Duncan Helen: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Duncan Helen: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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HELEN DUNCAN (Labour) 
: 
 I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this Address in Reply debate because this Government has a really good story to tell. After many years of seeing sluggish growth and social decay New Zealand has picked up momentum and is moving forward on many fronts. The measure of the success of any Government must be the extent to which it is successful in improving the lives of the people it governs. For that reason I am really proud to be a member of this Labour-Progressive Government which is making a real difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders is improving both the opportunities and outcomes for the disadvantaged in our communities is providing a better life right now and even more important is giving hope for an even brighter future to many people who felt forgotten disempowered and hopeless over the previous decade. 
It has always been difficult to prove claims of significant improvements in social areas because there have been no objective measurements available. This Government has been the first to have the courage to institute a regular reporting programme that measures the social well-being of New Zealanders. This Government wants our nation to be a place where everyone has the chance to reach his or her full potential where everyone has the chance to participate in the economy and where everyone can enjoy an environment that reflects our lifestyle our culture and our heritage. I am pleased to tell this House that the social report showed substantial improvements in the important areas of average income employment educational attainment and life expectancy. As well there has been a reduction in many areas of disadvantage and exclusion. 
There are particularly pleasing statistics in the area of employment. For example there are now more people in work than at any other time in our history. There are 176000 more people in work since Labour formed the Government and I am proud of that. In spite of those in the Opposition who consistently put down and criticise our country I can say that our unemployment rate is below that of any of our major trading partners. Our unemployment rate is 4.6 percent while Australia’s is 5.6 percent and the USA’s is 5.9 percent. The OECD average is 7 percent. So in comparison with others we are doing exceptionally well. People’s right to work and to provide for their own needs and those of their family is fundamental to a feeling of self-worth and of being included in society so I am really pleased with the steady improvement in our employment rates. There are still inequalities and we are all aware that the unemployment rates for Maori and Pacific people are still higher than those for other New Zealanders. This Government will continue to actively promote employment opportunities for those groups. 
 Where inequalities exist there is the potential for conflict and division in our society. This Government is dedicated to addressing and minimising such inequalities in the interests of the social well-being of our nation. This Government wants there to be fairness and opportunity in employment and to that end we have increased the minimum wage four times in 4 years. For low-paid workers that means earning approximately $60 extra per week. Although that may not seem much to people who work in this place I can tell members that it makes a huge difference for people on low incomes. It makes a huge difference to the quality of their lives and the lives of their families. Since 1999 this Government has methodically established and strengthened the minimum standards in order to provide fairness security and opportunity in employment. As well the Government has begun a review of children’s employment in order to ensure that those vulnerable young people are aware of their rights and legal protections. 
Providing jobs is very important to this Government but we do not want to have just any old jobs. We want to have jobs that develop the skills and the talents of our New Zealand population. So we are training the workforce of the future and fostering growth and innovation. We are trying to upskill New Zealanders so that they can move forward confidently into the future. The Jobs Jolt package which was announced a little while ago contains a range of initiatives to tackle skills shortages and to get New Zealanders into work. It contains 10 initiatives to help employers to meet skills shortages and to help people with disabilities long-term sickness and invalid beneficiaries mature job seekers drug-dependent job seekers young people and people who have been made redundant to get into the workforce—into employment. We have regionalised services in order to tailor them to the needs of women young people Pacific people people with disabilities and so on. We want to see our communities delivering services in ways that suit their needs and we have no intention of changing that policy and trying to turn it into a one-size-fits-all policy because the policy that we have is working. Unemployment is at a 16-year low and Work and Income has succeeded in placing record numbers of people into work. 
We want to train a workforce in which we match skills to the jobs that are available and we are fostering growth and innovation by improving the access to tertiary education. This Government wants to have all 15 to 19-year-olds engaged in appropriate tertiary education training work or other career development options by 2007 and we are well on the way towards achieving that goal. I know that every parent in New Zealand wants that to happen. We are fostering a skilled workforce and a strong culture of workplace training. It is great to see so many New Zealanders taking up work-based learning options. We want to build up an even wider set of opportunities in order to ensure that all young people successfully make the transition from school into the world of work. Successful programmes like Gateway and Modern Apprenticeships are already showing strong results indicating that young people are keen to take up the expanded opportunities for training. We are keeping tertiary education affordable and we are making student loan repayments easier as part of our plans to make tertiary education even more affordable. 
Industry training is booming giving people in employment the opportunity to gain recognised qualifications through a combination of on-the-job and off-the-job learning. Modern Apprenticeships reached its target of 6000 trainees 3 months early last year. Those are just a few of the host of programmes that this Government is putting in place to make sure that our young people our mature people and everyone within our society have the opportunity to progress into a bright future. 
I want to finish by saying that I was at Waitangi this year. Some things happened there that most of us would rather not have been a part of but I had the opportunity to talk to someone who was here in New Zealand for a conference on race relations. When I spoke to him at dinner after the events on the Thursday afternoon he made the comment that New Zealand was a wonderful society because what he had seen was a whole lot of people who were at Te Tii Marae protesting and making their feelings felt. Then he went along to the hotel and mixed with the people who were there for the Governor-General’s reception and—lo and behold—a number of the same protestors were there at that function. Everybody was talking and getting on together and discussing the events in a really good way. That is something that is wonderful about our New Zealand society. 
I conclude by quoting the Prime Minister who said in her speech: “... we want to build a New Zealand that offers equal opportunity a fair go and security for all our people. We want to unite not divide. We want New Zealanders to take pride in all our country’s achievements—economic social and creative.” I endorse those sentiments totally.