Sepuloni CarmelCARMEL SEPULONI (Labour—Kelston): Yesterday morning I had the privilege of visiting an organisation called the Bridge the Gap Project run by a woman called Amanda Betts. That organisation works with our young people some of whom have come through the Child Youth and Family system and some of whom have come through the youth justice system and it focuses on the potential that they have. Much of what that organisation does is slightly out of the box and it is really hard I was saying to her for any Government agency to put the Government agency framework around it but it is successful and I can see why. It starts with these young people by allowing them to have the opportunity to see what their potential is even physically. Many of them show up in their gangster gears" never really having had anyone model to them what they need to do when going for a job or how they need to look when going for a job. This organisation shows them what they have the potential to look like. That is only one part of it because we know that there is a whole lot that needs to go on internally but it does make a difference to their frame of mind and how they feel about themselves. Just reflecting on what we have seen over the last 8 years of a National Government it is incredibly disappointing that we have not had that same potential-based approach taken by the National Government. Instead what we have had is this deficit approach where it looks at our young people it looks at people on benefits and it looks at people who are unemployed as liabilities. It measures the forward liability of these people. The Government talks about the risk of long-term welfare dependency. So it is all about that deficit take on human beings rather than asking what this person has to offer what the value is here or what the potential is that needs to be realised. Unfortunately that is the view that the National Government has taken but what I am grateful for is that on the weekend at the Labour Party conference our leader Andrew Little made it very clear that that is not the perspective that we are taking and that is not the way we will be treating our young people. We are looking for the potential. Andrew Little talked about the importance of investing in our people. He talked about the importance of investing in our future. He said that Labour—and he meant this—is committed to rising to the challenges that we face including the challenge of 74000 young people being unemployed or out of work and training. It is not acceptable that so many young people are out of work and training. They are not having their potential realised. They are not being supported by that Government. Andrew Little also went through the many values that Labour has those values like fairness opportunity and aspiration our absolute belief in the importance of achievement and our absolute belief also that once you get there you also give back. That is what that side of the House all too often seems to forget. We had an announcement around our Ready for Work policy and the fact that we will not allow 74000 young people to languish doing nothing not in employment or training as that side of the House has. We have had members on that side of the House mock that policy. How unfortunate that we have had them mock that policy. But why should we be surprised? Why should we be surprised when the Deputy Prime Minister has been recorded—recorded—as saying that our young people are "pretty damned hopeless"? We have had the Prime Minister alluding to the fact that our young people have a problem with drugs. And we have had that side of the House put everything back on those young people as being their fault that they are not in employment or training rather than looking for solutions like this side of the House has. This side of the House is about opportunity and making sure that we secure our future by investing in our young people now. It is about that Ready for Work policy that Andrew Little announced on the weekend but it is also about the entire comprehensive package that Labour has announced over the last year at least and probably the many more policies that we will go into the next election with that actually complete that comprehensive package which is about investing in our young people. As my colleague Grant Robertson said earlier it is about our 3 years' free post - secondary school tertiary education policy. It is about helping businesses to meet the cost of new apprenticeships. It is about ensuring we have professional careers advice in our schools to help our young people make good decisions about work or further study. It is about things like grants for young Kiwis who might want to start their own businesses. Those are all solutions to a problem that we face and thank goodness we have got the leadership over on this side of the House to actually do something to deal with the problem of 74000 young people who are unemployed or not in training."