Fenton Darien: General Debate 
Fenton Darien: General Debate 
[Volume:675;Page:21066] 
DARIEN FENTON (Labour) 
: 
 I have to give it to the ACT Party: if they come up with one idea and they go on and on about it and their great idea to win them the election is to cut wages— 
Hon John Boscawen 
: Provide incentives. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Cut wages. No cut wages. That is exactly what Sir Roger Douglas and National did in the 1990s—cut wages. Did that help to create jobs? Did it create skills? Did it develop our skills? What it did was lead to a low-wage low-skill economy. So ACT’s whole policy is based on a false premise. I strongly suggest to the member that he go back and look at the history of what happened when this country cut wages and whether that created jobs. Did it create jobs in the 1990s? Of course it did not. 
I am very proud of Labour’s plan to have all young people earning or learning. I congratulate my colleagues who have been involved in putting it together. I know it has taken an awful lot of work. It has been very well received. It is a very positive plan. I know that National cannot live with the idea that some in business actually think Labour does some good things but they do. Have a look at the press releases from Business New Zealand and others. What the plan also does is add to a cohesive economic package we are putting together. We have announced some of it so far: our monetary policy and our tax policy. This is the skills and jobs— 
Chris Tremain 
: Oh yeah; that’s cohesive! 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Well that party has no cohesive policy except to cut jobs and lose jobs and owning our future. We will have a comprehensive package to take to the electorate that will have all the elements in it to change the economy instead of relying on past failed ideas as National continues to do. 
The skills crisis we are seeing at the moment which the Labour plan responds to was absolutely predictable—absolutely predictable. All the problems that are there and everything we are facing right now are the fault of a National Government that failed to look ahead and see that we were going to have skills shortages. Things never stay the same. If we go back to the great ideas of this Government we see the things it failed to do—particularly for the young people of New Zealand who are bearing the brunt of its failure. They are the ones who are paying the price. Let us think about those ideas. We had the Job Summit and that was supposed to deliver jobs. We are still waiting for that. The other big idea from National to create jobs was the 90-day trial period. How many jobs has that created for young people? 
Hon Kate Wilkinson 
: 13000. 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Well the Minister of Labour says 15000. She knows that that research she keeps citing is rubbish. It is absolute rubbish. Also while I have the Minister’s attention I say that she is doing the dance of the seven veils on returning to youth wages. We all know that she really wants to bring them back. Mr Key is being a little bit edgy on that. Again those are the only ideas they can think of. Of course we had boot camps. How many jobs have they created? What have they done to change things? 
I am really pleased about our policy. I am particularly pleased about the apprenticeship schemes. The previous speaker John Boscawen was talking about people sitting on the dole and how wasteful that is. We agree with that. That is why we will be subsidising employers to take on apprenticeships to fund 9000 additional apprenticeship places. 
Hon John Boscawen 
: Why are subsidies necessary? 
DARIEN FENTON 
: Why is subsidisation necessary? That member should talk to builders and find out how difficult it is in this climate for them to take on an apprentice. They need assistance to do it. Why should they take all the risk? We are going to help them with that. We are going to help make sure that those young people have much-needed skills. Also we will support group apprenticeships. That is a very good scheme. There are some group apprenticeships that exist already. What happens in a group apprenticeship scheme is the group takes on the responsibility of employing the apprentice so the employer does not have that responsibility. They do all of the pastoral care they deal with all the risk and employment relations and they can also share out those apprenticeships between different employers. In the process leading up to our announcement I visited a number of apprentices apprentice providers and industry training organisations. What our policy has come from is from listening to what those people were saying. Going back to builders it is really hard for them to take on an apprenticeship at the moment. That is why we are supporting a real boost to make sure they can do so.