McNair Craig: Budget Debate 
McNair Craig: Budget Debate 
[Volume:618;Page:13611] 
CRAIG McNAIR (NZ First) 
: 
 Tonight I am very proud to stand and speak on behalf of the New Zealand First team in this Budget debate. There is something I want to focus on specifically tonight—that is a group in our society who will probably be here a lot longer than most of us in this Chamber—some longer than others. I am sure that most members by now will know who I am talking about—that is the group in our society who are our young people. The ministry has been called the Ministry of Youth Development. In a way I am quite glad that it has been named the Ministry of Youth Development because in many ways youth development can symbolise so many things. Youth development in my mind is the ability to provide assistance encouragement financial assistance mentorship and leadership in a lot of areas to our young people who indeed truly are the future of our nation. That is one reason why I am very passionate about speaking on this topic tonight and there are a few issues that I really want to focus on. 
Just before I do that I want to focus on another topic within the Budget but it is something I am very disappointed in. That is the inability to see anything about a universal student allowance for our students of this nation a lot of them being young people in that category. We in New Zealand First say that if we really want to encourage the young people of our nation and ensure we invest in them for the future we should provide an education system that is affordable. One way we can do that is by providing a universal student allowance. That does not mean to say that there is not a degree of private good for every student to be able to pay some of their fees and so on but we say that a universal student allowance should have been part of this Budget and it is not. 
One small step in the right direction I would say is that the parental income qualification levels have been increased from their 1992 levels and that is better than nothing. That is not really giving anything; it is just raising the levels back to what they really should have been anyway. We say that that is not good enough. It is only a very very minute step in the right direction and we need to move towards a universal student allowance for the students of this nation of which young people make a large number. 
But getting on to the subject of the youth development appropriations I quickly want to touch on a few things. There are a couple of things I want to congratulate the Government on and a few things on which I want to encourage it to do better next time. One of the things I want to congratulate the Government on is its increased spending on the youth suicide prevention information service. That is something I spoke about very passionately last year considering the very little the Government was spending on it—$460000 last year. I am glad that it has heeded my call and the call of others as well to increase that very very important service for which we all know there is an incredible need in our society today. 
I want to ask the Minister about one thing and I am very interested in the fact that the amount of money spent just on policy advice in this appropriation for Youth Development is $3.8 million—23 percent of the actual vote is to be spent on advice. I say that that seems like too much. If members looks at the “policy advice” they will see that the only explanation given is—there is a little bit more after this but pretty much this is it in a nutshell—“Purchase of policy advice on young people to support their contribution to a healthy and productive society and facilitate them reaching their full potential.” We say that there has to be some real answers to this question of how much money is actually being spent on that particular area.