We’re working with experts for an economic system that prioritises children and whānau

Imagine an Aotearoa where everyone has enough to live on, a warm, safe place to live, and the means and support they need to learn and thrive. We can get there by ending whānau poverty and redistributing wealth fairly. This year we started working really hard to transform and reform our welfare system so all tamariki and whānau flourish.

This year, we partnered with Child Poverty Action Group (CPAG) and coordinated 328 members of the ActionStation community to make a joint submission to improve the Prime Ministers' Child Poverty Reduction Bill. You can check out the submission here:

We then coordinated a submission to the Tax Working Group on how to make our tax system fairer for everyone. This was a collated submission made on behalf of 750 everyday members of the public who contributed via our online submission tool that was jointly promoted by us and the Council of Trade Unions. You can check out the submission here:

Our submissions paint a vision of a more egalitarian society where wealth has been distributed fairly and everyone has what they need to learn and thrive.

We also hosted a Facebook Live with Sir Michael Cullen and The Workshop's Jess Berentson-Shaw to engage more people in the discussion about how we can make our tax system fairer for everyone.

In June, we celebrated the law for a crackdown on multinational tax dodging that we petitioned for in 2017 passing into law. The change helps to bring in an additional $200 million per year to help clean our rivers and teach our kids.

Then in October, we started work with CPAG once again to advocate for policies to reform and transform our welfare system so all children and whānau can thrive.

Over six weeks, we collected over 200 people’s stories of their lived experiences of the welfare system. We paired those stories with research from CPAG and we released a report called Welfare for Wellbeing.

We're planning to turbocharge our efforts to radically transform our economic system in 2019, so our next step is to recruit an Economic Fairness Campaigner who will lead this work. Click here to find out more and apply.