Shanks Katrina: General Debate 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shanks Katrina: General Debate 
[Sitting date: 12 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5151. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KATRINA SHANKS (National) 
: 
 It is my pleasure to take a call in the general debate. I want to touch on job creation and employment because that is what this Government is focused on. It is focused on getting more jobs creating good-quality jobs and growing our economy. Let me put some facts on the table to begin with. I want to talk about our unemployment rate: 6.7 percent is our unemployment rate. Obviously it is higher than what we want it to be but it is what it is right here and right now. When you compare it with other countries around the world we are certainly in a really good position. There are many countries that are envious of what we have done with our employment. Unemployment in Spain is 24 percent. Youth unemployment in Spain is 51 percent. 
Let us look at Europe. There is 11 percent across-the-board unemployment. Greece has 22 percent. France Italy Ireland Turkey and Poland to name just a few are all in double digits. Britain and the USA have 8.3 percent. Canada has 7.3 percent. So New Zealand is doing really well compared with the rest of the world and that is what we should focus on. 
Let me put some more facts on the table. This Government has created 60000 more jobs in the last 2 years—60000 more jobs—and we are going to create another 154000 over the next 4 years. A significant number of those will be in Christchurch with the rebuild of Christchurch. 
This is a really interesting fact I want to talk about: more people are employed as a percentage of the population on this side of the Tasman than in Australia. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Order! 
KATRINA SHANKS 
: Thank you Mr Speaker. There are just over 49000 people on the unemployment benefit which is 18000 fewer than 18 months ago. That is a significant change when you think where New Zealand has been what the financial crisis has looked like and where we are going now. We want to create more jobs in New Zealand. We want to do it through being competitive. We want to do it to ensure that our companies are productive and that our businesses can invest grow employ and pay higher wages in New Zealand. So that is what we are focusing on—our businesses—because unless we can create that growth in New Zealand we are not going to create more jobs. 
We have some fantastic companies in New Zealand that are growing going into new markets and doing it all on their own. This Government has provided a framework for them to be able to grow and develop and they are going out and doing it on their own. A perfect example is in the Hutt—I am sure the member Chris Hipkins has been to see it—and that is Fraser Engineering. It is an absolutely fantastic progressive company in New Zealand. It produces fire engines. Not only does it produce all the fire engines in New Zealand but it has now entered the Australian market and is producing fire engines in Australia as well. It is a very progressive company that is doing great work and it has been very innovative investing a lot of its money back into its research to ensure that it stays cutting edge. 
This Government is creating a lot of initiatives to ensure that we have got jobs. One of the big initiatives has been the 90-day trial period. This is allowing employers and employees to work together to ensure that businesses can employ more people because what we have had are businesses not being prepared to take a bit of risk. So with the 90-day trial period it has allowed businesses to take a bit of a risk to employ somebody they might not have employed or somebody whom they were unsure whether there was a position for or not and put them on a 90-day trial period to see whether it would work. It has been extremely successful in New Zealand. In fact the Department of Labour has done some research around this. Eighty percent of those people who went through the 90-day trial period have been employed. Employers said that they would not have hired to begin with—40 percent of employers said that they would not have hired to begin with—unless they had that 90-day trial period. This initiative has created 13000 more jobs in New Zealand. That is significant—13000 jobs from one policy. It is one policy that has created jobs in New Zealand which has been fantastic. 
We also know that to do that we have to support our businesses and give them the support they need to be able to grow. You would not be a National member of Parliament for Wellington—