Youth Employment Training and Education Bill

No, no. You say “Mr Assistant Speaker”; I say “Darroch Ball”.

💬 Darroch Ball: Mr Assistant Speaker.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Your turn now.

I move, That the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Social Services Committee to consider the bill. If the House wants an opportunity to understand what genuine social investment is, it need not look any further than the Youth Employment Training and Education programme, or YETE programme—what it offers, whom it targets, and why the House must vote for it, at least to see it through to select committee.

At present there are 90,000 young people aged between 15 and 24 who are not engaged in education, employment, or training, otherwise known as “neets”. There is no denying that is a colossal number, not least for its rather alarming increase, given there were 71,000 youth in this position just a year ago. It is a number that is a cost to the public finances to the tune of millions of dollars a year through lost earnings and costs to mental, justice, and social services. All we are asking is for just a fraction of that cost to be truly invested with some common sense before they become disengaged, before they leave school with no skills, before they leave with no qualifications, and before many of them leave with no hope.

Unemployed, disengaged youth numbers have never dropped below pre-2008 levels. We are not getting it right. Of the young people who spend a majority of their youth disengaged, almost 40 percent end up accessing mental health services, more than a third are sentenced to a custodial or community sentence, and over 40 percent end up on a benefit for more than 5 years at some stage in their life. If ever there was a cohort of candidates for proper, proactive social investment, this is it. We are not getting it right for our country, and we are not getting it right for our young people. These high numbers of youth in this situation result in high youth unemployment, with other various social issues, both immediately for them and throughout their futures, all of which drains the country’s social service resources. People who access a benefit as a teenager make up 70 percent of New Zealand’s future welfare liability. We need to act before they become disengaged and before they are reliant on the State.

There is a certain number of youth who have little or no direction, who struggle to establish goals or to develop formal, positive, and progressive career pathways. These youth can struggle academically and socially. Within the formal education pathway, there is potential for these youth to exhibit antisocial behaviours, including truancy, disobedience, and other anti-establishment traits. The evidence, data, and research show specifically that the activity rates of teenagers who began their first long-term “neet” spell at 15, 16, or 17 were slower to recover. It is a vitally important developmental age bracket, 15 to 17. They need another option. With 90,000 “neets”, whatever is currently happening is simply not working.

The Youth Employment Training and Education Bill introduces a voluntary pathway that ensures that they still gain a basic level of literacy and numeracy but that the individual is developed to their potential and prepared for adulthood beyond 18 years of age. This opportunity aims to increase the number of young people entering employment or training by improving their self-discipline, self-confidence, motivation, and initiative within a culture of respect, cooperation, teamwork, and tolerance. Through this bill, we wish to demonstrate the value of learning that is not specifically geared towards academic pathways and to address the pressing needs of those youth.

New Zealand First is proposing an employer-led, full-time employment option through the Ministry of Social Development in partnership with the New Zealand Defence Force. Youth between the ages of 15 and 17 will be able to leave school, as they can now, and move directly into this programme. At 15 they will still need parental permission to do so, as they do now. However, this is not just for youth who are still at school. This is for all youth of that age who believe this programme would be the best fit for them, targeting those youth currently unemployed and disengaged. The Defence Force currently has a youth development unit that has an existing arrangement with the Ministry of Social Development, the Ministry of Education, and the Tertiary Education Commission. We intend to use the same purpose and basic structure of the existing Defence Force youth courses to create a larger and expanded social-service, full-time employment programme.

Currently, the Defence Force runs the Limited Service Volunteer, or LSV, scheme on behalf of Work and Income. It allows 17- to 24-year-olds to attend a residential course in the army environment for 6 weeks. This is a highly successful course, targeting those youth who are disengaged from other formal pathways. YETE will expand and fully fund the army’s youth development unit, where it will run the residential full-time employment programme over 3 years. It will encompass apprentice trades, including, amongst others, automotive, building, construction, and hospitality trades, as well as non-apprenticed vocational training, including, amongst others, driver and trailer licences, non-apprentice hospitality skills, and skills in support services. Life skills training will also be included, in areas such as health and safety, first aid, civics, ethos and values, and physical training—all within the army environment.

Throughout this programme, participants will be paid a training wage, where they will be expected to pay for their own board and food but have a portion of their wages placed in a savings account as part of their overall pay. Local governments and community organisations will utilise the programme to complete community work, which will give these youth a sense of ownership and belonging within their communities. Finally, there will be an expectation for graduates to remain in New Zealand and work for 2 or 3 years, along with a 12-month post-programme incentive for employers of graduates that will form part of the current existing flexi-wage scheme.

The initial costings per individual for this programme are approximately the same cost as for employing a full-time private soldier in the army, with obvious huge potential for both fiscal and social cost savings in the future. It makes both social and long-term economic sense. New Zealand First is seeking an initial pilot scheme of a few hundred youth to attend this programme. That means the current infrastructure can handle this level of expansion; it is existing and ready to be used. The infrastructure is there, the demand for a programme like this is there, and all we need to do is implement it.

With this bill, there is direct potential to improve the percentage of youth who are unemployed and disengaged. It has been identified that 15- to 17-year-olds who experience a “neet” spell will likely have one again after they are 20 years old. What is needed is proactive investment before they become inactive. These youth will have the ability to become trade experienced whilst being paid, and paid work plays an important role in social well-being. For many young people, income from paid work has a major effect on their standard of living, provides financial independence, and allows them to save for the future.

Feedback we have received from organisations such as Business New Zealand, the Post Primary Teachers’ Association, careers guidance organisations, youth workers, and people who have experienced apprenticeship training in the Defence Force has shown the potential benefit of this programme and the need for it to go to a select committee. Many young people and parents I have spoken with have told me that they wish they had a programme like this for their kids, or even for themselves.

All that New Zealand First is asking for is a chance for this programme’s true potential to be discussed, dissected, and submitted on in a select committee. It will be the first step that needs to be taken if all parties in this House are genuine and even searching for solutions for our youth. This will not solve the entire issue of 90,000 disengaged and unemployed youth, but it has the potential to save a good number of them from starting the spiral of dependence on the State and a lifetime of problems stemming from the current failure of the system, which is simply not letting them get a fair start and not letting them get a fair go.

Importantly, this is not just another army boot camp. It is based on the working and successful LSV model, which has been proven to work and which this Government has identified works for these young people. Essentially, all we are wanting is some real investment in expanding the reach of what a programme like this can achieve. This is not just another boot camp; it is an employer-led, full-time employment training pathway. It will give those youths an opportunity to start their lives skilled and ready, an opportunity that they currently simply and demonstrably do not have. Every party in this House should vote in favour of this bill, and in doing so they will be acknowledging that, at the very least, it is worth the discussion. Thank you.

Before I call Joanne Hayes, I am going to—I chose not to interrupt the member under Speakers’ ruling 53/4, which is regarding the reading of speeches. I think the member—we are in the third year of this Parliament, and therefore the inexperienced-member exemption does not apply. While it is a very important matter and I know that the member cares deeply about it, it is not a deeply technical matter. There were not lots of figures or quotes or anything like that in his speech, and therefore I just want to warn the member that when he has another shot, in an hour’s time: please do not read your speech.

Before I start my contribution, I just want to congratulate Darroch for having his bill, the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill, pulled out of the ballot. As I was sitting here listening to the member Darroch Ball’s contribution, it almost harked right back to many, many years ago, when you could join the army at the age of 16 and you could, from there, start off on the basics and move your way through to a career if you wanted to. It does hark back to those times. I have a brother-in-law who is in his fifties now, and he was recruited into the army when he was 16 years old. But things have moved on since then, and I know that the army does require that recruits who are recruited into the army do actually have NCEA level 2 in education to do with English and mathematics. They do require that.

My brother-in-law is now a commissioned officer. He started out, as I said, as a lance corporal and moved right through. He became a non-commissioned officer, and then he became a commissioned officer. One of the things that he has said to me, on numerous occasions, is that he would like to make sure that young people who are coming into the armed forces do have basic education abilities and qualifications.

When we start to look at this bill, we are looking at a starting age of 15 years old, while the legal age to leave school is 16 years old. If we start looking at young people at the age of 15, say, going in under this bill and being recruited into the armed forces, we are requiring the armed forces to pick up an almost custodial positioning within the organisation. That does require extra support for the young people who are going in. They will have many other issues besides the issue of actually getting into the armed forces and being woken up at 5 o’clock in the morning and being told that if they get into trouble they are going to be sweeping that court with a toothbrush in the wee hours of the morning. They are actually going to go through all of those things, and not very many 15-year-olds who are failing in the system will actually accept that. To be honest, they will tell the sergeant major where to go, and that is not what I believe this bill is all about.

I look at the many things this Government has done for youth within the Youth Guarantee programme. That is for 16- to 19-year-olds. We are all very familiar with what this Youth Guarantee scheme is all about: it is about supporting young people to get qualifications at NCEA level 2. That actually helps to put in a base for them—an educational base—that they can launch off from. This is a Government that provides all of the tools and the background so that young people can launch into their careers—into whatever career they want to do.

There are also opportunities that this Government has put in place for young people, such as the Gateway programme. My son went on the Gateway programme. He went into carpentry. He went in and tried his hand at carpentry, and he came out with some amazing skills. He ended up not working in that area, but it opened a door for him so that he could actually start aiming his education towards the area he is best at, which is working with his hands. We also have service academies. These service academies are put in place for young people to go in and have a go at whatever service they want to try their hand at. They have an opportunity to opt out if they find they get to a certain point and find out that it is not really for them.

We have a number of other opportunities that have been offered to young people that start them out as little wee cadets. They can move up and through—and it is usually through the air force base. They can start in the community and work their way through. It is called the Cadet Corps, and it is voluntary for the young people. It helps parents to move their children towards those particular fields, and it acts as another pathway into an area of one of the three armed forces.

This bill actually deals only with the army; it does not deal with the air force or the navy—it does not do that. This is what the member is actually saying—he talked about the army. There is also trade training. These programmes offer some amazing opportunities for Māori and Pasifika within the building area. When I look at and turn my face towards Christchurch, and we start looking at focusing on that area, we have Te Rūnanga o Ngāi Tahu, which offers trade training for young Māori, who can join up and become building apprentices. As we know, Christchurch has had great need for builders, and we had to train some young people into the building trade. Māori trade training has been able to offer them that. They also offer pastoral care for those Māori students as well.

As another example, I used to work for a seafood industry training organisation many years ago, and we had various polytechnics and providers that supported young people into the seafood industry, to train either as deckhands or as fisher people on the boats or on shore. One of the biggest areas that they had to put together was a pastoral care programme that looked after these young people so that they could successfully progress through. That is what this bill is actually asking for: it is asking for the armed services to put together not only custodial care but pastoral care around these young people.

We also look at New Zealand Apprentice. A big area that we have reintroduced back in is New Zealand Apprentice, because, at one stage, we trained a lot of people in academia and we got lots and lots of people with qualifications at university and tertiary level, but we forgot about the trade training area. This is how the New Zealand apprenticeship schemes came about.

Those are some of the things that the Government has come along and put in to support young people into positions. When I start to look at some of the unintended consequences—that is, this thing about offering this programme to 15-year-olds when we know that the compulsory school-leaving age is 16—what this bill is actually doing is encouraging young people to leave school at 15: “It’s OK, we’ll look after you. We’ll just throw you on this programme.” It is not a very good message. And what about young people who want to enter the army and have to go through and sit all the exams to get into the army, yet 15-year-olds can just trot on in there through this bill.

I have already talked about the New Zealand Defence Force having to have extra people around to support the young people in whatever pastoral care they need, but, I guess, really, the areas of concern are some of the contractual implications with the Ministry of Social Development (MSD)—that MSD would have with the New Zealand Defence Force, also additional to the Limited Service Volunteer programme that we have got. There are also the cost implications. I think the member said the cost is a fraction. Well, I do not think a cost of around $23.4 million is a fraction; I think it is a lot of money. I am saying to the member that you will need to go back and redo and have a look at the actual programme and the bill that you are proposing here in the House today, because there are so many holes and gaps, without any consideration of what is already in place for young people.

As I wind up my contribution today—as I said to the member—I congratulate Mr Ball on having this bill drawn. I think there is more work to go in. There is a lot of pastoral care information that needs to go in. You are trying to take us right back to the 16-year-old recruit from back in the day when my brother-in-law was recruited into the army. He had a long history with the army, and of all the recruits who went in when he went in at 16 years old, you can count on one hand the number of people who stayed in the army past age 30. So it is not an answer to everything, it is not what the member proposes it to be, and I think it sends out some very, very damning messages to our young people.

💬 Darroch Ball: Your National Party policy?

It does. It sends out some damning messages to our young people, and I think more work needs to be done. That is why I cannot support the bill. Thank you.

Labour supports this bill through to select committee. Labour is supporting the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill, by Darroch Ball from New Zealand First, because it believes that addressing the huge issue of those of our young people who are not in education, employment, or training is something that we should seriously have a conversation about. We should actually refer this bill to select committee and talk about the fact that we are not serving too many thousands of our young people. To me, it is a shame that under this National Government, since it came into power in 2008, we have seen an increase in those young people under the age of 24, an increase to over 90,000 people.

The speech that we have just had from National Government member Joanne Hayes, basically, ended—I was waiting and waiting until I heard whether the Government supports this bill or does not support this bill. We did not actually get to that until the very end. To me, it is a shame that the Government is not supporting this bill. Why is it not supporting this bill?

You know, in 2013 one of the sectors in Auckland, the construction and infrastructure sector, came with a report that it did together with Auckland Council. That report was really detailed. The sector presented it to the Minister at the time, who is the finance Minister now, and it was really detailed in that it actually set out that by next year, by 2018, we are going to be short in skilled labour by up to 32,000 people. That is 32,000 people whom we need to build up the city of Auckland, the largest city. These are carpenters, civil engineers, plumbers—you name it.

That was several years ago. We are now in 2017, and what do we see? What has this Government done? Has it actually fixed this issue? Do we have the skilled labour that we need from our own young people here in Aotearoa New Zealand? The answer to that is no. It is no.

Just last week we had another sector, the service sector, come and launch a report here in Parliament, and it told us that in 3 years, by 2020, it projects that it will need 200,000 trained people. Two hundred thousand new jobs—that is great. We celebrate new jobs. But the sector is worried. It is worried about where those trained people will be. I am too. When we have over 90,000 young people under the age of 24—that is, essentially, the population of Palmerston North—who are not trained and not skilled, and we have that many people whom we need in the service sector as well as in the construction and infrastructure sector just in Auckland, we have an issue.

When we have a Government that is not even willing to sit down under a select committee and actually listen and have a conversation about why it is that it is not serving our young people—it is not even willing to do that—we have a problem. The bill that Darroch Ball is proposing is based on the Limited Service Volunteer programme—a programme that we know has 85 percent of enlistees graduate, and a programme that has 60 percent of them then find work. I do not see the sense in why we do not even agree—why the National Government does not even agree—that we should sit down at a select committee and have a conversation about what we should be doing to ensure that many more of our young people are skilled and trained and that many more of our young people are not falling through the cracks, from the compulsory sector through to tertiary education, to apprenticeships, and to employment.

This is something that the National Government should absolutely agree to. We need more of our young people to be trained. We need to ensure more of our young people, especially those who are already being failed by this National Government, get into some training—that they actually get employed. What this bill proposes is one of the solutions. It is a step in the right direction, and it would be a shame if the National Government continued on with not agreeing with this bill that Darroch Ball is proposing. Thank you.

When I was listening to the first speech on this debate from the member sponsoring the bill, Darroch Ball, it felt a little bit like I was sitting in a silversmith’s workshop, watching a craftsman with his lathe fashioning the ultimate silver bullet that was going to fix the woes of New Zealand’s young people who are not in education, employment, or training. It was a very passionate speech; one that, I guess, really highlighted the benefits that have come from the Limited Service Volunteer programme and the benefits there are in military training for young people. That is not what I think any of us are in dispute about today.

I can think of numerous people who have been through military training. I think of my own colleague Andrew Bayly. I think you would look at the fact that he has managed to get to both poles in his lifetime—probably, his military training was useful for that, and other things in his career. Other members of this House, including this bill’s sponsor, have had military training, and it has been very beneficial to them. There is no doubt in my mind that for individuals who undergo military training, there are some benefits.

I also have lived for the last 30-odd years in the city of Palmerston North and over that time have come into contact with many, many people from the New Zealand Defence Force who have been through military training. I look at some of the jobs that they are doing now and cannot disagree with the fact that the training they have had is very, very beneficial, that it equips them for a huge number of different things in their lives. As I said, very good training—very good for our community in Palmerston North, very good in so many ways.

However, there is a little bit of an issue that I have around this particular proposal. The first one is this: to simply say that because a programme that lasts for 6 weeks is successful, we should somehow just say “Oh, well, let’s do it for 150 weeks.”—that therefore, it would be better as well to simply say “Let’s take something based off 6 weeks and do it for 3 years.”—to me, that seems like a little bit of a leap. Why is the magic number 3 years? Why not 12 months? Why not 24 months? Those sorts of things have not necessarily been outlined, and so I think there is—

💬 Darroch Ball: 15 to 18 is 3 years. Wake up, Jono.

I can do my maths. I can do my maths, but just because—why not let them out when they are 17 or 18?

The issue that I have around this, too, is that introducing something where we are actually promoting young people to leave school at 15 sends a very different message from what we are trying to say at the moment. We are saying to young people: “Stay in school. Keep going to school. Get NCEA level 2.” And I know that the member has said that they would receive literacy and numeracy education to get their NCEA level 2 literacy and numeracy levels done. But it does not necessarily mean that they have achieved NCEA level 2 in its entirety just because they have achieved the literacy and numeracy credits. I think there is potential, under a programme like this, that we actually short-change young people from potentially having the types of broader experience that they might get by remaining in school and potentially going on to other programmes.

I would also have a little bit more sympathy for this programme—because I am not saying that it is a bad programme in its own right—if there was nothing going on in this space already. But there is. As Jo Hayes indicated earlier, there are the Youth Guarantee programmes going on, there is Gateway, there are youth services going on. I know, in particular, the success—again, talking back to the benefits of some of the military training of service academies, I think of Queen Elizabeth College in Palmerston North, where I live, and being able to go and visit that school. I have seen the great work they are doing with the service academy—the great sense of pride that those young people are gaining from the level of training they are getting through the military service academy, the discipline they are learning. But, guess what, they do not have to leave school to achieve that. Just because military-style training is beneficial, it does not mean we have to extract people from a school environment and stick them into another environment for them to receive that.

Finally, 15- and 16-year-olds, in my opinion, are ultimately still better off in their families where possible, where it is applicable, and where it is beneficial for them, rather than being shipped off to go and live somewhere else. I think there are some custodial issues that we would need to address in a programme like this. If we are asking the military to take, sort of, a loco parentis over this situation with these young people, I think that is a lot to ask of it. I will not be supporting this bill, well intentioned though it is.

Tēnā koe, e Te Māngai. I rise to speak about this bill and commend Darroch Ball for introducing it. This is an absolutely important aim, as other speakers have said. The number of young people not in education, employment, or training totals around 90,000; 21 percent of those kids in that cohort are Māori, 17 percent Pasifika, compared with a total of 11.5 percent for the overall population. We note that the number of people who are not in education or training has increased dramatically under this Government. So we commend this bill in terms of coming up with a solution to the problems of unemployment, unrest, crime, violence, and, above all, the waste of the potential talent and the lives of young people. It certainly makes it worthwhile for this House to be considering new initiatives.

The Green Party supports programmes that engage young people: work readiness in order to build skills and confidence, the expansion of apprenticeships and vocational training, providing vocational advice and career guidance, and programmes for participation in work in the community. These are the kinds of programmes that we think are part of the mix that can start to address these problems.

I am also very aware that the concept of boot camps and military training has a long history in New Zealand. We recognise that boot camps were introduced in 1971 but then abandoned in 1981. And the Government’s programme for boot camps in 2009 had a fairly mixed record, shall we say, with a cohort of 40 youth. It was found, in the evaluation, that half of those youth have subsequently reoffended and that, in the 6 months following their leaving the service, 10 youth had committed 126 offences—within 6 months.

By contrast, there have been some positive results from the Limited Service Volunteer programme, which this programme is largely based on. That programme being run by Defence and the Ministry of Social Development has had a number of successes in terms of getting young people into employment. However, there have also been some poor evaluations of it. In particular, in 2003 it was found that teens had been assaulted, abused, and mocked, according to a military police investigation. That gives rise to considerable concern when we are talking about 15- to 17-year-olds, because, as we know, the Limited Service Volunteer programme is for youth of 18 and above.

So we are concerned about introducing 15- or 16-year-olds into the military system, and for that reason and for some of the concerns that come from overseas experience with similar training institutes in the defence forces, we have reservations. We do not think this is necessarily the best option to pursue going forward, although we commend the initiative in addressing this problem. Unfortunately, we are unable to support this bill. Thank you.

I want to start by congratulating Darroch Ball on his bill being drawn from the ballot, but I am taking this call to oppose this bill. As a great believer in education, I believe that every child should get the opportunity to do well in their life and in education—it could be through a traditional pathway, it could be a vocational pathway through partnership schools, or it could be secondary or tertiary programmes that we deliver through Youth Guarantee programmes. Our education system has been strengthened a lot under this National Government, and we are seeing some really good results. I hear a lot of positive feedback when I am out and about talking to schools, talking to parents, talking to students.

So this bill—Darroch Ball’s bill—the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill, is based on the 6 weeks’ Limited Service Volunteer programme, which is for 17- to 25-year-old people who are on jobseeker support and is delivered through the Ministry of Social Development. That programme is for only 6 weeks, and, yes, we are getting some good outcomes, but there is a big difference: that is for 17- to 25-year-old people.

Darroch Ball’s bill is to allow 15-year-olds—yes, young people; 15-year-old people, who will require parental consent—to take up a 3-year full-time programme with our New Zealand Defence Force. This will be non-deployable, non-combat—that is understood—but what this bill wants to achieve is that these young people will gain numeracy and literacy skill, to at least NCEA level 2, and vocational training while being there. So that part of the bill makes me feel that we are shifting the responsibility for educating our young people from our education system to our New Zealand Defence Force.

The bill does not explain how everything would work. It does not explain the New Zealand Defence Force’s custodial role. It does not tell us what the operational impact on the New Zealand Defence Force will be. It does not tell us what the role of the Ministry of Social Development will be, or how both the Ministry of Social Development and the New Zealand Defence Force will be delivering this programme.

If this bill is just to give better outcomes for young people, we already have several programmes in place, as we have heard from colleagues on this side. We have the Gateway programme to provide work training for young people from year 11, we have service academies to provide more engagement in learning, we have Youth Guarantee to help 16- to 19-year-old young people to achieve NCEA level 2, we have Youth Service, and we have extended Youth Service to 18- and 19-year-old young people. We want to see that these people are in education or in some form of training so that they can get into employment. We have special programmes for Māori and Pacific people. We have Māori and Pacific trades training to help them to get into trade industries, which helps people aged from 16 to 40, and then we have employment programmes for Pacific people.

So there are several programmes available already for these young people, and they are giving us some really good results. Not just that, in education we have communities of learning, which is a new way of helping our young people achieve better in education. About communities of learning: when I am talking to schools in Mount Roskill, where 11 schools are part of the communities of learning, the feedback is great. It is about schools coming together as a group and coming up with shared goals to help students in those schools.

So, talking about the achievements of young people, helping them to do well in life, we have seen a significant increase in the achievements of Māori and Pacific students at NCEA level 2. There are ways, through our education system, that these young people can achieve numeracy and literacy skills through to NCEA level 2. Not just that, it is also about setting good role models for these young people so that they can do well in their lives. Through our social investment approach, we have seen that there are fewer children now in benefit-dependent families. They see the adults around them taking up training courses and going to work, so that helps them to decide what they want to do in their life. So, yes, they understand, by seeing the adults in their family, that they should stay in education because, in the long run, that is going to help them do well in their life.

Overall, I feel that this bill is not thought through properly. There could be some unintended consequences. As some of my colleagues on this side have mentioned, some 15-year-old young people might think that it is very attractive to get into the army instead of staying in school. So that is why I do not support this bill. Thank you.

Before I call Iain Lees-Galloway, I am going to invite him to do what really the last three speakers have not done, and that is to address the bill. I call Iain Lees-Galloway.

I support the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill at first reading, and I believe that we should take it to select committee. One of the great things about our parliamentary process in New Zealand is that an idea that is perhaps not absolutely perfectly formed, that perhaps needs the input of officials and needs the input of submitters from outside Parliament, where a few things need to be debated and thought through—we can take that idea to a select committee. We can give the public the opportunity to have their say, we can hear from officials, and we can craft a piece of legislation that does the job that is intended by the author of it and that everybody around the House can support.

When listening to the contributions from members opposite, who are voting against this legislation, they have all said that there is an issue here that we need to address. They have all congratulated Darroch Ball on bringing this bill to the House. They have all said that the number of young people who are not in employment or in work or in training is unacceptable. Some of us have been prepared to admit that it has gone up while the National Party has been in Government. And yet we have members opposite who say that they are not going to vote for this bill, which seeks to address that issue, because it might do this or the evidence might not be clear over here.

For members of a party that has put so much stock into charter schools, for which the evidence is very hazy, to say that they are not prepared to support this even to select committee, just because they are not convinced or they think there might be some unintended consequences—I think that is incredibly disingenuous.

The evidence for and against putting young people into military-style programmes is balanced. If you look at the evidence around the world, there is some evidence that putting young people through military-style programmes can improve their employment prospects and can improve their educational outcomes, and there is some evidence that is not quite so strong. It is quite similar, actually, to the level of evidence around charter schools, which that Government is prepared to support.

So let us take the bill to select committee. We do not think this is a perfect bill by any stretch of the imagination. But we do think there is an issue here. There are 90,000 young people who are not in school, not in work, and not in some form of training. When we announced our Ready for Work programme, which we think is somewhat analogous to this—the idea of getting young people into a guaranteed 6 months’ worth of work to get them work-ready—there were only 71,000 young people not in work, or in school, or in training. That number has now gone up to 90,000, and it shows absolutely no sign of reversing.

So all the things that the National Party members have listed as the reasons not to support this bill actually are not making a difference. So why not take this one to select committee? Why not acknowledge that we do need to try some different options? Why not acknowledge that the public sector—in this case, in the form of the Defence Force—might actually have the resources to provide an opportunity for young people to turn things around?

What this bill provides for is not a wholesale shift into this programme. It is a pilot programme. It is an opportunity to test out an idea. We can do that at select committee. Even if we pass the legislation, we could do that by testing out this idea by actually putting it in place and seeing whether it works.

But the Government is not even prepared to go to select committee. Why is that? One, because it might actually have to talk about its abject failure to keep young people in school and in work; and, two, because the arrogance of the Government is such that it cannot stand to see an idea from the Opposition actually have an opportunity to fly—to actually have an opportunity to go to select committee and talk about it.

I have not heard one argument from the Government members as to why they are voting against this bill to even go to select committee. I say to the National Government: you are failing 90,000 young people, which is more than the population of my city of Palmerston North, who are not in school, not in work, and have no hope and no opportunities. They have been written off by Bill English as being “pretty damned hopeless”. Here is a bill that offers an opportunity for them. Why will you not vote for it?

I rise to take a call to speak against the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill. Can I first acknowledge Darroch Ball for reflecting on the opportunity to connect young people with the benefit of discipline and for putting forward this bill. I acknowledge that he shared with us when he first came here, 2¾ years ago, his own life journey—that the military was a key part of what he believes, looking back, has made him the person he is today. I acknowledge that, and I appreciate that that, no doubt, was no small part in the thinking that he brought to this piece of legislation.

But I do have three or four points that I would like to explore in respect of this bill that underpin why I am not able to support it. Firstly, and this is linked to the previous conversation around how formed or otherwise this bill is, from what I can see—and there is very limited explicit information around this bill—this is hellishly expensive. It could potentially be north of $20 million, even for a pilot for 500-plus people. That is a significant cost, particularly when there is no detailed business case, if you like, to underpin it.

Our side has just been criticised for opposing something that is not perfectly formed. I would counter that by saying that, in my view, there is actually a threshold of working through how the legislation would actually be operationalised and how it would actually work and the associated costs, which it is reasonable to assume has been done as one considers legislation for the first time. In my view, that is absent, and for me, personally, that is part of the reason that I cannot support the bill.

The second issue for me is there have been conversations already this afternoon that the Limited Service Volunteer (LSV) model does work, and it does. It is a short, 6-week programme, and for some of those participants it has been life changing. They have been able to move from that programme after 6 weeks and on to work and full-time work. But there is a significant involvement by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD) in picking the individuals who are most likely to succeed within that LSV framework, and there is a significant amount of wraparound services that are provided by MSD for these people as they progress through the 6-week course.

At the core of this bill is a vision that our Defence Force, essentially, has the capability—and, indeed, should prioritise its capability—in providing those wraparound services and support over the 3 years that these students would be required to go through this programme. That is a very large leap, in my view, and one that I do not think is sufficiently substantiated to warrant support through a first reading. Our Defence Force has a very clear mandate and is appropriately focused on delivering that for the benefit of New Zealand. Asking it to participate in a 3-year trial with the level of need that these people inherently require in terms of wraparound services, I think, is a step too far.

Finally, there is the view—it has been expressed, and I agree with it—that in terms of priorities, the No. 1 priority must still remain that we keep our 15-year-olds and 16-year-olds and 17-year-olds at school for as long as possible, to give them the opportunity to get access to as many skills as possible to enable them to move into effective employment. This bill obviously has a lot of passion behind it, but I think that when you reflect on what we are currently doing—the significant number of projects that the Government has in this space, and the intensity that LSV requires in terms of wraparound services—the assumption that that is therefore a model that is best placed for our Defence Force to apply is ultimately flawed, and that is why I will be voting against it. Thank you.

Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare, otirā, tēnā tātou katoa. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill, and I congratulate Darroch Ball on bringing this bill to the House. I can share with the House that as I travel around my electorate, youth unemployment is always within the top five issues that people talk to me about all the time. Having 90,000 young people not in any training, employment, or education is an indictment on this National Government, and, actually, I believe that Parliament needs to do something constructive about it. That is why I support this bill. I support it also because we need to be creating new conversations around how we can support communities to support their young people.

I have not heard one single compelling reason why the National Government is not supporting this bill. We need to have a new look at how we are focusing on young people. I believe that we are not doing enough in this country, and that is why this bill—although, yes, maybe it is not perfect, I believe there is sufficient detail within this to go to a select committee, and it could benefit from that process. Most importantly, it is to let the people have their say on this bill, and if there are issues that people have, then they can be addressed, I am certain. I am certain that if Parliament works constructively together, then we can actually address the issue of so many young people being disengaged. We have a looming problem in this country because of that.

There are dire consequences for inaction, and that will be the legacy of the National Government if it continues to do nothing about it, with a Prime Minister that refers to them as “pretty damned hopeless.” We need to address that. I believe that we can work through all of those issues. I believe that we need to invest now in those young people.

There were some points that have been brought up in this debate—for example, that this bill encourages young people to leave school early. That is not the case. The reality is that within those 90,000 young people, a significant number of them are 15-year-olds. My comment on that is that we are not doing enough for those young people. This bill at least provides an avenue for some of them to address that issue. I commend Darroch Ball also because he has actually addressed it within the bill.

This bill proposes to amend the Education Act and to address the issue that a young person of 15 years of age who is not part of this education and training will be considered as though they are in school. My further comment to that is that it is a far better option than having young people sitting at home, doing nothing, and not in any kind of education or training.

We simply cannot afford—our country cannot afford—to have so many young people disengaged from education. We have to do something about it. We have to do it now or, as I have said, we will be creating a legacy of dire consequences for the future. We have heard in this House people complaining about things like incarceration rates. Well, if we do not do anything about it, that is what we are consigning young people and their futures to. We need to address it. We cannot sit idly by. Our future depends upon it—our collective future in New Zealand. I say to the young people of this country: you deserve much, much better. Kia ora.

I had a very sort of unusual experience just a few minutes ago when I found myself agreeing with a Green Party member—that was with the words of Barry Coates, and I do invite Mr Ball, actually, to address the questions that Mr Coates raised around that programme that was around about 10 or 15 years ago and the failure that that programme was. It is all very well to talk about the Limited Service Volunteer (LSV) programme as being a success, and it is, but that does not mean we can simply just expand it and somehow create greater success; it is quite a different programme. To me, your programme, Mr Ball, looks and smells and seems to be very similar to a programme that has already proven to have failed in the past. So that is the first thing.

The second point I would like to make is that there seems to be, at least in the language in the Bills Digest, some sort of compulsion to participate in this programme if you find yourself as one of these—I think Mr Ball calls these people—“school drop outs who were languishing on the unemployment benefit.” I am not sure that there are 90,000 of them, but nevertheless, in the bill, I read some sort of compulsion. Please clarify: if you cannot make it through to 15 in this case, but let us just say 16 or 17, you are not in a Youth Guarantee scheme, you are not in a Gateway scheme, you like the service academies that are out there—because I am assuming your bill is about voluntary participation in a scheme—you are enjoying the service academies, you have already participated in those, and you are thinking of a career in the military, that is the pathway that I am anticipating as the entry point for these people, for these youth. Then, of course, you did not like the Māori and Pasifika Trades Training Initiative and you failed the Pacific Employment Support Services, or whatever it is.

So I am interested to hear from you, Mr Ball, whether it is compulsory, whether these people have to have failed, or participated in and dropped out of, not just secondary school but also all these other initiatives that the Government has as options for those young people not in education, employment, or training, “neets”, or youth—or even those school-leavers, as they may not even be “neets”. So that is the second point.

The third point is that I am also concerned at the age group that your bill applies to. We have already talked about the pastoral care that would be required. I am assuming—and I apologise if I make the wrong assumptions—that these camps would be in a boarding house situation. You would live on campus, you would get up in the morning, you would run around the block, you would be forced to do 100 sit-ups, and then you would go and do your apprenticeship training, and so on and so forth. So I am concerned about the age of these participants. I believe that we should do everything to keep people in school and that if they are not set up to participate in school, then there are other options, like the charter schools. So I would be interested to hear your thoughts vis-à-vis this bill with regard to charter schools. Is there a role that charter schools can play for the people whom Mr Ball is talking about?

💬 Fletcher Tabuteau: We’ll just stick to this bill.

No, well, it is a similar—there is no reason why you cannot have a specialised charter school - type call-it-whatever-you-like.

💬 Darroch Ball: Because then it’s not a school.

Mr Ball, your bill does recommend—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Come back.

—doing training for apprenticeships. You talk about the NCEA and the ongoing education in the camp, in the school, so I do not see it as too dissimilar, especially given the age group that you are talking about.

But, overall, I cannot support this bill, obviously. I think it does feel like a silver bullet, and I think there are a lot of well-intended purposes to the bill, but the way that it is laid out and the end result are not, I believe, what the member is looking for, so I cannot support this bill.

I call Darroch Ball—5 minutes in reply.

Well, how utterly disappointing. I am not disappointed for myself or for the party; I am disappointed for those 90,000 young people who have just seen that the Government cannot even be bothered to take the bill through to the select committee to discuss it. It cannot even be bothered to understand that over the last year the number of those young people not in education, employment, or training, “neets”, has increased by 20,000. It does not even want to discuss it.

What is even more frustrating is this: the question I want to ask every single member of that National Government who stood up is whether they have actually read the bill. Have you read the bill? The second question is: have you seen this? Have the members who have spoken from the National Government backbenches seen this? This is a 10- or 11-page information booklet that was sent out to every single party in this House explaining in detail every single question that they asked.

What we have heard from the Government members is evidence that not only did they not read the bill properly but the front bench obviously failed them in passing on the information booklets that they needed to read as responsible members of Parliament and members of Government to make decisions for the most vulnerable people in our country. They have not done it. Not only did they not read the bill, not only did they not read the information booklet, but they did not listen to my speech. Half of the questions that they have been asking were included in my speech; the rest were covered in the information booklet.

It is a silver bullet, they say. There is no silver bullet. In my speech, I acknowledged that this is not going to solve the entire problem of the 90,000 “neets”, which has been caused by this Government. The levels of unemployed, disengaged youth have never been lower than the pre-2008 levels, and that is a fact. They have increased by 20 percent under this Government. And what did we hear: “Is this compulsory?”. Of course it is not compulsory. If you had been listening, you would have heard that I said it was voluntary—if you had been listening, if you had bothered to listen. What we heard was a whole list of current programmes that this Government is producing for our young people—for our unemployed, disengaged young people. That is a total juxtaposition, as I said in the House yesterday, of the actual reality of what is happening. They do not listen. They do not want to listen to the fact that the number of “neets” has increased under this Government and that the current situation—the current courses that they are offering these young people—is not working.

I acknowledge what the Labour Party members have said: that this is not the perfect bill. We have come out here and said this is not the perfect bill. In no way can it be a perfect bill if we do not go to the select committee, if we do not hear from the experts. But, you know, the people I wanted the Government to listen to are the people I have spoken to, the parents I have spoken to and the young people I have spoken to, over the last year about this bill and just how much they know and how much they wished that their children who are not suited to school, who are not suited to the formal education system that is currently failing them—how anything that the Government is coming up with to help those kids who drop out or get disengaged is not helping them. I wanted them to listen to those submissions, to how they were saying that this is a programme that they wish they had for their young people, that this is a programme that they know their nephew or niece or sister or brother would have absolutely suited. The young people themselves have come to me and said: “I wish there was a course like this.”

I am not making this stuff up. I was a schoolteacher, I was a youth worker in the community, and I was in the army and dealt with young people who came off the bus, spent 6 to 8 weeks in the army on the Limited Service Volunteer training programme, and changed the way that they lived their life because of genuine adult involvement. What we have got is the research and data and information that shows that we need to start this earlier, at 15. That is what this bill would have done, and this National Government has shown that it does not give a damn about those young people.