Sunday 31st July, 2011

Q+A interview with Annette King.

Labour will abolish Families Commission, spend money on new Children’s Ministry, Minister and more services
Childen’s ministry wouldn’t need to be “a big ministry with lots of bureaucrats”
Labour open to targeting, even if other miss out on state support
Still committed to universal child support at birth and universal support for early childhood education, but need to then identify and target families which need help
Ridiculous to have minister for racing and seniors, but “no minister for the most vulnerable”
Labour to re-introduce Training Incentive Allowance – ‘Parents must have govt assistance if they are to move into work’
Labour’s child-focused policy “unfinished business”; circa 2005 Labour was focussing on getting more income into families rather than child welfare
Need professional person with family when baby is born
More mobile families these days means many people falling through cracks
Wants an integrated approach across govt departments, with Minister overseeing it
Advocates more parenting programmes, cross-party work on identifying key issues

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be watched on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

Q+A, 9-10am Sundays on TV ONE. Repeats at 9.10pm Sundays, 10.10am and 2.10pm Mondays on TVNZ 7

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ANNETTE KING interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL HOLMES
Annette King, welcome. Very nice to have you on Q+A.

ANNETTE KING - Labour Deputy Leader
Morning, Paul. It’s lovely to be with you.

PAUL What did you make of what those two men [Sir Peter Gluckman and Robert Winston] were saying?

ANNETTE Well, I agree with just about everything they said, actually, Paul. Um, in fact, Lord Winston - I’ve watched Child of Our Time, probably every episode, and of course Peter Gluckman is one of our foremost scientists and has done a lot of work with children. So I found what they said compelling. In fact, I have followed, in terms of developing our policy, a lot of the stuff that’s being said by our academics, our scientists and our practitioners.

PAUL But, again, the problem’s not new, is it? Is this something anyone can fix? I mean, even in 2005, not to insult your government at all, but in 2005 in the middle of your Parliamentary term, we had the third worst stats on child death by neglect in the OECD.

ANNETTE Well, I think we could always do better. There’s no doubt about it. And, I suppose at that time, we were concentrating on the issues of getting children to doctors that were more affordable, housing issues, the issues of more income into families. I see this as unfinished business, in terms of our own party, the things that we need to do to ensure a better start to life for children. And when you listen to those two you’ve just had on this programme, they’re making the point over and over again about the importance of putting funding and investment and priority on those first five years of a child’s life.

PAUL Now, is that going to mean targeting, though? And, I mean, I don’t know how you sit with that, because they both said, and you heard Lord Winston at the end say you can’t go with a scattergun approach. You’ve got to say these are your particularly vulnerable age, for a start, but also these are the particularly vulnerable people within that group, within that age. Could you do that?

ANNETTE Yes, you could, because where you start is the beginning. You try to start with the family before the baby’s born, but if not, they always end up somewhere having a baby to be born. If you start then and ensure that you can identify the children that are at risk, then you can put the extra investment in. But how can you identify a vulnerable child if you don’t pick them up until they’ve been abused? So my argument is the old idea, Paul - you mentioned it. It was called Plunket. The idea that at the very beginning of a child’s life, there is a professional person with them that can identify if that family’s got a problem. Then you can put the additional support in. But we’ve lost that track, in many ways, and it is so highly targeted these days and families so mobile that many children move from town to town and just fall through the cracks.

PAUL Well, there are some of the difficulties. That’s right. But this business of targeting, it’s generally anathema to Labour, but it’s something that both those men suggest you might have to do. There are obvious, obvious people and kids who need help, and that might mean that if we help them with the resources they’re going to need, that someone over here might miss out who’s not in such need. Could you handle that?

ANNETTE Of course, because the idea is that you start by looking at all children, but then you find the children that are vulnerable and you invest more in them. I totally agree with that. And you’ve got to identify them first. You find a mother that is a sole parent. You find that they’ve got a child who is sick, or there’s a death in the family or whatever. You find the vulnerable child or family, you put the additional support in. But if you just try and wait until they appear in a statistic, you’ve missed the opportunity. You’ve missed the boat.

PAUL Now, you’ve been quite firm on this that you believe there should be a senior minister with responsibility for children at the Cabinet table. Senior minister at the Cabinet table. A minister for children. God, when you think about, why have we never done this?

ANNETTE Well, I don’t know, but it’s certainly been said to me by lots of people. They’ve said, ‘We’ve got a minister for elderly in New Zealand. We have a minister for racehorses. We have a minister for Rugby World Cup. Why don’t we have a minister for the most vulnerable?’ And I’m not talking, Paul, about a big ministry and heaps of money and lots of bureaucrats; I’m talking about a minister who’s able to speak up when issues come to that Cabinet table that affect children and their families.

PAUL And so where do most of the big initiatives that go into looking after the most vulnerable young babies go? Will that go through Health?

ANNETTE No, that’s the problem. They’re put into one portfolio, and then they’re supposed to cope with them all. And Peter Gluckman mentioned it - you want an integrated approach across departments, and you want a minister and a small ministry that can say, ‘What does that policy do for children? What is the impact of it? What’s Health doing? What’s Education doing? What’s Justice doing?’ And you look across the portfolios. We run these parallel lines, and there are big gaps where children fall down them.

PAUL Is that true of government a lot, do you think?

ANNETTE In my experience, yes, it is, and being a minister for many years, I know how hard it is to get that sort of integration.

PAUL You have been there a hundred years, I know.

ANNETTE No, not a hundred. (BOTH LAUGH)

PAUL But, you see, we’ve had the Minister for Youth Affairs. We’ve had the Families Commission. We’ve had the Minister of Women’s Affairs, which may not necessarily be to do with this, but you’d get rid of the Families Commission, yes?

ANNETTE Yes, I would, because I don’t believe the Families Commission plays a very important role any more. It cost about $8 million, and I’d rather use that money for a ministry for children, a minister - very small - and put the money into some services and help for families.

PAUL So, very specifically, what you’re coming up with is you’d refocus policy on the two crucial early years - birth to two years?

ANNETTE Birth to two years, then three to five where early childhood education is a big key, and you heard that from your two guests today.

PAUL But would you prioritise?

ANNETTE Well, of course we would prioritise. When you get to early childhood education, that is where it should be universal for all children, but prioritise your services to the most vulnerable families when you’ve identified them. So you start with a very universal approach at birth, but you soon recognise there are families that need more help. I do believe, Paul, though, that every family and most families could get help from parenting programmes. None of us are experts, and we’re parents, and we know how hard that is. So, you can help many parents with access to parenting programmes. Some parents don’t need any help, but others need a little more.

PAUL We’ve talked a lot about solo mothers, and my producer and I yesterday were talking about the sheer difficulties about what it must be like to be a solo parent and to be a solo mother. The other day on Sky I found myself watching - what’s the Dustin Hoffman film?

ANNETTE Which one?

(OFF CAMERA)
Rain Man.

PAUL No, not Mrs Doubtfire. No, no. It won the Oscar. Best Picture.

ANNETTE Kramer vs Kramer.

PAUL Kramer vs Kramer. And the sheer impossibility of trying to marry job, career, blah, blah, blah. And there used to be something called - now, what was it called?

ANNETTE Training Incentive Allowance?

PAUL The one that helped Paula Bennett get off the DPB.

ANNETTE The Training Incentive…

PAUL It’s gone, of course, and the Greens are going to announce next week they want to see that back.

ANNETTE Well, we’ve already announced that we should have it. You see, what really works - and we know works - is if you give people some assistance to get a job… No good saying, ‘Go out and get a job. Find something, somewhere to put your kids.’ You need to give them some assistance to help them get a job. It might be travel, childcare, or a Training Incentive Allowance that gives them some skills to get a job that pays more than the benefit. Because all they really care about is caring for their kids and giving them what they need. Now, if you take it away and you don’t provide that support, then I believe you will have many parents who won’t do a good job of looking after their children if they’re forced into jobs where they can’t properly care for them.

PAUL So you will bring it back. You will bring it back.

ANNETTE Absolutely.

PAUL Now, another thing. With the greatest respect, Mrs King, all of this is academic, isn’t it, when I’m talking to you about it, because given the polls.

ANNETTE Oh, well, I’ve already said it once this week, I’ll say it again - bugger the polls. (PAUL LAUGHS) Look, I’m out there talking… I’ve particularly been talking about this policy of ours, Paul. Talking to parents, talking to those who provide services, and they believe in this policy, and a lot of people out there are listening to what we’re saying. So I’m going to rely on the big poll that comes on the 26th of November

PAUL Do you think there’s a sea change going on - that we really are, people of all walks of life are saying, ‘For God’s sake, we’ve got to start looking at this’?

ANNETTE Absolutely, and I’m really excited about that. What I’d like to see, however, is across the political parties, that we actually have an agreed approach to policy for children so we don’t get, as they said, this political to-ing and fro-ing. We need to sit around and decide on the key issues. But we’ve got all the evidence, we’ve got the research, we’ve got people ready to go. I don’t want to see a long delay in getting something happening.

PAUL Annette King, thank you very much indeed for your time. Deputy Leader of the Labour Party.