum is delivered.
8. Incorporate environmental education into the core curriculum at all levels from pre-school to secondary school. Children more than adults are aware of the natural environment around them. We want to assist them to further develop their knowledge and understanding of the environment and our interdependence with the environment, and how they can work to protect our environment.

NB: This is a summary. For full details please see our Education: Children and Young People policy.

7. Ensuring children have the opportunity to actively participate in sport and leisure activities.

The Green Party will:

1. Work towards increasing access for all children, including children in rural areas, to art, music and drama.
2. Support and expand programmes that focus on cultural activities, such as kapa haka. It is important that our children are encouraged and supported to fully participate in their cultural activities.
3. Promote greater participation of all children in a wide range of sporting and outdoor activities.

8. Creating a safe, natural environment for children to learn and play in.

The Green Party will:

1. Make sure children have clean air and clean water. These basics are not always available in our cities. Children's good health and well-being is dependent on the health of our environment.
2. Ensure beaches, rivers and streams are clean and safe for children to swim and play.
3. Create marine reserves near towns and cities so that children can enjoy the sea in its natural state.
4. Create a "mainland island" in or near each of the 5 main centres by 2010 so that urban children can enjoy their natural heritage.
5. Make sure children have access to parks, playgrounds, skateboard parks and other challenging activities.

9. Supporting quality and appropriate services to children and families in need.

The Green Party will:

1. Adequately resource the provision of respite care as a key means of supporting parents caring for children with special needs, including those with severe disabilities.
2. Support the full implementation of the recommendations of the Brown Report on Child Youth and Family Service (now Department of Child Youth and Family or CYF), with a view to improving the quality and accountability of the service throughout the country.
3. Support CYF to develop a culture that respects the children, families and communities it serves, and at the same time carrying out its core function of protection and nurturing children in particular need. Staff should be well trained and properly supervised and supported.
4. Seek better infrastructure resourcing for community based organisations working with and for CYF. It is also important to recognise and resource work that is done with families before their children end up in statutory care, or the parents in refuge or prison.

10. Ensuring the interests of children are protected and promoted.

The Green Party will:

1. Support the Children's Commissioners' independence and advocacy role.
2. Establish a children's reference group to work with the Office of the Children's Commissioner.
3. Work towards the implementation in New Zealand legislation and government policy of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
4. Require the interests of children to be considered as part of all policy initiatives.