Bennett Paula: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Bennett Paula: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:656;Page:5819] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister of Youth Affairs) 
: 
 I stand to speak with regard to Vote Youth Development and to look at its task of looking after young people—757000 young people aged between 12 and 24 years—with a focus on the Ministry of Youth Development. When I first came into Government and looked at this vote and the work it was doing I saw that it was doing a lot of good work. But equally I felt that the vote had moved slightly into doing more work with at-risk young people and young people who were serious offenders and that it was funding more programmes for them. I felt that the ministry actually needed to get back a bit to its knitting and look after the majority of young people who are doing positive stuff out there who are very successful who are getting ahead and who will have some pretty awesome opportunities ahead of them as they get further along. 
We had a good look at everything that Vote Youth Development was doing. We made sure that we moved some of that vote to where it needed to be. We moved some of it into—[ 
Interruption 
] The members opposite are welcome to take a call. I notice they did not take a call on Vote Social Development because they did not see the unemployment benefit numbers as being important enough. Now they have decided to sit and snipe from the sidelines like the headless turtles that they are and they hope that that sniping will make a difference. I will not do that when it comes to our young people. It is easy to look at the negatives and it is easy to think about everyone as failing and not doing well whereas the reality is that the majority of our young people have incredibly bright futures and are doing incredibly well out there in some pretty tough times. They are surging ahead and it is pretty exciting to be their Minister and to be working alongside them. 
When it came to looking at what we could do what was important and where we were going to move ahead naturally we looked at employment opportunities for young people who were not involved in upskilling. It was with real pleasure that I heard the Prime Minister announce that $152 million would go into the Youth Opportunities programme. It is no secret that job opportunities have been the biggest intake under that programme initially: 590 Job Ops applicants have come into Work and Income already. I do not have in front of me the number of those who have been placed in jobs; certainly from memory over 175 are already in jobs via Job Ops and it has been running for only about 3 weeks. 
Literally hundreds of community organisations have stepped up and are asking all sorts of questions about how to get a project together that young people can work on. Maori organisations are talking about how they can renovate a marae and get a bunch of young people together to work on that. I heard of one Maori organisation that is working at setting up a library and is getting young people in for 6 months to work on that community project. Another area is talking about getting young people to go around and check fire alarms. They will offer to go into people’s homes and check that the fire alarms are still working and that the batteries are going. There are awesome opportunities for young people to get involved in doing things like that which give them something meaningful to do in these tough times when there is not as much available to them as there was previously. We have to make some pretty tough decisions. 
It was interesting that the previous speaker Katrina Shanks brought up the independent youth benefit. About 1700 16 and 17-year-olds are on the independent youth benefit. From memory of that number about 1000 to 1100 are involved in education another couple of hundred are involved in other upskilling activity and about 400 are not actively involved at all in employment education or training. We make no bones about and no apology for the fact that we expect 16 and 17-year-olds to be actively engaged in society whether that is through education employment or training. So we will be putting measures in place against those on the independent youth benefit. We will say to them that we expect them to be involved in these sorts of activities. That will mean providing a commitment from the Government to make sure that those activities are there for them: that places are available in upskilling and that there are jobs for them to go to. We are willing to make that commitment to them but we will also expect those young people to step up and to be actively involved. Quite frankly it is National’s opinion that a life on welfare is not a life of full opportunities and we want more for our young people than that.