Estimates Debate — Vote Employment

We come to what I believe should be a centre point for this Government. One of the key platforms that it should be campaigning on currently is a plan around employment and job creation. This is where we should be seeing the most significant forms of relief to the New Zealand public. It is work and jobs that people desperately need in the midst of what is a very dark recession. Instead, what have we seen from this Government around the area of employment? We did hear a very grand plan around the potential creation of 170,000 jobs some Budgets ago. Unfortunately, at that time we saw no proof that those jobs would actually be generated. In fact, over the period through to March 2012 we were meant to have 36,000 new jobs coming on stream.

💬 Hon Member: How many?

That was 36,000 new jobs. What have we seen? We have seen roughly 20,000 materialise. That may sound significant to some. But when you take into account our growth in population, those coming on to the job market, and those coming out of tertiary education, Mr Joyce, because they cannot afford to stay in there any more with the changes that are being made by this Government to that sector, 20,000 is simply not enough. That has been manifest in some of the statistics that we have seen through, for instance, our household labour force survey: 6.7 percent of the New Zealand public are unemployed and seeking jobs. We have 87,000 young people not in employment, not in education, and not in training, and that is an absolute waste of potential. When your unemployment rate for young people sits at 19 percent, that is an explosion just waiting to happen—a ticking time bomb, as it were.

But that actually does not go across all of the measures that tell us we have an issue. The number of people who are jobless has gone up. That is the number of people who are actually willing to work, if there was a job for them, but have simply given up. Underemployment, those who want more hours than what they already have—we have seen that trending up, as well. Yet the Government, across all of these indicators, chooses instead to hone in on the number of people on an unemployment benefit, because those numbers are often smaller because of the eligibility questions around who can access that benefit and who cannot. Even on that measure, we have gone from roughly 18,000 when Labour left office to roughly 50,000 now that National is in office.

The Government tries to have it both ways. Any time you bring up the staggering statistics around unemployment and joblessness, what do you hear from this Government? It is the recession. It is the global financial crisis. Any time you hear us raise that the statistics were so much better under a Labour Government, you will hear the Government again say that we did not have a global financial crisis or a recession. Yet what do you hear when the Government stands up and talks about benefit changes and about welfare reform? You hear that people are lazy, that they do not want to work, and that they are taking advantage of the system, and that is why we need reform. You cannot have it both ways. Kiwis want to work, and the Government’s job is to make sure that businesses are supported to create those jobs, that the economy is thriving, and that people have the skills, training, and education to move into work. What should we be seeing, therefore, in our benefit system as an enabler? We should see intensive case management, and we should see, as I said, sound economic management.

As I have said, fixing the welfare system is actually linked to the idea of a strong, well-functioning economy. It is a link that this Government chooses not to make. If you want to fix welfare, fix the economy. In fact, on this side of the Chamber we have promoted a few ideas around that area. We have a housing shortage. Anyone who lives in Auckland knows this to be a fact. In Christchurch, equally, we have a significant housing crisis. We also have a skills crisis. We also have a huge number of people seeking work and employment. Labour put all of those things together and suggested to the Government, around the last election, that it bring in a dole-to-apprenticeship scheme. We said to transfer the amount of money you are spending on the dole for a young, unemployed person to a willing employer to subsidise an apprenticeship for that young person.

Tēnā koe, Mr Chairman. I would like to take a call on employment, because although MPs do not exactly create jobs, they are in a position to influence the creation of jobs and most certainly training. Everyone knows that many of the unemployed are Māori and many of them are young people. The previous speaker referred to trade training and creating opportunities for people to enter into the workforce, and that is what has been happening. Under Te Puni Kōkiri we have established 1,800 cadetships in a scheme where people go and work for a company for 6 months. It is subsidised by Te Puni Kōkiri—$10,000 per student. They are trained for 6 months and are often kept on longer. Many find jobs in those particular areas. These include the electrical supply industry, aviation, travel, infrastructure, InfraTrain—all those companies. It is working very well.

But the good thing that I believe that we have to move into is actual trade training. In Christchurch, straight after the earthquake, we negotiated with the main builders down there that they should become involved in supporting a trade training programme, in particular for Māori, because that is my portfolio but also because they are overrepresented in the unskilled, untrained, and unemployed. So we started this programme, He Toki ki te Ringa, which is “a tool in the hand to work with”, and trained 200 Māori in trade training. It is a joint deal between the Māori education institutions down there, along with the Christchurch Polytechnic and the iwi, Ngāi Tahu. So working together—one providing pastoral care, another one providing the actual tuition, and another one providing tools and support in that area. It has worked very well. Just recently the Government has put another $1 million into that project so it can carry on and grow.

That is the formal programme, but also down there the Māori who trained in trade training in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s who live in Christchurch, where a lot of it was done, have come together. They now own companies in carpentry, plumbing, and the like—the trades—and they have come together and formed a co-op. They have tono-ed and got jobs from Fletcher’s, Mainzeal Property and Construction, and Hawkins Construction, the builders down there. They have got contracts, and what they do is they take on young unemployed Māori to work alongside them for a minimum wage, but afterwards they give them a full wage, in working towards an apprenticeship. I think that is a really good thing that they are doing.

Now we are going to do another one in Auckland, under a programme called “MITE”—Māori into Tertiary Education. It is a programme between all the tertiary institutions there, where any young person can trace how to become a carpenter, how to become a nurse, how to become a doctor, how to become a lawyer, or whatever profession or trade they are interested in. Once again, we are going to get different employer groups together to see whether they would also take on young people and train them in those areas of work, as well. We will be calling all the trade trainees of the 1960s and 1970s in Auckland to come together for a hui and a dinner, and at that time we will present the kaupapa to them. We expect quite a lot of support from them to take up these apprentices to work for them.

I think these are all positive, and what I do think about it is that it is something that any of us can get involved in. For example, down in Napier we have a situation where young gang prospects were gathered together by the local iwi and told to take off their jackets, and come into the compound. A tutor from the local polytech in Napier comes in and he gives them free tuition for 1 year in carpentry. At the end of that they enrol formally into the polytech and become students there to carry on and do their apprenticeships. Out of the 29 students, or gang prospects, 27 are still on that programme. They have lost only two. They have got rid of their jackets; they do not even bring them any more. They are looked after in pastoral care by the elders, who teach them the etiquette of the marae and teach them how to speak Māori. They teach them about pride, dress, and the basic pastoral care of living and belonging. I think that combination, for many people who have been long-term unemployed, of pastoral care together with training and together with guidance is a very good formula that actually works. So I look forward to that programme extending. We are going to take it to Waipukurau, just a few miles down, then hopefully it will extend to Wairoa, where there is real need for employment. So there is much we can do, even though we are MPs and do not actually have the industry ourselves to create jobs. But we can work with other people to do so. Thank you.

It is very important that we have this discussion around employment, because it is a crucial thing. I think what the whole Committee is interested in is the growth of jobs in the economy. In fact, I think nearly everybody in the Chamber, if you said to them: “Do you want more and higher-paying jobs in New Zealand?”, would say: “Yep, that’s a very good thing. I’ll sign up to that.” Where the problem comes immediately is where they go next.

I would firstly like to thank the Hon Pita Sharples for his comments on the training programmes, because they are an important part of bringing the economy forward. In fact, I made some announcements on industry training today, which we may get the opportunity to discuss in a later vote.

The real challenge of growing the economy is what you are prepared to do to let jobs grow here, and what you are prepared to do to let businesses have the opportunity to succeed in this country. That means what opportunities you are going to let them take to actually be successful. Where it all unravels on the other side of the Chamber is that they say they are very concerned about jobs, but all of their initiatives involve, effectively, taxpayers subsidising some activity some more. As we know from Spain, Greece, and other countries like that, that is a path that leads down in only one direction, and that is too much debt, which basically removes the sovereignty of those countries to decide what it is they want to do. So that is your problem. The solution for everybody on that side of the Chamber is to spend more borrowed money in order to persuade people to do things that they would not otherwise do.

What are the opportunities? The opportunities are hugely important. There are opportunities in things like oil and gas, in things like the intensification of agriculture, in things like allowing people to build convention centres, and in things like allowing foreign investors to come in and invest in businesses here. All those things are things that the Labour Party opposes and that various other members of the Opposition oppose. So on the one hand we have the member Jacinda Ardern popping up and saying: “I really care about jobs. I really care about jobs.”, and then she sits down and, once again, those members go back to opposing oil and gas exploration, they go back to opposing intensification of agriculture, they go back to opposing most things that could immediately—

💬 Hon Dr Nick Smith: Aquaculture.

Aquaculture is another one that they are against, and all of those things. They do not want to change the Resource Management Act, and they do not want to speed up the consenting processes to get decisions made more quickly—not to change the decisions but to get the decisions made more quickly. That is why nobody takes them seriously when it comes to economic growth and jobs. Every time they open their mouths they prove they are not interested in them. It is weasel words and crocodile tears about the job situation in this country.

Do you know that the lowest unemployment rate in Australasia is in a place called Western Australia? Western Australia has the lowest unemployment rate in Australasia. It is about 3.5 percent—

💬 Hon Member: And why is that?

—and that is in Western Australia. Well, why do you think that is? I think it is because in that state they allow oil and gas exploration and mineral exploration. That is why. Tasmania, incidentally, has strong opposition to economic growth, and its unemployment rate is 7.4 percent. That is where the Labour Party would take us. It would take us further down the Tasmanian path. That is where the Greens want to take us. Well, frankly, we on this side of the Chamber know what it takes to create jobs and growth, and we are focused on it. It is not about just sitting there wringing your hands and thinking up another rinky-dink scheme where you can borrow some more money from, incidentally, foreign moneylenders, spray it around the place, and consider that you are doing something useful when, in fact, you are just heading us towards the Spanish situation, which nobody in this country wants except for the Labour Party. That is why it is as popular as it is.

I am more than happy to take a call on Vote Employment, because we have a major problem in this country: 87,000 of our young people are not in any form of education, employment, or training. We just heard the Minister in the chair, the Minister for Economic Development, take a call. He spent the whole time telling us the problem with Labour without actually putting out a plan to get people into jobs. We have a dole queue that is growing, and we see him sitting there saying that Labour opposes things, but we are not seeing any kind of positive plan from the Government about how to arrest this.

We have 87,000 of our young people thrown on the scrap heap. There are 87,000 of our young people who do not see hope in this country. They do not see opportunity in this country, and what is happening? They are leaving on a jet plane. They are literally stampeding to Australia—61,937 young New Zealanders aged 18 to 30 have packed their bags and have given up making a life in New Zealand since 2008.

We have 19 percent unemployment amongst our youth. There are no jobs, there is no hope, and there is no opportunity. All we can hear in speeches and chipping across the Chamber from members opposite is that this is because Australia has mining. This seems to be the extent of the analysis that the Government is capable of when it comes to looking at what it takes to grow an economy. What we have here is a Government that has an inability to join the dots.

We heard a very good speech earlier this evening about the Māori trade training scheme of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, and what a success that was. That was Labour Prime Minister Peter Fraser’s willingness to see a problem that we had with unemployment amongst Māori youth and to see a solution—that we also needed a stock of housing built in this country. He did not sit idly by and wait for it to happen magically. His Government was an active Government that joined the dots and made it happen.

There is so much similarity with what we are seeing in this country now. We have a housing crisis, we need young people with skills, we need young people equipped, but we have a Government that is failing to even spend the money it has appropriated to train our young people. It is failing to spend the money that it has set aside to train the next generation of carpenters, sparkies, and plumbers. The Government is failing our young people. It could be setting them up for employment for life. There is a failure to seize these opportunities.

The Minister told us at the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee that the Government was not about to frogmarch young people into training, but it is actually reluctant to even see the connections with the opportunities that exist. We have a Government that is more than willing to frogmarch young people all around the places it has shown us, with its welfare reforms, but it has an unwillingness to use this opportunity that we have to train a generation of our young people. It has shown time and time again that this commitment is not there. The Government voted against my amendment that would have explicitly named trade training under Skills for Canterbury as one of the options presented to our 87,000 young people who are not in work, education, or training. It voted it down.

This is a Government that does not even know how many of our 87,000 young people are moving off benefits and into training, because it is not bothering to collect the data that goes across on this. There is absolutely no commitment. We have a whole lot of rhetoric. We have crocodile tears, but we are not seeing an active Government connecting the dots and making sure that young people in this country have a future.

The Government is willing to lay down the law to those on benefits, and suggests training schemes that are not leading to real employment and career opportunities. What the Government lacks is a positive plan to give those on benefits the skills and opportunities to make something of themselves. Canterbury and New Zealand are crying out for skilled workers, and yet this Government just cannot make the connection between our unemployed young people and what is needed in this country. There is a lack of jobs for our young people.

Vote agreed to.

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