The Child Poverty Crisis the System is Choosing Not to See
And the child support system sitting at its root.,
A Crisis Too Large to Ignore
New Zealand has around 975,000 children.
One in five lives in poverty.
Around 200,000 are connected to the child support system.
These numbers are not abstract.
They describe a crisis affecting a significant portion of the country’s children — a crisis that is growing, predictable, and preventable.
Ignoring it does not make it functional.
It simply hides the harm.
A Catalogue of Failures No One Can Justify
Anyone who has lived inside this system knows the truth: the failures are not rare, accidental, or isolated. They are structural. They are predictable. And they have been allowed to continue.
Here are just a few examples that expose the scale of the problem:
Driver licence suspension for unpaid child support — a power that exists on paper, yet when ask the system how often it happens, it can't tell you. No transparency. No accountability. And the logic is absurd: removing someone’s ability to drive removes their ability to work. Whoever designed that rule clearly never thought about the consequences.
IRD placing a caveat on a family home with no notification — slowly eroding the asset by stealth as interest and penalties accumulated, and then forcing the parent with the children to pay the Government to have it removed. A private agreement existed, yet the system acted as though it didn’t.
A working parent paying a student loan AND being taxed on child support that was never actually paid. Yes, this has happened 'income' not received was taxed.
A working mum receiving $7.90 a month for two children. Not even the poorest countries in the world could feed two children on that.
MSD using child support payments to reduce their own obligations by treating it as taxable income — effectively cancelling out support that should have gone to children and leaving families worse off.
One parent told they owe hundreds of thousands, while the other is told they will receive $30,000. No explanation for the difference or calculation. No transparency.
Dispute, delay, reassess, repeat. The list goes on.
These are not edge cases.
They are symptoms of a system that has lost sight of its purpose.
Child Support Payments Treated as Income — No Other Family Group Pays That
One of the most indefensible features of the current system is that child support payments are treated as income for the receiving parent. No other family group in New Zealand is taxed on money intended for children. A two‑parent household is not taxed on the portion of income used to raise their children. A grandparent raising grandchildren is not taxed on the support they receive. Only separated families are treated this way — and the result is predictable: support meant for children is quietly absorbed into the system, leaving families worse off and deepening child poverty.
This is not fairness.
It is a structural penalty applied to one group of families and no one else.
You Wouldn’t Allow Their Lunch Money to Be Taken
If a stranger took a child’s lunch money, every adult in the room would intervene.
If someone reached into a toddler’s hand to take their treat, every adult in the room would step in.
We instinctively protect children from having what is theirs taken away.
Yet the current system does exactly that — quietly, routinely, and with full authority.
Child support payments are treated as income and taxed.
No other family group in New Zealand is taxed on money intended for children.
Only separated families are penalised this way.
If this were happening in a schoolyard, we would call it what it is.
But when it happens inside a government system, we call it “policy.”
The label does not make it moral.
It does not make it fair.
And it does not make it sustainable.
Money intended for children is being taken before it ever reaches them.
And children are not children forever.
What is taken from them now cannot be returned later.
Meet the Children Paying the Nation’s Bills
There is a phrase that keeps ringing in the ears of anyone who has lived inside this system:
they are costing the country.
But the numbers tell a different story.
The real cost to the country is not the children receiving support.
It is the system that takes from them.
New Zealand can afford landlord tax breaks.
It can afford to forgo billions in revenue to support property investors.
It can afford to subsidise those who already have assets.
What it cannot justify is taking money from the children who have the least to cover the costs of those who have more.
No other family group in New Zealand is taxed on money intended for children.
Only separated families are penalised this way.
Only their children see their support reduced, diverted, or clawed back.
A country cannot claim to be addressing child poverty while funding its choices by taking from the children who can least afford it.
Punishing Parents for Forming Relationships
The system doesn’t just intrude — it actively discourages parents from rebuilding their lives.
By treating any new relationship, flatmate, or household arrangement as evidence that someone else should be financially responsible for the children, the system creates a chilling effect. Parent left afraid to date. Afraid to move in with anyone. Afraid to be seen with someone who might be interpreted as a “partner.”
It creates a culture of surveillance — not by choice, but by fear.
And while the caring parent lives under that microscope, the other parent — the one responsible for contributing financially — can exploit the system’s blind spots. Instead of being held accountable, some use the system’s obsession with the caring parent’s private life as a distraction, a loophole, a way to avoid responsibility.
It is easier to scrutinise the parent doing the caring than to enforce responsibility on the parent avoiding it.
A system that punishes people for trying to rebuild their lives is not a support system.
It is a barrier — one that keeps families stuck, isolated, and constantly monitored.
And it all flows from the same flawed logic:
judge the parent who cares, not the parent who leaves.
Parents Forced to Prove Their Worth
Separated parents have been forced into a constant cycle of justification — proving their contribution, defending their income, and navigating a maze of calculations so opaque that even professionals struggle to explain them.
Millions of dollars have been spent on disputes, reviews, and litigation.
Courts are clogged with arguments about assessments, arrears, exemptions, and income definitions.
Those with fewer financial resources are dragged through processes they cannot afford, while those with more resources can weaponise the system to delay, dispute, or avoid responsibility.
The result is predictable: children wait, families suffer, and the system continues to fail everyone it touches.
A whole sector of society — hundreds of thousands of parents and children — has been left to wade through an administrative swamp that was never designed with their wellbeing in mind.
A System That Won’t Let Families Move On
One of the most damaging features of the current child support system is that it simply does not allow people to move on with their lives.
Even after separation, even after agreements, even after years of trying to stabilise their households, parents are repeatedly dragged back into disputes they never asked for.
Every reassessment, every challenge, every recalculation pulls them back into conflict with an ex‑partner they may be trying to heal from — including in cases involving trauma or abuse.
This isn’t just emotionally exhausting.
It is an enormous administrative overhead that should not exist.
A well‑designed system reduces conflict; ours manufactures it.
It keeps families stuck in the past instead of helping them build a future.
The Harm Is Still Current
The failures of the child support system are not relics of the past. They are happening today:
• licence suspension
• clawbacks
• diverted payments
• forced signatures
• parents losing homes
• children missing opportunities
• young adults carrying debt that should never have been theirs
This is not just legacy harm.
It is ongoing harm.
Poverty Is Engineered, Not Accidental
Poverty does not appear overnight.
It accumulates when a system applies sustained pressure and removes every exit:
• no ability to save
• no path to home ownership
• no room for education
• no financial stability
The system manufactures “have‑nots” and protects “haves.”
This is not personal failure — it is structural design
Does Anyone Think This Is a Good Use of Taxpayer Money?
At some point, the country has to ask the most basic question:
Does anyone think this is a good use of taxpayer money?
Because this system does not create value.
It does not reduce poverty.
It does not support families.
It does not grow the economy.
It does not improve outcomes for children.
Instead, it funds:
• endless reassessments
• income policing
• disputes
• reviews
• recalculations
• enforcement actions
• administrative churn
It drags parents back into conflict they are trying to escape.
It consumes public resources.
It delivers little for the children it claims to support.
This is not fiscal responsibility.
It is fiscal waste.
A system that costs this much, delivers this little, and harms this many children is not just inefficient — it is indefensible.
A System Built for a Minority Now Affects a Major Segment
When the child support system was created, single‑parent households were a small minority — politically invisible, socially stigmatised, easy to overlook. The system was built around that assumption.
That explains the original blind spot.
It does not excuse its continuation.
Separated and single‑parent households are now one of the largest family structures in New Zealand. The system has not kept pace. It still treats this group as marginal when they are anything but.
A system designed for a minority cannot be allowed to fail a majority.
The Blind Spot No Longer Exists
For decades, governments operated without data, without evaluation, and without listening. That explains the past — but it cannot excuse the present.
Project Kōtare is now in the Government’s hands.
It has been formally provided.
It has been acknowledged.
Once the evidence and the solution are in front of them, inaction is no longer an oversight.
It becomes a decision.
And decisions have consequences — for the hundreds of thousands of families living inside this system, and for the next generation watching how they are treated.
The Scale of Impact Is Impossible to Ignore
Hundreds of thousands of people live inside this system — parents, children, young adults, extended families, partners. This is not a fringe group. It is a significant portion of the population.
Continuing to ignore the crisis is not neutral.
It carries consequences.
Another Generation Is Growing Up Inside This Failure
Children see the system take money meant for them.
They see their parent struggle.
They see opportunities closed.
They learn what the country thinks they deserve.
And children are not children forever.
Every year of delay is a year of childhood lost — a year of development, stability, and opportunity that cannot be returned. Another generation is being shaped by a system that treats them as less.
The urgency is not theoretical.
It is lived.
Reform Means Restoring What Was Taken
Reform is not generosity.
It is restoration.
• If the system offset your entitlement, you can have it back.
• If you lost your home, here is a deposit to rebuild.
• If you missed out on sports or activities, here is the chance to try them now.
• If you had to work instead of study, here is support to pursue the education you were denied.
• If you carried student debt because support never arrived, here is a reduction to level the playing field.
This is not creating advantage.
It is removing disadvantage.
A System That Must Be Brought Into the Present
A system built for a different era cannot meet the needs of today.
A system that has never been reviewed cannot be assumed to work.
A system that produces predictable harm cannot be defended.
The cause is sitting in plain sight.
The solution is already in their hands.
A Crisis Ignored Is a Crisis Owned
The child poverty crisis is real, urgent, and too large to ignore.
The child support system is one of its root causes.
And the blueprint to fix it — Project Kōtare — is already on the desk.
Once the evidence is clear and the solution is available, the responsibility is simple:
Represent the people affected.
Fix the system causing the harm.
Act while children are still children.
Because childhood cannot be paused while the system catches up.
The Blueprint Exists. The Ministers Have It. The Time for Excuses Is Over.
Project Kōtare Blueprint is complete. It is ready for implementation. It has been delivered to the Ministers who have the power to fix this failing system.
Every day without action forces families back into disputes they should never have to revisit.
Every day keeps children in preventable poverty.
Every day allows a known failure to continue harming the people it was supposed to protect.
The failure is lived.
The solution exists.
The harm is undeniable.
What will finally make those with the power care enough to fix a system that has hurt families for far too long.
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