Young Jonathan: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Young Jonathan: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 13 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:2936. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
: 
 I am very pleased to stand here today and speak from the sensible side of the House about what New Zealanders want and that is a life to aspire to and a livelihood that is going to build and support their families here in this country. In order to build this life you have to be positively pro-growth—something that we know the Opposition of course opposes. It opposes everything that this Government is doing. It opposes growth and every single idea that we have proposed to enlarge our economy. For every single idea that we have proposed to bring restraint which would bring us back to surplus all we have heard is opposition. All we have heard is complaint.  
Here are some of the initiatives that our opponents have said no to. We want to intensify and develop our agricultural sector; they want to put it out of business like last time with their tax. We want to develop our mining and our oil reserves and we want to see—as I know and I experience in Taranaki—the prosperity that that industry can bring to New Zealanders but they say no to that as well. We want to see Australian companies move jobs to New Zealand. Just recently the Hon Bill English was across in Australia and Australian businessmen were saying that it is more competitive for them to be able to locate here than there but our opponents oppose that. They do not want to see more business come here. They do not want to see New Zealanders get jobs like that.  
We want to bring an element of work to those who are beneficiaries because we believe that work is good for people. It is not a punishment; it is a reward. It is something that builds esteem that builds wealth in people’s lives that builds skills and social interaction and that enables them to contribute to their communities. But no every idea that we put forward they oppose. We want to help people get into jobs and help businesses to grow. We have brought in a 90-day probation period for new employees but they are against that as well. So many employers that I talk to say that because of that law change they have given somebody a go when they would not have done that before because the risks were too great. Yet we have done it and we have seen—the Department of Labour said—13000 jobs grow because of that. And all of our other labour-market reforms the Opposition has opposed.  
I guess to be in Opposition you oppose but there are so many good workable ideas that are helping New Zealanders that we are putting into place. We are bringing some stability some strength some economic growth and opportunity. We heard today that unemployment is reducing. We are not happy with those levels of unemployment at 6.7 percent but we know that right now they have gone under 50 percent. We know that there has been a reduction of 44 percent of those youth who have been unemployed. We know that in times of recession the young people are the ones who struggle to find work and we are seeing more and more of them being able to take up opportunities. A lot of that is to do with the labour laws that we have put in place.  
We are in times in our world where there is a lot of uncertainty beyond our borders and we need to acknowledge that. We know that there is social disintegration taking place in a number of countries up in the northern hemisphere. We understand that there is a gap between what people want and what they have and I guess that has always been the human dilemma. People have always wanted more and aspiration can fulfil that goal if people are prepared to work. But if we want the world’s best we have to become the world’s best. We have to find out what we are good at and what our point of difference is and become very very good at it whether that is farming food processing engineering or making movies. We need to use our ingenuity and innovate and this Government is putting so much effort funding and support into those particular areas where we can develop innovation and where we can become the world’s very best at what we are good at so we have that point of difference and are able to compete in a mobile and global world like never before. That is so important.  
What we are seeing in Greece and in Europe is that there is a tremendous disconnect taking place in those economies between what people have become used to and what they can actually afford. I was reading this week’s  
Newsweek 
 magazine and there it showed pictures of people in Greece having a party.