Estimates Debate — Vote Youth Development

In speaking to Vote Youth Development, I want to talk about a positive experience I had the other day. I visited a gentleman who runs a youth conservation corps project in Omaha—an outdoor education trust. It was great to see some of the projects they had been doing in the few months that the programme has been running. It was encouraging to see the kinds of things they had been doing. They had not been doing things just for themselves, or things that were fun. They had been doing things like painting people’s houses—things for the community—and I could see that it was a positive programme.

So often we talk negatively in the House, and so often that is the right thing to do because we need to focus on the problems that are facing our country. There are a lot of things that are not right that we need to get right. It was very encouraging to see this project, and to see that young people in our communities—in the Rodney area where I come from—are able to foster a bit of community pride, and a sense of discipline and self-esteem in their lives.

In focusing on Vote Youth Development, New Zealand First would like to expand programmes such as this in order to foster that sense of pride, purpose, and direction in our young people. We know that many young people are struggling with issues such as youth suicide, and all the other problems that are caused by a whole lot of issues in our communities such as unemployment, family problems, family breakdown—and the list goes on.

There are some other programmes that New Zealand First would like to implement, such as targeting youth recidivist offenders and entry-level crime, and helping those offenders to get into industry or military-type training. New Zealand First believes there is a real need for that, and that it would go a long way towards fostering that pride and sense of purpose I was just talking about that I saw a lot of people developing in the Conservation Corps. But the young people I am talking about, as far as military-style training and so on is concerned, are at another level. They have been struggling for quite a while, and are at the notice of police and other authorities within the community.

There is also another point, which was mentioned earlier. We could tell that members opposite were very opposed to the community wage, which was New Zealand First’s idea. New Zealand First implemented it in 1996. It was not surprising to see the National Party copy another one of our policies the other day. The community wage rose again, and all of a sudden the National Party was in favour of it. New Zealand First implemented that in the 1996 coalition Government.

💬 Lindsay Tisch: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I note that this is a debate on the Appropriation (2005/06 Estimates) Bill, and so far the member speaking is propounding a view of his party’s policy. It is interesting that his party abstained on the last vote. When I look at youth development in the Estimates, on page 1450, and that is what the debate is about, I do not see anything there to do with New Zealand First’s policies. I think it would be appropriate to stick to what the debate is about, and that the member confine his efforts to what is actually in the Budget.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Thank you for raising the issue. It is not a point of order.

I will continue with my speech, then. I was specifically talking to Vote Youth Development, because when we talk about appropriations we are also talking about what we want to achieve. The truth might hurt that member—that he copies just about every policy that New Zealand First puts out. Everybody else in this Chamber knows that that is the fact, that that is the case. It might hurt him, but facts are facts.

I was specifically talking about the estimates of appropriations, and about the Conservation Corps—how we would like to expand that programme. I was totally within the parameters of the debate. But before I was so rudely interrupted by that member, I was going to say that one of the Labour members was talking about how Work and Income New Zealand said that the community wage did not work. Well, I do not believe that Work and Income New Zealand is the most impartial source of information as far as the community wage is concerned. I know somebody who went through one of those programmes, and now he is a qualified nurse. He is married, he has a little family, and he is doing really well and contributing to society. He is actually fulfilling a need there, because we need more males in the nursing profession. He is doing great, he is a very good worker, and he has been nursing for a few years now.

So I think it is a case of who one talks to. A lot of people have said positive things about those programmes, and I believe there are positive things to come if one votes for New Zealand First.

I thank Mr McNair for his contribution to the debate. One of the good things about MMP, obviously, is that we have younger people coming into Parliament, and that means we have a spread of interests around the kinds of portfolios we have to debate. The fact that we have a lot more younger people here in Parliament means that we have an interest in youth policy. So I thank the member for his interest.

I am delighted that he went to see the Conservation Corps. I visited a branch myself just recently in Christchurch. They were a group of young people, all of whom said they had no idea what they were going to do with their lives. They came from churches and groups around the city, and they had all somehow become connected with the idea of the Conservation Corps. They had just come back from a programme of looking after kiwi around the Canterbury area. They had gone off into the hills and camped. They had not actually seen kiwi but they had heard them. The young people were out there basically to try to trap stoats and all the predators that get into kiwi in their particular area. I spent about an hour chatting with that group, just as, no doubt, the member did. I came away totally impressed with a group of young people who clearly had a whole lot of issues going on in their lives, but right then they were focused, they were doing something practical, and they were all beginning to get a sense that when they came out of that course they would go on to something else, because they wanted to do that.

One of the interesting things, though, that I want to suggest to the Committee in terms of these estimates, is that members will notice some changes to Vote Youth Development. It has come across to what is called the Ministry of Social Development platform. That means that the nine people who do policy and the 14 people who are involved in administration are now part of a much bigger organisation. That has given them reach right across the country, so in each of our areas around the country youth development will now have a presence in a policy sense. Our aim is to get out and talk particularly to young people, so that they can be heard in terms of the issues that they feel impact on them.

It is interesting talking to young people, I find. The issues that interest them are often not those necessarily that I think they should be interested in, but that is what we should be doing—finding out what is on their agenda and what they are talking about. The Ministry of Youth Development is doing that, and on top of that it is looking at what it might do with its programmes.

One of the things we have found with areas like the Conservation Corps is that the number of young people who are available to come along to those kinds of courses has shrunk, because the rate of youth employment now is higher and people are often in tertiary institutions. There is not that same big pool of young people who are available to come into those programmes. So members will also notice in the estimates that there is money available for youth development, to respond to what members hear around their regions in terms of new and interesting styles of programmes that young people might be able to identify, which might make a difference.

One of the things we do find as we sit down with different groups of people is that some will say: “Yes, the Conservation Corps is exactly what I want to do; I would love to get out there and do something out in the hills and so on for my community.” But others say that they would not mind doing a leadership programme or learning how to run something. So one of the things we will look at is how we can use that money within the Ministry of Youth Development to respond to what we hear from young people in terms of programmes. So I am impressed with what we have, and I am grateful to hear that Mr McNair and, I guess, other people around Parliament are also hearing good things about what the Ministry of Youth Development is doing.

But I say to people in the Committee that there are opportunities to have a look at new things that might be done. That will be one of the things that MPs like Mr McNair, who are connected to younger people around their communities, might like to make a feature of in the next year. They can feed back through the Ministry of Youth Development, and hopefully we will end up with some more programmes that are very interesting.

💬 Shane Ardern: I would be very worried now if I was in the Green Party.

Mr Ardern, who has long parted company with young people, intervenes there, but Mr McNair is somebody who is connected, and I was interested to hear him say how he enjoyed being in contact with that programme. The invitation is there to look at how money might be spent on new programmes that respond to young people.

Vote agreed to.

Vote Foreign Affairs and Trade