The building industry is short of about 5,000 apprenticeships says the Building Construction Industry Training Organisation in this story on Radio New Zealand this week.
What an unbelievable cock-up.
Despite a devastating earthquake in Christchurch three years ago, a severe housing shortage in Auckland and high unemployment we find ourselves still waiting for “the market” to find and train 5,000 apprenticeships.
It’s an outrage. In any sane country cabinet ministers like Stephen Joyce (Tertiary Education, Skills and Employment) and Gerry Brownlee (Earthquake Recovery) would be forced to resign and a commission of inquiry would be launched into how such a disaster in planning had been allowed to happen under the government’s nose.
Joyce and Brownlee left the planning to “the market”.
When National effectively abolished apprenticeships in the 1990s they said we should leave it to the market to train and up-skill young workers. They said the market was the best mechanism to allocate resources so that workers and companies would read the market and respond with increased numbers of apprenticeships when they were needed.
It was all ideological bullshit of course.
Employers aren’t that concerned at the shortage however because they prefer to bring in skilled workers from overseas than train New Zealanders themselves. That’s a major reason why we have immigrant workers pouring in to rebuild Christchurch despite persistently high unemployment in New Zealand.
These money-hungry corporate types have no commitment to this country or local workers. They prefer workers they can closely control because immigrant workers’ visas are held by the employer. This means they are easily pressured and bullied to accept poor pay and poor working conditions because if they complain the employer can have them deported.
We also need to remember the history which led to this failure.
When National slashed and burnt apprenticeships in the 1990s training programmes at polytechs were slashed, staff made redundant and so-called “on-job” training took its place.
Industry training organisations were set up to co-ordinate the training to “meet business needs”. We were told they would initially be funded by government but over a short time they would shift to industry-funding.
However instead of taking over the funding of ITOs employers ensured successive Labour and National governments kept paying the tab while companies themselves were only interested in training for the specific skills they needed rather than the more broad-based skills taught under previous apprenticeship schemes. This meant workers becoming tied to specific jobs in specific industries rather than developing the wider range of more portable skills which would ensure better pay and conditions of work.
And so in 2014 market failure has left us thousands of apprenticeships short and employers actively recruiting overseas rather than training young New Zealanders.
The answer is simple. Young New Zealanders need to be actively recruited into a re-established state agency along the lines of the old Ministry of Works where they can get high quality apprenticeship training and build the big projects and housing so desperately needed in Auckland and Christchurch.
That’ll be a win for everyone.
“Young New Zealanders need to be actively recruited into a re-established state agency along the lines of the old Ministry of Works where they can get high quality apprenticeship training …”
And then do what if there aren’t any jobs? No John, the market has’t failed, the market will deliver the labour in response to the demand. The last thing we need is a return to the state predicting who should be trained what, which left people like my niece with a degree after 4 years of university for which there are no jobs.
When was this?
For the last twenty years of so that I have been around, people chose their degree and were let in if they met the minimum standards. Noone in government made anyone chose to take a degree or to chose the subject for their degree.
The problem is not state imposed direction but market forces that young people don’t have a clue how to read and arise so far into the future (i.e. at the point they actually get the degree not when they chose to take one) that they can’t make a great prediction anyway.
You think the government is better at making predictions like this? The reality would suggest otherwise.
Suggest you look at the student intake vs employment-gained figures surrounding “glamour” courses such as contemporary music, sound engineering, film etc etc .
Such courses exploded like mushrooms post 1990. Great little earners that attract funds for the institutions. Not so great for many if not most of the dreamy youngsters encouraged into them by unrealistic expectations and lax entry standards, later leaving with $20K of student debt etc. All hail the market.
Yet bizarrely people on the left are criticizing the current government for prioritising Science and Engineering students at Tertiary level and moaning about the Arts being neglected. Seems there is no pleasing some left wing people.
Yet bizarrely people on the left are criticizing the current government for prioritising Science and Engineering students at Tertiary level and moaning about the Arts being neglected.
i believe you are just making stuff up.
The first part of your sentence is simply untrue.
To use your word bizarrely, it is a peculiarity of the NZ market, or NZ business culture, that discourages science and engineering. Our business leaders pay and value money manipulators, sales and management far more than technical and scientific staff when compared to high performing countries in the technical fields, e.g. Germany and Japan.
To be fair this is not a recent state of affairs.
The second problem you identify does not quite address the point I raised. A solid liberal arts degree is quite different to an industry specific glamour subject such as a degree in pop music performance as offered by say, Otago University.
The issue around Science and Engineering funding vis-a-vis Arts is a debate about the corporate university model, not about the subjects themselves.
The fact that you couldn’t comprehend that the tertiary debate is about economic ideology shows how powerful our current economic ideology is – it’s pervasiveness has become invisible to you.
You’re a slave to our ideology because you can’t even entertain the idea of critiquing it, even when it’s destroying our future (and present). Just as the 20th century Communist dictators controlled their people’s minds through hard power, today the weak are controlled through soft power (TINA, using the word ‘freedom’, references to North Korea and Stalin…etc).
I pity you Gosman, but at the same time I envy you, after all, ignorance is bliss.
Go sit in the corner.
That’s not the market, Richard. That’s decisions made by Govt as to were to direct education funding. The market isn’t asking for these courses to be offered, on the contrary in fact.
Decisions made by government are a ‘market signal’.
And our ‘markets’ are tone-deaf, stuck in status quo, lacking in agility and far too comfortable for anyone’s good.
Of course they wouldn’t want those courses. Fresh young minds with modern training and enough enthusiasm to give a fair day’s work for a fair price??? The horror!
Far too many ‘industries’ and trades are closed shops in this country. ‘Mates’ rates’ and keeping out the newcomers. Same old names applying for the contracts. Same over-priced and tardy ‘services’ to retail customers. (Christchurch recovery is the state of our ‘markets’ writ large.)
That’s the nasty market-rigging reality. Like Enron and Lehmann Brothers and other great pillars of The Markets.
I am surprised that any rational person would have ‘faith’ in it. ‘Faith without works is dead’ – according to another faith-based system. (James 2: 14-26)
Gossy, you’ll say anything mate, you really will.
Unless you’re from a different planet where these things are actually true that is. Actually that could explain a lot now that I think about it.
The Global Financial Crisis reality? Or your delusional neo-liberal “reality”?
Mind you, when Reality gets in the way of your neo-liberal, “free” market belief system, never let it be said that gets in the way of pushing your bollicks – Intrinsicvalue is here to cherry-pick;distort; mis-represent; or just plain lie, to push your discredited right wing ideology.
When ideologues have to resort to misrepresentation and distortions instead of factual data, that signifies failure.
And there was no unemployment in the soviet union, eh Frank.
Nope. Post-war, there certainly wasn’t.
Eh, IV?
The bullshit you presented last time just showed how desperate you were to “prove a point”.
All you did was show how derisable your BS can be.
Eh, IV?
Frank are you seriously suggesting that the state is better at making these decisions than the market? There is very little the Government can do better than the market for the simple reason that when the market fails the market pays. When the state fails, we pay.
Oh, really?!
And who paid for the bailouts of the GFC and finance companies here in New Zealand, IV?
Or have you conveniently (yet again) overlookerd that?
As for your rubbish that “There is very little the Government can do better than the market” – that has to rank as one of the loopiest things you’ve said in a long time.
Who the fuck do you think built this country’s assets and infrastructure?!
If you were to stop using the infrastructure that the State has built up over the last century, you would be unable to read, write, walk on a street, enjoy good health, use a phone, watch TV, switch on an electrical device; listen to radio, live in reasonable security, use money, etc, etc, etc.
You’d be living in a stick-hut grubbing the soil in subsistance living.
You doofus – it was the State that built this country. Big business didn’t/couldn’t build the dams – they just came along as “johnny-come-latelies” and bought them in state asset fire sales!
Gawd, such ignorance… unbelievable.
It is mind-boggling that you believe this kind of crap…
“For the last twenty years of so that I have been around, people chose their degree and were let in if they met the minimum standards. Noone in government made anyone chose to take a degree or to chose the subject for their degree.”
You couldn’t be more wrong.
Yes, people choose their degree based on what was offered, but what was offered was based on the courses Govt choose (whether via the MoE or by Universities themselves). My niece did a 4 year degree in spatial design, assured from the outset that there would be jobs at the end by people within the education sector or claimed to ‘know’. She graduated 4 years ago and there were no jobs. When attending interviews she was told over and over again that industry had warned the Govt. that they had 3-4 times too many students.
Citation/reference/source please?
Or else it’s more bullshit from you.
You have made stuff up before.
IV, you obviously have little clue about the current setup course funding at Universities.
The Govt has little to do with what courses a University offers. It is largely up to the institution. The Govt has, however, set the funding framework up. The Uni’s are significantly funded per bum on seat.
Popular courses often subsidise those less popular. Popular courses are not determined by the Govt, but by student demand. Students do not always make rational choices, you niece being a case in point.
No one likes to see people wasting time effort and money on a useless education. Pre 1990 the Universities took their role in society seriously in this respect. They were not encouraged to offer pap courses to secure funding. Many course intakes were limited to account for society’s projected demand. By and large it worked well.
I also note that your niece, if graduating 4 years ago, is a victim of the later market model of funding.
Richard you took all that time to miss the most important fact of all. Universities are, at least for the most part, Govt run.
Citation/reference/source please?
Or else it’s more bullshit from you.
You have made stuff up before.
Richard you took all that time to miss the most important fact of all. Universities are, at least for the most part, Govt run.
(Sigh) You merely reveal that you don’t know Universities are managed or don’t now the difference between “owned” and “run”.
Actually, thinking on it, do you think that everything owned by the tax-payer is Govt. “run”?
I don’t really understand what you are saying, intrinsicvalue.
Are you suggesting that your niece should have studied at a higher personal cost at a private university – and then she would be guaranteed a job? No?
And have you failed to register the “lack of qualified builders” in the article above? There is a time lag between training in the trades and having full qualifications.
The market – as John points out – has failed to deliver.
At a private university? Why would that have helped? What I’m saying is that it isn;t the Govt’s role to predict the jobs that will be needed in the future, it is the market’s. That is what should drive funding. My view is that anyone doing any course that is not in some kind of industry umbrella (like basket weaving) should have to pay for the fees themselves.
What a load of rightwing bollicks.
We’ve had a shortage of skilled tradespeople for the ChCh rebuild, to such a degree that tradespeople from overseas are being imported into NZ,
Source: http://www.visabureau.com/newzealand/news/22-04-2013/new-zealand-immigration-to-fuel-christchurch-rebuild.aspx
And,
Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/christchurch-earthquake-2011/6682307/Head-start-sought-on-painters-for-rebuild
Meanwhile, unemployment stands at 166,000 unemployed, plus rising under-employment.
Your precious “Market” has failed spectacularly and only myopic ideologues like you fail to grasp this simple truth.
Evidence plays no part in your belief system, does it, IV?! Silly man. Blind as ever. 😀
“We’ve had a shortage of skilled tradespeople for the ChCh rebuild, to such a degree that tradespeople from overseas are being imported into NZ, ”
So? How is that a problem?
“Meanwhile, unemployment stands at 166,000 unemployed, plus rising under-employment.
Your precious “Market” has failed spectacularly and only myopic ideologues like you fail to grasp this simple truth.”
You just don;t get the real world, do you Frank. So let me tell you how it works. The market does not dictate to universities what to train people. The market finds labour to meet demand. If the market ran tertiary institutions, as it should, we would not be creating graduates in useless courses for which there are no jobs. But because bureaucrats make those decisions, we have graduates who have qualifications for which there are no jobs.
Your attempt to suggest the skill shortage due to an earthquake, a building boom and a remarkable upswing in economic activity is the fault of the market is pathetic, but unsurprising.
You are parroting rubbish.
It’s a problem, you witless bunny, because whilst skilled workers are imported from overseas (at dirt-cheap wages) it is our taxes that keep paying to keep people unemployed.
That is not just a “market” failure – it is a failure of common sense by every measure.
Only a rightwing nutjob thinks that is sensible.
That is why your Party barely registers in the polls.
As opposed to a party that advocates your solutions like Mana.
No John, the market has’t failed, the market will deliver the labour in response to the demand.
The comedy that writes itself. IV can see into the future but fails to see the reality of the now.
my niece with a degree after 4 years of university for which there are no jobs.
What!? Behold the logical inconsistency. Did the State dictate her choice of study? Even according to your world view she made a poor “market choice”, there is no one to blame but herself and perhaps her family advisers.
“Did the State dictate her choice of study?”
In a sense, yes. Because the state funds such courses on the basis that jobs are available yet had not conducted due diligence consultation with industry.
“IV can see into the future but fails to see the reality of the now.”
No-one can see into the future, however the best people to make these decisions are the ones who will make money from the labour.
Intrinsic nonsense
The idea of predicting is exactly what Joyce has been doing with university courses. He is telling them what to run if they want funding.
Why are right-wingers so blind in one eye and yet like to appear as far sighted all-seeing prophets with the other eye?
So please explain
the market has’t failed, the market will deliver the labour in response to the demand.
Why then are we importing labour from the Philippines and other places to re-build Christchurch, is this the market delivering, well I want the market to deliver to Kiwis, as John says they bring them in and they screw them, and they don’t make a peep because they will be booted out.
There’s jobs in Christchurch for a start and there’s developments in new housing that will need trades people and apprentices. The market has to be a load of bull if we are employing overseas workers because we became a slave to the market instead of more pragmatic state initiated building projects and trade training.
IV says,”No John, the market has’t failed, the market will deliver the labour in response to the demand.”
It would seem you haven’t read John’s article, he contends the market has responded by importing labour. He calls this a market failure because our own people should have be trained for these jobs.
Only if you are comfortable with an over supply of trades people at some point in the future.
What does mean?!
When did we ever have an “over supply of trades people”?!
I doubt you thought about that statement, Gosman, before hitting the “Post Comment” button…
Markets are pretty straight forward to comprehend Frank. If you train up a huge amount of trades people then the demand for them will have to be there once they finish their training otherwise you will have a lot of newly qualified trades people chasing a few vacancies. The Christchurch earthquake rebuild will soak up some of these in the short term it is true but then what? When building activity inevitably falls in a few years time where will all these trades people be employed? Much better in my mind to allow people to see the benefit of being trained as a tradesperson by the higher wages they get as a result of a shortage of workers and also cover the shortfall in the short term by allowing foreign workers.
Gosman you clearly know nothing about the building industry. Because of the expense of any kind of construction the first thing people stop doing in a downturn is spending money on buildings.
I went to Architecture school from 1990-94. You could count the number of graduates who found work on one hand in 1990 but by the time I left in 94 we were all eventually able to find work. Then by the early 2000s every graduate was instantly snapped up because the whole industry was in the midst of a boom. This ended in 2008 of course.
If by some miracle we had been able to predict all this it would have meant having no intake of students in the years 1984 – 1986, then having a small intake in 87 increasing to a full intake in 1990 and then expanding to double the intake by about 1998. All the while maintaining the correct amount of staff and teaching facilities. Even someone with a crystal ball wouldn’t be able to orchestrate that.
The only way to solve the problem is to retool the economy to prioritise the needs of workers over the needs of speculative capital and lessen the effect of economic booms and busts – but clearly that’s a delusional thought on my behalf, I must be going mad.
Aaron it seems to me that rather than disagree with Gosman, you actually are supporting what he said. The interventionist approach of Frank et al would have a host of tradespeople somehow mysteriously appear from the unemployed hordes (and who knows how many of those are even suitable?), only to find that in 5-10 years time the work begins to fall off once the rebuilding of Christchurch and the rapid expansion of Auckland slows down.
Posters at this blog seem to have the idea that Governments can magic apprentices out of thin air, which is utter nonsense.
“The only way to solve the problem is to retool the economy to prioritise the needs of workers over the needs of speculative capital and lessen the effect of economic booms and busts ”
What??? Speculative capital is what drives an economy to grow and thereby satisfy the needs of workers. Without speculative capital there are no jobs in the private sector. Oh but that’s right, that’s precisely what you socialists want, isn’t it?
As far as economic cycles are concerned, we will always have them. But thankfully a free market avoids total economic collapse, unlike socialism, which in Russia guaranteed it.
In your world, the GFC, recession, and billion dollar bail outs didn’t happen, eh, IV?
You’re as myopic/thick as ever.
Quite worryingly, you actually believe this nonsensical ideology.
All you’ve done in your above posts is profer excuses why the so-called “free” market has failed.
Excuses.
Nothing more.
You obviously haven’t thought through what you’ve written, have you? If you had, you’d realise you’ve just admitted that your precious neo-liberal ideology has failed to meet the demand for skilled tradespeople.
Importing skilled labour whilst 160,000 remain unemployed is not a rational solution. It’s a cop-out.
Much like the billions spent bailing out huge corporations and finance companies. When the rubber hit the road, the “market” skidded and relied on the State for a hand-out.
Now that the “market” has failed to meet the demand for skilled labour, it is relying on hand-outs from other countries.
All whilst you and I – via the State – pay to keep people unemployed.
Jeez, and you think that is clever?!
Twat.
The GFC was an example of where government intervention exacerbated the usual market volatility. That is not to state that market’s like the finance markets shouldn’t be monitored and even regulated/ However what happened in the GFC was that government involvement in the mortgage market in the US led to a serious mispricing of risk.
IV you nitwit, surely you are just saying that to wind me up. Everyone with half a brain knows that speculative capital is a parasite sucking the juice out of the world economy.
Perhaps you’re confusing the parasites with old fashioned capitalists who put their money in for the long haul – they certainly enable a lot of economic activity – but ultimately the whole thing is reliant on the little people going shopping.
As for describing the system in Russia (I think you meant the Soviet Union) as Socialism; that’s too stupid for words! – My advice is stop being an idiotic troll and go and do some research. Find out just how different the Soviet system was compared to socialism as practiced in western democracies.
You know, I really can’t believe you spend your time making stupid comments like this on a website full of people who think you’re an idiot – don’t you have any like, friends to hang out with?
Just imagine…
Christchurch happened over three years ago. In the intervening period of wide scale demolition, unemployed yoof could have been getting trained.
Three years full time and NZ would now have a stream of newly qualified builders electricians and drainlayers coming on steam just in time for the rebuild proper to get underway.
Painting seems to have been the only thing done in chch to date along with a raft of smaller jobs easily managed by existing resources.
Now we are at crunch point with few qualified builders available at home, hence the widespread importation of slave/indentured labour.
Its not bad planning! Its outright incompetence.
Is this the same market force that was used to justify the genocide of millions of irish in the mid 1880s.
Yes I believe that is the very same ideology that was used. They said there was a famine but contrary to this there was plenty of food sitting on the docks. Market forces meant more money could be made by exporting the grain for britains profit and let the people of Ireland starve. The same market force that called it a famine really create the Irish holocaust.
Kinda ironic with the earthquake when you draw the comparisons.
The corn laws (which contributed much to the suffering of the Irish during the famine) were examples of government intervention and market distortion not of free market policies. Indeed if these laws had been repealed sooner much less people would have likely starved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_laws
“To ensure that British landowners reaped all the financial profits from farming, the corn laws imposed steep import duties, making it too expensive for anyone to import grain from other countries, even when the people of Great Britain and Ireland needed the food (as in times of famine).”
@ Gosman – “land owners”, huh?
Think about it for a moment. Land owners. Capitalists. Vested interests.
200 years later, what has changed; Land (/business) owners. Capitalists. Vested interests.
Thank you for pointing that out to us. *voted thumbs up*
Yes it was a market distorting law introduced to favour capitalists. In this regard it isn’t too different to Labour’s recently announced policy to support the timber industry. It was still a market distorting law though.
“Yes it was a market distorting law introduced to favour capitalists”.
Actually these are still allowed within the neo liberal revolution.
There has been no ‘neo-liberal revolution’, other tan in your delusions. The economics of the past 30 years or so have been conventional and orthodox. True neo-liberalism has never been implemented in NZ, otherwise we would nothing like the generous welfare system we have, no WFF and far lower taxes.
Gosman and IV – you two keep making excuses why the “market” isn’t working.
Your comeback is that it isn’t working because it isn’t “pure” enough.
Well, I have news for you two bunnies. It will never work, no matter how “purist” you two sycophants try to make the system.
It will never work, like other ideologies that demand “purism” to succeed, have never worked.
Do you know why?
Because humans are not “pure”. Anything we create is inevitably fallible.
So expecting a pure, market-driven economy to be infallible is akin to religion. Like waiting for the Second Coming.
You’ll be waiting an awful long time before the second coming. Or a “pure” market.
What a joke!
Where have I made excuses that the market doesn’t work? The market is just a place for people to exchange economic goods and services freely. It makes no value judgments. It is the realm of politics to argue the good and bad of outcomes. I am merely pointing out examples of market distortion caused by the state and the negative consequences of those.
I’ve just recently been trolling you Gosman and what I’ve learned is that it’s much quicker than trying to put together coherant arguments so I take back my comments about you not having a job. I’m sure you’re hardly using up any of your employers time making all these comments.
If only I could understand WHY you do it.
Labour hasn’t distorted the economy yet with its value added policy re the timber industry. I see a lot of sense in the idea of turning some of those millions of logs into timber instead of watching logging trucks drive past my place (one every ten minutes) on SH1 bound for Mt Maunganui Port on their way to Asia. Waiting for the market is like relying on a gamble which is what the market is about. NZ’s experience so fare is that most people lose and the income gap is now a wide chasm.
Or, land owners, communists, vest interests AND peasant farming. Take your pick comrade.
The idea of predicting is exactly what Joyce has been doing with university courses. He is telling them what to run if they want funding.
Why are right-wingers so blind in one eye and yet like to appear as far sighted all-seeing prophets with the other eye?
“The idea of predicting is exactly what Joyce has been doing with university courses. He is telling them what to run if they want funding. ”
And so he damn well should be, providing it is based on what industry is telling the Govt. And that’s the difference. In Auckland we are giving huge additional funding for a Philarmonia no-one listens to while reducing funding to a rescue service that saves lives. And why? Because of the left wing appointments of Clark and friends to the funding body.
You idiot. The Auckland Council was a creation of ACT’s Rodney Hide and this National government!
How much longer are you going to blame a Labour government that hasn’t been in power for five years?!?!
You right wingers aren’t as ‘big’ on personal responsibility as you’d like to think, eh?
God, no wonder National has screwed up the economy…!
Oh Frank, Frank, Frank. Another horrible own goal.
Look up Auckland Regional Amenities Funding Board.
This is the body who distributes the lolly, and it was established under the Labour Government and was a pet project of Helen Clark.
[…] More market failure – Joyce and Brownlee should resign By John Minto https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/03/26/more-market-failure-joyce-and-brownlee-should-resign/ […]
[…] More market failure – Joyce and Brownlee should resign By John Minto https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2014/03/26/more-market-failure-joyce-and-brownlee-should-resign/ […]
As a builder I thought I’d throw my two cents in, for what its worth.
From what I’ve seen its not so much a shortage of tradepeople caused by a lack of government direction, but tradespeople (especially builders) not getting paid well enough to tempt more people to want to be in the trades. Christchurch could have more than enough builders if they paid them well, the only reason that foreign workers are being bought in is so their bosses don’t have to pay more for local builders, ie so they can have a larger profit.
Apart from the ChCh rebuild and the Auckland housing issues the rest of NZ doesn’t seem to be in a building boom, definitly better than three years ago but still has enough slack to spare a few hundred builders for Chch. But they’d have to pay more to tempt them to move there, and a large part of me just doesn’t see that happening.
Speaking of paying builders, my hourly wage has gone up by 15% in ten years, the minimum wage has gone up about 50%, at that rate of closure builders will be earning minimum wage in about 18 years or so. Good luck getting people to want to become builders at that point.
Anyway just my two cents.
I had to skip most of the right wing dribble from iv and gooseman
They distract from how incompetent the ex wood-work teacher Browenlea and the other ‘wide boy’ Joyce have, been which is what the original post was about ……..
Everything the Nats have touched turns to shit .
Pity poor Christchrurch ……..
“Everything the Nats have touched turns to shit .”
That’s not what most of the country think. We have an economy growing faster than mot of our trading partners, low inflation and interest rates, declining unemployment, the lowest crime rates on record, high levels of consumer and business confidence…..
Correction: the economy being talked up to be the fastest growing on record . Interest rates are increasing, inflation won’t be far behind. Low unemployment because no one can be bothered subjugating themselves to the gulag that is Dehumanize and Belittle NZ aka Winz. Crime is dropping because there are no back office staff to enter crime reports into NIA. If only you could see the pile of papers at the police for loading… There are reports from 2012 still needing to be loaded. Who even cares about consumer and business confidence ratings considering those are all generally done by self interested parties.
“Interest rates are increasing, inflation won’t be far behind. ”
Interest rates were around 11% when this Govt took office. Inflation was around 5%. On both counts the country is in much better shape, and will continue to be so.
“Crime is dropping because there are no back office staff to enter crime reports into NIA. ”
That’s total bs. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11230189
“Low unemployment because no one can be bothered subjugating themselves to the gulag that is Dehumanize and Belittle NZ aka Winz.”
That’s also total bs.
“A Guide to Unemployment Statistics explores three measures of unemployment in New Zealand: the unemployment benefit, the job-seekers register, and the Household Labour Force Survey (HLFS).” http://www.stats.govt.nz/browse_for_stats/income-and-work/employment_and_unemployment/a-guide-to-unemployment-stats.aspx
Are you also suggesting the unemployed don’t answer survey’s?
I believe the acquisition of marketable skills should be a core focus of schooling. School kids should be made aware about jobs, skills, training and what the costs are of getting those skills are, and then how likely it is they will be able to use those skills for gainful employment. Also they should be made aware the more skills they have the safer their income through job availability will be. I believe that trades are not promoted enough. University degrees are overvalued currently, basic arts and science degrees while important do not guarantee an income. It is unfortunate that some are unaware of these realities until after they have invested years in their training. Career guidance needs to be improved.
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