Rurawhe AdrianADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour—Te Tai Hauāuru): Tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare otirā tēnā tātou katoa. It is a pleasure to take a call on the Youth Employment Training and Education Bill and I congratulate Darroch Ball on bringing this bill to the House. I can share with the House that as I travel around my electorate youth unemployment is always within the top five issues that people talk to me about all the time. Having 90000 young people not in any training employment or education is an indictment on this National Government and actually I believe that Parliament needs to do something constructive about it. That is why I support this bill. I support it also because we need to be creating new conversations around how we can support communities to support their young people.I have not heard one single compelling reason why the National Government is not supporting this bill. We need to have a new look at how we are focusing on young people. I believe that we are not doing enough in this country and that is why this bill—although yes maybe it is not perfect I believe there is sufficient detail within this to go to a select committee and it could benefit from that process. Most importantly it is to let the people have their say on this bill and if there are issues that people have then they can be addressed I am certain. I am certain that if Parliament works constructively together then we can actually address the issue of so many young people being disengaged. We have a looming problem in this country because of that.There are dire consequences for inaction and that will be the legacy of the National Government if it continues to do nothing about it with a Prime Minister that refers to them as pretty damned hopeless." We need to address that. I believe that we can work through all of those issues. I believe that we need to invest now in those young people. There were some points that have been brought up in this debate—for example that this bill encourages young people to leave school early. That is not the case. The reality is that within those 90000 young people a significant number of them are 15-year-olds. My comment on that is that we are not doing enough for those young people. This bill at least provides an avenue for some of them to address that issue. I commend Darroch Ball also because he has actually addressed it within the bill. This bill proposes to amend the Education Act and to address the issue that a young person of 15 years of age who is not part of this education and training will be considered as though they are in school. My further comment to that is that it is a far better option than having young people sitting at home doing nothing and not in any kind of education or training.We simply cannot afford—our country cannot afford—to have so many young people disengaged from education. We have to do something about it. We have to do it now or as I have said we will be creating a legacy of dire consequences for the future. We have heard in this House people complaining about things like incarceration rates. Well if we do not do anything about it that is what we are consigning young people and their futures to. We need to address it. We cannot sit idly by. Our future depends upon it—our collective future in New Zealand. I say to the young people of this country: you deserve much much better. Kia ora."