Boscawen John: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Boscawen John: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:674;Page:20433] 
Hon JOHN BOSCAWEN (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 It is a privilege and a great opportunity to take a call in this debate on the estimates for Vote Employment—or unemployment. We have just heard both the Minister in the chair the Minister for Social Development and Employment and the member for Rotorua castigating Opposition members because they were not prepared to stand up and take a call in this debate. They said that the Opposition was not prepared to put its policies forward. The ACT Party is very proud to support the National Government. We are a confidence and supply partner with the Government and most of the legislation that passes through this House passes with the support of the ACT Party. But I have to say that when it comes to youth unemployment we take on the role of the Opposition. If the Labour Party is not prepared to stand up and talk about what is required to address youth unemployment then the ACT Party certainly is. 
Youth unemployment is one of the greatest tragedies of our time because it is largely preventable and the Minister and Mr McClay know that well. New Zealand has a disastrously high rate of youth unemployment. Last week Statistics New Zealand released figures showing that the rate of youth unemployment has risen to 27.6 percent. Think of that: more than one in four young people is unemployed. What is worse more than one in three young Maori people is unemployed. 
Although the ACT Party is a confidence and supply partner of the National Government it does not believe that the Government is taking this issue seriously. Although it may have implemented multimillion-dollar schemes to effectively bribe employers to take on young people it has not been prepared to acknowledge that that simply has not worked. The Minister of Finance can stand up at question time and defend the Government’s record on spending but tens of millions of dollars have been put into schemes to employ young people and there is a much simpler solution. 
The numbers are truly staggering. Some 41000 young people are out of work. That is enough young people to fill the nearby Westpac Stadium and to then spill out on to the pitch. Youth unemployment is at the highest level it has ever been even after taking into account the effects of the recession and the biggest tragedy is that it is entirely preventable. An estimated 12000 young people are unemployed as a direct consequence of the abolition of the youth minimum wage. Let me repeat that: 12000 young people are unemployed as a direct consequence of the abolition of the youth minimum wage. While unemployed young people are scraping by on the dole there is a solution that is not being taken advantage of. They are missing out on vital work experience. 
Unemployment robs young people of their sense of self-respect and their self-sufficiency. There is no dignity in sitting around waiting for a weekly welfare cheque and that is exactly what the scrapping of the youth minimum wage has done. I hear people ask why abolishing the youth minimum wage pushed so many people out of work. Supporters of abolishing the youth wage argued that doing so would give youth a livable wage but it did not. When given the choice between employing an older and more experienced worker and taking a punt on a young person lacking in maturity lacking in experience and fresh from school—and having to pay that person exactly the same as what that older more experienced person would be paid—it is no surprise that an employer will choose the older person virtually every time. One has only to talk to employers in New Zealand to know that that is true and I cannot believe that the Minister for Social Development and Employment who is sitting in the chair right now has not spoken to employers and does not know that to be a fact. I think that is a tragedy because there is an opportunity to do something and it is not being taken up. 
In abolishing the youth wage the Government forced young people to compete with experienced workers which placed young people at a serious disadvantage. I ask members in the supposed Opposition why employers would employ a 16-year-old or 17-year-old fresh out of school who is without experience when they can employ someone with more experience and more maturity. Why would they do it? The answer is that they are not doing it and that is reflected in the statistics. It is reflected in the over 12000 extra young people who are denied that opportunity. If Labour members opposite do not see that it shows us how completely out of touch with reality they are. 
An entire generation of young people has grown up without the work experience that generations before them have benefited from. The 16 and 17-year-olds who are unemployed today will continue without that experience as 19 21 and 22-year-olds never having had a job. That cycle has to stop. 
The ACT Party fought tooth and nail for the youth rate to be reinstated. We submitted a member’s bill in 2010 that would have effected change and curbed youth unemployment. National Labour the Greens and the Maori Party voted against that bill. Since then youth unemployment has continued to skyrocket. It was the ACT Party and only the ACT Party that showed it really cared about youth unemployment. The tragedy is that the Minister in the chair knows that and the members on the National benches know that. 
There are 12000 young people sitting at home unemployed without the benefit of the experience that getting on the first rung of the ladder would give them. The key to getting a pay rise is work experience. It is the experience that comes from having that first opportunity. One of the great myths created by those who oppose having a youth wage is that reinstating it would simply shuffle jobs from the old to the young. Nothing could be further from the truth. Reinstating the youth minimum wage would create new jobs. Employers who currently cannot afford to take on an extra staff member because they have to pay that person $13 an hour may be prepared to give a young person—an apprentice or a person in training—that opportunity at $9 an hour. The tragedy is that this Parliament passed a law that makes it illegal for the employer to do that. Let me repeat that: this Parliament—first Labour supported it then it was supported by National—passed a law that makes it illegal for an employer to offer a young person straight from school and without experience a job at $9 an hour. Instead this Parliament has decided to send those people to the scrap heap and has sent them to register for the unemployment benefit at $4.50 an hour. 
Mr McClay talked about young people languishing on the unemployment benefit. Well I say to Mr McClay and I say to National members that if they want to address this issue they should actually have youth rates. They should have the courage of their convictions. National members know that when this proposal was put up by the previous Labour Government they rallied against it. They spoke against it and they campaigned against it yet when they had the chance to actually do something about it they refused. They voted against Sir Roger Douglas’ member’s bill to reinstitute youth wages. 
The tragedy is that the members of the National Party actually know it. The members of the National Party are more likely to have had employment experience to have been in business and to have actually employed people. They—those business people and those employers—know more than anyone in this Chamber how to employ people and about the economics of employing staff. If an employer has an opportunity to employ someone who is mature who is older and who has experience and would have to pay exactly the same to a young inexperienced immature youth the employer will go for the more experienced person virtually every time. 
We sit here and talk about employment. The Minister stands up and says that the Opposition is not prepared to debate this issue or to put up policies. The ACT Party has put up a policy and it certainly is one we intend to campaign on. If we can come back into this Parliament after the election we certainly hope to get it through and hope to get some spine and backbone into the National Government following the election. Thank you.