Ardern Jacinda: Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10369] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I am somewhat bemused to be in the Chamber again debating another bill introduced by the member the Hon Sir Roger Douglas that I think fundamentally attacks the rights of young people. I find it bizarre also to be agreeing with some of the contributions made by the Government. But I still find it a bit rich for the Government to claim that it is against the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill because it values the young and because it is interested in youth unemployment as an issue. 
The Government’s scorecard on youth issues is dismal. I was reflecting on those issues as I was preparing my contribution to the House today. The list looks something like this: failed boot camps for young offenders; treating child offenders as adults; targeting students who are struggling to pay loans after completing tertiary education; capping enrolments in polytechs and universities and turning away 8000 young people; trashing youth health centres; and cutting funding to the youth workers association. If the Government goes ahead and supports voluntary student union membership I will be adding that to the list of lost services also. But I also have something to say about the absence of the Government’s action on some critical issues and I add youth unemployment to that list. 
This bill naively I think purports to address the issue of youth unemployment. It is an antiquated and discredited argument to claim that if youth are paid less that will fix the issue rather than simply perhaps shifting unemployment around. We have an evidence base from within New Zealand to discredit that argument with. Labour increased the youth minimum wage by 126 percent and 81 percent for the two different age groups. At the very same time youth unemployment in New Zealand fell to 11.8 percent—one of the lowest levels that we have seen. No one in this House is denying that youth unemployment now is high and is a significant issue that we should all be concerned about. In fact it is an issue that the entire OECD is struggling with but only nine countries have looked at lower youth minimum wage rates as a potential way of addressing it. 
The member raised the significant youth unemployment numbers we face. When was the last time that youth unemployment was as high as it is now? It was in the 1990s when the youth minimum wage was in full swing. I have spoken to people who work in the New Zealand labour market at an academic level. They tell me that moving around minimum wage rates for young people is simply not the answer from an evidence-based perspective. What will fix the situation? There is no point saying that these young people would have jobs if we simply paid them less if the jobs are not available in the first place. Job creation in New Zealand is a significant issue. Skills training for our young people is a significant issue as is making sure that they are educated in areas where we have gaps in New Zealand. Did I hear anyone say that the Skills Strategy may have contributed to answering that? But the Government decided it was best suited to the shelves. All of that would have contributed to fixing our youth unemployment issue. 
Instead the only response that we hear on this from one party in Parliament through Sir Roger Douglas is that we should simply pay young people less. In fact one of his arguments was that somehow paying young people equal pay for equal work—paying them equitably across the board with peers doing the same job—would contribute to their choosing to join youth gangs. That is a completely abhorrent argument to make that somehow we are sending a message to young people that we do not value them. It was certainly the message that I took when as a young person I was paid less for a job I was doing that was exactly the same as the job of an older peer—that I was not valued as a young person. That was the message I received. 
I have asked young people their view of this bill. I have asked young people about it. One young person told me that he agrees with this member’s bill. When I asked him whether he felt that having a different minimum wage would give him a decent wage to survive on he said yes. I asked him how he would pay the rent and he pointed out that his mum and dad covered it for him. I do not believe that this is a realistic bill that addresses the significant issues that young people are facing. I hope that we come back to this House and debate the real issues around youth unemployment.