Families who have never needed help before are asking for food parcels. Parents are skipping meals so their children can eat. Schools are quietly expanding breakfast programmes because more students are arriving hungry.
The cost of food is biting hard. Every supermarket trip is a reminder that wages and support payments are not keeping pace with rising prices. Bread, milk, fruit and vegetables are essentials — yet for too many households they are becoming unaffordable stress points.
Instead of confronting this crisis, this government is choosing to look away.
The expansion of harsh "move on" orders reveals an attitude focused on pushing visible hardship out of sight rather than addressing its causes. Moving people along from town centres does not reduce grocery bills. It does not lift incomes. It does not house families. It does not reduce child poverty. It simply hides it.
When you combine rising living costs with policies that fail to strengthen support for families, the outcome is predictable: more hardship. Under Christopher Luxon, food prices remain high, support has not kept pace and progress on reducing child poverty has stalled — in some measures, reversed.
Child poverty is not inevitable. We have seen that deliberate policy choices — lifting incomes, supporting families, investing in housing and school food programmes — can make a real difference. The question is whether the political will exists to act.
This election in November is about values. Do we accept a country where hunger becomes normalised and poverty is policed rather than solved? Or do we choose a government prepared to tackle the cost of living head-on and put children first?
Across my electorate the message is clear: people are struggling more, not less. Things are getting worse for ordinary New Zealanders.
If we want change, we must change the government before the damage can not be reversed.
