This week Labour announced a significant policy package to ensure that all New Zealanders under the age of 20 are in work, education or training.
My team and I have had just over 8500 personal conversations with people in Christchurch Central and I know that this is the stuff that people really care about.
Young people want opportunities for training and jobs. Parents and grandparents want to ensure opportunities exist for their children and grandchildren to get ahead.
Currently 75,000 young New Zealanders aged 15-24 are not in work, education or training. This amounts to a rate of more than 11 percent, which is double the unemployment rate for the rest of the population. 45% of our total unemployed are youth – the highest percentage of any youth population in the OECD.
Labour will invest $183 million in a comprehensive Youth Employment Package. We will encourage young New Zealanders to move off the unemployment benefit and into apprenticeships by paying the equivalent of the dole ($9100) to employers willing to offer a permanent full time job. And we will develop a National Careers Strategy and increase funding for career guidance in schools.
This Youth Employment Package will reach the 24,000 young New Zealanders under the age of 20 who are not in work, education or training.
This is a policy that has particular significant for Canterbury – a region that desperately needs skilled people who are trained to help us rebuild our city. It’s what should have been put in place four years ago.
Labour is committed to supporting New Zealanders into work. This will include a particular focus on giving young people a pathway to realising their full potential. To do this we need a world class skills training system that meets the needs of workers, employers and the economy.
A world class skills training system that meets the needs of Canterbury and the rebuild.
Anything to get people into work is good. But another factor that no one seems to touch on is attitude. Taxpayers dont want to waste funds on trying to upskill young people if they have not got the correct atitude. If you ask runholders within the Dairy industry why they have so many Asian workers they respond with the following; they are relaible, they turn up for work on time, they don’t thieve things, they have a good manner and just get on and do the work, they don’t do drugs etc etc. Now go to the Wine industry and ask the same thing, same answers. A friend doing a bit of work on a winery asked this question and the wine grower replied; see that shed over there, i had a local contract gang and my shed was slowly ransacked. But now with these Asian workers nothing is touched. Thats dam sad and curse the system that has let our young people slip to such levels. It starts by accepting lower standards and now these kids pay the price. It’s not their fault, it’s slack parenting and weak discipline within the school system. We should not have to bring in labour when we have 24,000 young adults being paid to do nothing. But whatever, it’s good to invest in upskilling young people, and some or hopefully for many it will be the opening they need to learn skills, instil confidence and progress onwards.
Hi Tony,
Well done, the youth are our future leaders and we need skilled workers badly, I was a apprentice electrician beginning in 1960 so know what a benefit a skill was in my life so top marks for Labour, my vote this time.
Milne and Labour need to get off their arses and get out of Central ChCh and into the suburbs and talk to those in the 50+ age demographic who have lost their jobs in “restructuring”, closures, “amalgamations”….. Those who have the skills, the experience, the work ethic, but whose applications and CVs go unanswered the moment the age of the applicant is noted. Ageism seems to be the only discrimination in NZ that can be sanctioned or tolerated. They are the unseen, they are the ignored but they are the ones most likely to vote. They do not, conveniently, show up in Government statistics as most do not register as unemployed; usually because a spouse /partner on a small wage precludes them from any Government support. Up-skilling/retraining is the catch cry, but older workers are excluded from any financial support to do so while still struggling to pay a mortgage, insurances (and there is another story..!) provide the essentials for family and continual costs of unfruitful searches for work. They have paid their dues down the years, paid the taxman, were the infrastructure of this country but now are the ignored by the ignorant. “The Grapes of Wrath are growing heavier by the vintage..” Political wannabes – ignore us at your peril. NZ Labour, this socialist doesn’t recognise you. Since ‘Rogerednomics’ your colours have faded to a delicate shade of ‘puke’.
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