"This is our country," said the Breakfast presenter while sitting beside a young girl sleeping on the ground.

A visibly emotional John Campbell put the spotlight on the state of poverty in New Zealand while reporting beside a sleeping child who spent the night outside a food bank.

The Breakfast presenter was at Eden Park, where Auckland City Mission has set up a distribution centre ahead of Christmas.

"We talk about this all the time, and usually we talk to adults and we leave children out of this, because whatever is going on is never the child's responsibility," he said, sitting on the ground beside the young girl who was covered in a blanket.

Chris Skelton/Stuff People queue up outside the Auckland City Mission for food packages.

"This is our country. And there's point pretending this isn't our country, because it is. Those of us who are journalists see it quite often; those of us who work in the sector see it all the time."

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Campbell said there were "many children" at the centre, who were waiting for food and presents.

"This is the reality, for some of us, of life in New Zealand at the moment."

Child poverty has been a focus for Campbell throughout his career. His current affairs show Campbell Live, which was axed by Three in 2015, raised more than $1.5 million for the KidsCan charity after highlighting the issue of hungry children. The programme conducted an experiment where it compared lunches from students in a decile one and decile 10 school.

"I think it was a real shock to people that there are still children in New Zealand who are arriving at school with no lunch, having had no breakfast," Campbell told Stuff back in 2015.

"I think our programme made people aware that that was the reality – and gave people an opportunity to respond to that."

Auckland City Mission has four distribution centres at Papakura Marae and Ngā Whare Waatea Marae in south Auckland, VisionWest in Glen Eden and Eden Park in Auckland central.

Each centre is part of the Mission's Christmas service to distribute 200 family care packages per day for eight days.