Douglas Roger: Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Douglas Roger: Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:662;Page:10372] 
Hon Sir ROGER DOUGLAS (ACT) 
: 
 It was an interesting debate: not one solution to the unemployment rate amongst young people was put up by any speaker. The fact is that National has already conceded the principles of my Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill. It did that when it said that the abolition of the youth minimum wage has led to unemployment. That is why the National Government has implemented the Job Ops scheme giving businesses $5000 to hire someone between the ages of 15 and 24. It has done that because it knows full well that the businesses could not afford to hire those young people without that subsidy. Instead of facing the truth and reversing this silly policy the Government’s solution is to spend more taxpayer dollars trying to restore to youth the ability to get a job that was taken away by the Government in the first place. 
The whole thing is absolutely ridiculous. Whether or not we want to deny it—and everyone in this House was denying it tonight—there is one economic reality that we cannot overcome and it is that wages will always reflect the productivity of the worker. Regrettably thousands of young people do not have a productive value of $510 a week and to those young people who do not have a productive value of $510 a week we have said that we will put them on the scrap heap. We have said we will throw them on the scrap heap. In my area a decile 6 school had a test for young people coming into that school. One of the questions asked if we have 36 apples and we eat 27 how many we have left. Guess how many people got it wrong. It was 23 percent. One in four got it wrong. The school system has failed these young people and what this House is doing is making damned sure that the labour market will fail them as well. 
What we are doing—the National Party the Labour Party the Green Party and the Maori Party—is saying to young Maori people of 16 years of age that they cannot accept the job. Even if they are offered one at $400 they cannot actually take it. We say that by law they cannot take that job. They cannot go into that job and develop the skills they did not get at school. They cannot get that work experience. They cannot get their foot on the ladder. We fail them in the education system and we are failing them in the labour market. We are saying to those young people that we will not help them. They could get $400 in the workforce and guess what we say to them? We say they cannot have $400 they cannot earn $400. They have to go on the dole and we will give them $160. We would prefer them to be $240 worse off than they could otherwise be and somehow we are claiming we care for these young people. Do not talk rubbish. We should be ashamed of ourselves and frankly that is why New Zealand is in the cart. It is because we in this House do not have the courage to do what is right. We do what we think is best politically and that disgusts me. 
A party vote was called for on the question that the Minimum Wage (Mitigation of Youth Unemployment) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.