Ardern Jacinda: General Debate 
Ardern Jacinda: General Debate 
[Volume:655;Page:4839] 
JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 It is telling that Government members at a time like this when we see 1100 Kiwis lining up in the dole queue seem to have spent their entire week googling. After they looked for ideas on saving jobs on Google probably they then in desperation typed in “Phil Goff 1980s” and hit “try my luck” and they have been working on the outcome of that trawl ever since. 
I think that this issue is a lot more important than a couple of pithy quotes that the National research unit has managed to draw up. We are talking about 1100 Kiwis per week joining the dole queue. We are talking about 32000 15 to 19-year-olds being unemployed. That is our future generation and it represents 10 percent of that entire age cohort. We are talking about 12 percent of 20 to 24-year-olds being unemployed which is a 5 percent increase on the last quarter. Those numbers are big; they are relevant. They are the reason this Government needs to act and it needs to act now. 
We have given the Government time to respond. We have put these questions to it in a constructive manner in question time. What was the response? One response was for the Prime Minister to wave around his latest popularity graphs as if that somehow would console the hundreds of people who were facing redundancy or joining the dole queue. I say to the Prime Minister that if he would not do that to one individual person who has lost his or her job why would he do it to the thousands who have lost their jobs? 
The second reason put forward by the Government in response to the massive job losses we have seen is to claim that it is a recession and that the response in a recession is to tough it out. The recession may be a problem. Indeed we acknowledge that it is but it is a problem that requires an answer. A recession in itself is not an answer. It is merely the cause and the call to act. It is not an excuse; it is a reason. The Government will be measured on this and so far it would be marked poorly. 
I want to delve a little further into the question of youth unemployment. It is a question that is dear to my heart and it is something I have grave concerns over. I have already said that 32000 youth are not in work education or training. If we take out of that group those who are supported by the Government in some form whether it be Government support as some form of benefit for those who are eligible or the independent living allowance we are left with 15000 15 to 19-year-olds who not in work not in training and not supported by the Government. We cannot account for these 15000 young people. We have no idea how they are even supporting themselves let alone what they are doing with their time. In a sense they are an abandoned generation. Therefore because it is such a young age group—15 to 19-year-olds—one could assume that they have left school with no plan and no support. 
That then begs the question: what can we do? The Opposition is arguing as we are that in a time of recession we must act not simply wait it out. Well what can we do? We can certainly tell members based on the Budget what they should not do. In fact in many ways the Budget was a blueprint for what not to do. When we have 32000 young unemployed people we do not cut $3.3 million out of careers advice and training for young people as they transition out of school into work. If we do that the result will be that we will increase from 15000 the number of totally unsupported young people who are not in work or in education or in anything. I say to the Government that it cannot cut $98 million in scholarships for low-income students who require support if they are to further their education. The Government should not have cut adult and community education. Neither should it have cut industry training. Allowing 2000 apprentices to lose their placement without any form of ongoing support or back-up industry training which has happened as a result of real cuts would also be on our list of things not to do in a recession. 
In fact the one thing I would say is that we could perhaps assume that there is only one thing worse than a recession. The one thing worse than a recession is not having a plan for a recession. It is probably the only thing that is worse yet it is exactly what we have seen from this Government. It does not have an ounce of a plan to respond to the recession and high unemployment.