McNair Craig: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
McNair Craig: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:606;Page:3386] 
CRAIG McNAIR (NZ First) 
: 
 I take pleasure in rising to speak in the debate on the Prime Minister’s statement today and to start I would like to quote the words of the Prime Minister in her statement to Parliament yesterday. Some of the first words that came from the Prime Minister’s mouth were her boast about the Government beginning the year feeling positive about the prospects for New Zealand and its policy programme.  
 She went on to talk about the economy’s so-called strong performance. First of all here we had the Government trying to lead us to believe that the New Zealand economy over the past year has been one of the OECD’s star performers—even though we know that the Prime Minister’s quoted figures for our economy show that that is not quite the case as stated by my leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters yesterday.  
I want to talk about another issue today. I really want to focus on a major issue where our country is not a star performer and that is the very serious issue of our troubled youth. I look over at the Minister of Youth Affairs and say I am very concerned that this Government is not taking the problems and the troubles of our young people seriously enough. There is a lack of vision for our young people from this Government which is unable to provide the leadership and the resources to give young New Zealanders a sense of purpose and direction. When Helen Keller was told once that it must be terrible to be blind she turned to the person who said that and replied that the most pathetic thing in this world must be for somebody to be able to see but not to be able to have any vision. Those words of Helen Keller sum up this Government very very well. We have high suicide and youth crime rates and I say to this Government that a suicide can only be reported once. The suicide rates are very high in New Zealand and we need to look at that problem. It does not matter who says that; we do need to look at that problem and at our problems of youth crime as well.  
Last year I spoke to the Estimates of Appropriation Vote Youth Affairs and I asked the member for Tamaki Makaurau the Minister of Youth Affairs how on earth a Government could spend $1.7 million on youth affairs policy advice when it spent only $460000 on a youth suicide prevention information service programme. Where is the vision and the leadership in that? When New Zealand First was in Government we injected over $13 million into youth affairs. Now 5 years later this Government—members should do the maths—puts only about $11 million into youth affairs. Let us go back to the $460000 spent on youth suicide. The Land Transport Safety Authority—and I am not saying this is a bad thing—can spend $10 to $15 million a year on advertising but how much do we spend on our young people in the important area of suicide prevention?  
I turn to the youth offender apprehension figures for the 2001 fiscal year supplied by none other than the Hon George Hawkins. Total New Zealand apprehensions for people aged 10 to 13 were 11000 and total New Zealand apprehensions for those aged 14 to 16 were 30995 bringing total apprehensions for those aged 10 to 16 to 42000. What message is this Government giving to our young people? The message that they get from this Government is that it is OK to commit a crime unless they get caught that if they do get caught nothing much will happen and that after nothing much has happened they can do it all over again. That is the message this Government sends to our young people.  
I say our young people are more important than that. Our young people need vision. The young people of our nation need to be given what Helen Keller talked about: vision and hope.