As a Member of Parliament, I often visit schools in my electorate of Mt Roskill and I see so many children full of energy and potential. I like to think that’s because each of them has the essentials – enough to eat, warm clothes and sturdy shoes, and a place to call home. They are the essentials needed for children to thrive.

But sadly that’s not true for every child.

Around 150,000 New Zealand children, that is 13% of our Kiwi kids, live in material hardship. That means having to go without six or more things most of us consider as essential.

Not far off half of those 150,000 children live in severe material hardship, which is worse. They’re forced to get by without nine or more of the basics. This issue is a large and complex one, and had been neglected for years.

Child poverty in New Zealand is completely unacceptable. We know we won’t eliminate it overnight, but the government has laid the foundations for change, and we’re now making progress in the right direction.

Last week, Statistics New Zealand released the latest figures on child poverty in New Zealand. These showed that over the past year we’ve lifted 18,400 children out of poverty. And in that time seven out of nine child poverty measures have shown improvement, whereas under the previous government, seven out of nine had worsened.

I know we still have a long way to go but I’m proud that under Jacinda Ardern, our government has prioritised a reduction in child poverty. We don’t believe that economic growth by itself is a sufficient measure of success and have changed the budget rules so that as well as being held to account annually for our fiscal management, we hold ourselves to account for a range of measures of community wellbeing, including the rate of child poverty.

In future years we’re likely to see more improvement, too. Since we came into office we’ve introduced our Families Package, we’re steadily lifting the minimum wage, and we have indexed main benefits to wage growth.

The Families Package will lift up to 74,000 children out of poverty over the next few years. Minimum wage increases will help tens of thousands of kids and their parents across the country. The Children’s Commissioner has said indexing benefits is the single best thing the Government can do to combat child poverty.

We are proud to say that we have made it cheaper to maintain a family by growing our public housing stock, limiting rent increases, putting fuel and power companies under the microscope, scrapping NCEA fees and funding the removal of school donations, making doctors’ visits cheaper, and providing healthy lunches in low-decile schools.

I know we still have a long way to go. But it’s good to see the progress that is being made with the right policies. Thousands of children, just like the ones I visit here in Mt Roskill now have more energy to learn and play at school – few things could be more important.

-Michael Wood, MP for Mount Roskill, Auckland. Parliamentary under secretary to the minister for ethnic communities.