It’s a busy Sunday for New Zealand First as it unveiled its latest candidate, former Defence Minister Ron Mark, and announced its latest policy which aims to tackle what the party calls “New Zealand’s birthrate crisis”.
These announcements were made in Masterton, with NZ First leader Winston Peters saying: “As a country we have been blind to this issue and now have found ourselves at the eleventh hour with a disaster coming, if we don’t do something about it now.”
“That problem is our massively declining birthrate,” he said.
"There are many and varied reasons why in modern western societies people are deciding to not have children or choosing to have children later in life – which all inevitably lead to fewer children.
“Those reasons range from prioritising careers, prioritising a dependent-free adulthood, increasing costs, and sacrifices of raising children.”
"The fact is, we need more Kiwis having more children, and one way to do that is to substantially lower the main barrier most are facing – that is the cost,” he said.
Peters said NZ First would campaign on introducing a ‘Kiwi Kids Grant’ which will support New Zealand citizens to raise their first three children through the first three years of their lives.
“The ‘Kiwi Kids Grant’ will encourage Kiwis to have more kids, and remove the barrier of the increasing costs of having children,” Peters said.
“The ‘Kiwi Kids Grant’ is a universal, non-means tested grant of $5000 annually for the first three years, and for each of the first, second, and third child.
“This regular payment will be facilitated through IRD (Inland Revenue), with an option of the first-year grant for the first child being taken as a lump sum to help with the costs for a first child,” Peters said.
The $5000 will be tax free and will be in addition to all other existing support that parents are currently eligible for. One parent has to be a NZ citizen in order to be eligible for this grant.
New Zealand First estimates this will cost $400 million by the third year once the full cycle is established.
“This is an essential investment in our country’s future demography, culture, and sustainable economic future," Peters said.
"New Zealand needs to get our birthrate increasing before it’s too late.”
Ron Mark’s return
On Mark, Peters said he brought "proven leadership and a deep commitment to serving the people of New Zealand".
“When Ron was the Minister of Defence, he had a huge impact on the Defence Force, was well respected within the ranks, and delivered massive changes and upgrades to our forces.
“No modern Minister of Defence can match his record in terms of procurement of essential military equipment.”
Peters said Mark “seriously delivered" as a minister and an MP.
“Others might talk about the Wairarapa interests, Ron does something about it.”
Mark was a former New Zealand First list MP and Defence Minister between 2017 and 2020. More recently he was Mayor of Carterton and is currently a member of the Waitangi Tribunal.
In the lead up to Sunday’s announcement, there was speculation that Mark would be running for New Zealand First again. Asked about this by reporters on Tuesday, Labour MP Kieran McAnulty said there were rumours that Mark might be coming back, “but [we] have to wait and see, I suppose”.
Asked about the potential of Mark being the Wairarapa electorate candidate for NZ First before the announcement, McAnulty said “whoever other parties pick is not going to change our approach in Wairarapa”.
McAnulty is currently a list MP but was the MP for Wairarapa between 2020 and 2023, and is standing for Labour in the Wairarapa electorate this year.
The current MP for Wairarapa is National’s Mike Butterick, who in the Prime Minister’s ministerial reshuffle in April, became Minister for Land Information and Associate Minister of Agriculture.
Speaking to the NZ Herald on Wednesday, Mark said he was “still thinking” about his future, sharing he had gotten a good job offer in Europe.
“My selfish side says, ‘Sayonara, Luxembourg here I come’, but I’ve always been a simple soldier, put my country first,” he said.
21 Comments
So the solution to our problems is to pay people to have more kids? Not creating a country/society where people 'want' to raise children, where they can expect a decent job, affordable cost of living, the ability to buy a house without being crushed under a mountain of debt for the rest of their lives. What's next, govt subsidies to encourage FH buyers to 'get on the property ladder'. Absolute insanity.
Even in very rich countries it's expensive for average people to bring up kids. This concept that we can become rich enough that it's easy without state help will never happen. And even if it did, you'd be even richer if you didn't have kids so the same barriers still apply.
Who said anything about being "rich"? Societies have functioned perfectly well without everyone being "rich". Maybe creating a world where everyone wants to be "rich" is in fact the problem?
People are struggling to afford to feed a family now, and we are a fairly rich country.
When I was a kid parents got family benefit or similar. I've had kids since and never received a cent. I guess their education and healthcare were free, otherwise got no help at all.
Working for families is no longer available to working families even on min wage.
I tend to agree with Bubbles sentiment Jim. It should be the parents responsibility to ensure they are capable of providing for their children, not the states. Population growth is NOT economic growth and in this NZF have disappointed me. They need to be able the get a better grasp of the big picture and then communicate it to their constituency.
This is arrant stupidity.
We are already overstocked - both locally and planetarily. Perhaps the silly fellow might ask why 60,000 tried to cross from a piece of sand to a piece of sand. Hint - it wasn't sand once.
We need to be well beyond such stupidity, this late in the human trajectory.
He represents old people that need young people to pay tax and feed them. But those old people also don't like immigrants so I guess they will reluctantly hand out a small benefit to the locals.
Rubbish Jim. Young people need to have decent jobs to go to, that pay a good wage. That's not a part of their policies apparently. More kids their way is increased liability for the government. PDK is essentially correct.
The 3rd time we've agreed...
Also, why should taxpayers pay for other people's lifestyle choices - which include having children.
Or retiring.
We pay benefits to almost everyone, including boomers with millions of dollars in housing, but refuse to help young families feed multiple mouths because that would be a handout. A bit f'd up IMO.
Having a kid is when you need state help the most.
Look where that led to?
Gross overpopulation.
So that was a bad idea.
Keep up PDK. Population growth is last centuries problem.
"We...refuse to help young families feed multiple mouths because that would be a handout..."
That is obviously quite untrue, we do the opposite in so many ways & in doing so ensure ongoing inherent state dependence for individuals personal choices while creating unforeseen consequences (eg WFF becomes a universal taxpayer funded wage subsidy).
We don't tell the truth.
Which is that there are too many of us.
The young get the picture; no chance of a nest (the rentiers got the real estate before they were born). So they go for alternative personal narratives.
Not everything is made better without cohesive leadership, though. Neoliberal freemarketry is why we're in existential trouble; it fails to fit within limits.
Also free public transport for pensioners, but school kids pay so much they sometimes can't afford it and have to miss school.
But the right have polices where the parents can get fined when the kids miss school.
I suspect if anyone looks past the topline number they will conclude that it will make no difference to their situation....some however will not make that examination.
Bill Rowling promised a baby bonus too.
I rated him sub-average.
Just sayin'.
I viewed him as a good Minister of Defence. If Winston first gets in I'm sure RM will get a ministerial portfolio and I hope it includes MoD. Perhaps he'll get rid of the woke DIE introduced or continued by Judith Collins. Just reminded me another reason not to vote for National.
Ron Mark back in NZF is bringing back a bit of class I feel.
I could never understand why he left, but suspected a conflict with Winnie. No information or evidence just a hunch. Some of the things Winnie did would have frustrated him.
New Zealand would be a better place with fewer people. And richer.
So throw money at a problem to keep the govt and public from sorting the root cause of the issue? Band aid policy at best and we'd all be taxed to pay for it of course.
Perhaps if housing was more affordable and there were greater employment opportunities, then the youth would consider having children without having to dump their kids in daycare and work to the bone just to get by.
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