Selective quoting

About the In Work payment that the Child Poverty Action Group is challenging in court, Tapu Misa writes, "There's little evidence that such incentives work. It's true the number of people on the unemployed benefit or DPB has fallen since 2000, thanks largely to a strong economy, but the proportion of children in severe and significant hardship increased 36 per cent between 2000 and 2004. As the OECD has noted, employment isn't the full solution."

Taspu Misa is possibly unaware that two OECD representatives are appearing for the government.

In 2007, on the back of extensive international research exploring the comparative effectiveness of using benefits or work to reduce child poverty, the OECD recommended to New Zealand 'reforms to reduce joblessness among families with children should be a priority.'

This paper compared the effectiveness of a 'benefit' strategy and a 'work' strategy in achieving reduction in child poverty. It concluded that a work strategy would be more effective in New Zealand. Hence I believe it is the authors of this paper that the government are going to use to defend their current strategy.

It is benefit dependence that creates child poverty. When benefits are increased, more people opt for them over work. Isn't it strange that when carbon emissions are widely accepted as contributing to global warming (rightly or wrongly) there is a clamour from the political left to reduce them yet the same logic is not applied to benefits.

Ironically Tapu Misa's chosen analogous headline, "Kids are not gambling chips" probably provoked a more direct response in many. Exactly. They are not meal tickets for feckless parents looking to increase their incomes to squander on, amongst other things, gambling.