Labour pledges family support

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 3

Labour pledges family support

PA Wellington The Labour Party yesterday pledged to continue the Family Support scheme for lower-income families. The support, now $36 a week for the first child and $l6 for each other child, would be retained and regularly reviewed to maintain its value, said the Minister of Women’s Affairs, Mrs Hercus.

Mrs Hercus claimed the National Party had said it would wipe the scheme. Such a move, she said, would take away help from 200,000 families. However, the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, said National had no intention of scrapping Family Support.

“That is not in our policy, has not been enunciated in that fashion at all.

“What we have said is that taking GST off basic food items, doctors’ fees and local body rates will reduce the cost (of living) to families and therefore will reduce the group that may qualify for support,” Mr Bolger said yesterday. No way of changing the system had been worked out, but Mr Bolger said Family Support would continue to be a meanstested benefit. Mrs Hercus said the

guaranteed minimum family income would also be retained and regularly reviewed to maintain its value.

Releasing a paper focusing on Labour’s policies for women, she also said the setting up of the Ministry of Women’s Affairs had been a landmark initiative.

Further work was needed particularly in public education programmes in such areas as women and violence, the promotion of the value of all women’s work in the home, in the community and in the paid workforce, and the need to portray non-sexist and non-racist positive images of women, she said. Labour would continue to support, and more equitably fund, early childhood care and education facilities. It had already increased funding 141 per cent. The party was concerned about pornography and had already said it would set up a Ministerial Committee of Inquiry into the subject. It would also ensure that compensation was provided through the Accident Compensation Corporation for any woman who had been injured through the production of pornography, Mrs Hercus said.