OPINION: It’s always a bold move, in a Budget, to deliberately bar the poorest New Zealanders from its centrepiece policy. Up until now, child support payments from their ex-partners have been taken by the state to “offset” the cost of their benefit. This has always been bizarre: the point of child support is to do what it says on the tin, support children, not reduce a government’s net welfare costs. * Budget 2022: The little Budget projects you didn’t know about* As it happened: All the Budget 2022 news, analysis and reactionsCampaigners have urged the full “pass-through” of child support, as it is known, for years now, and will be delighted. In a few years’ time, the projections say, child poverty will be where it is now: lower than when Labour started out, but still far higher than it should be.

Source: Stuff May 20, 2022 03:37 UTC