- Who is your employment spokesperson?
Wyatt Creech- What are your employment policies?
Delivering gains in income, living standards and quality of life to all New Zealanders remains a key goal of government economic policy. At the heart of achieving this is jobs. The economy has 209,000 more jobs now than there were four years ago. Now we must assist those people still out of work. The Government's employment strategy for these people revolves around three inter-related principles; opportunities, incentives and responsibilities. We offer unemployed New Zealanders a lot of assistance to improve their employment prospects. In return we expect individuals to take responsibility for themselves in taking up the opportunities on offer. The immediate policy focus is on those groups over represented in the unemployment figures, like Maori and Pacific Islands people. Increasing employment also remains a key goal of government economic policy.- What employment initiatives will your government take?
Unemployment has fallen from 11.2 percent in 1993 to 6.2 percent in 1996. Four out of every five new jobs created last year were full-time. Long-term unemployment has fallen by a third in a year. Maori employment is increasing faster and the unemployment rate is falling faster than that for NZ Europeans.We will continue to consolidate and build on these gains, by providing support where it is most needed for disadvantaged job seekers, ensuring income support encourages rather than impedes opportunities for work, improving education and training opportunities, and by providing more responsive co-ordination of available services.
- How will you encourage local government to be active in solving unemployment?
Ensuring every local community is making the best use of all employment assistance measures available is one of the key focuses of a new initiative announced as part of the Focus on Employment strategy last year, and currently being spearheaded by the Department of Labour.The Local Employment Co-ordination initiative recognises local diversity and the value of local people finding local solutions to unemployment. It is about ensuring that those people who know the most about employment issues within a community, including government agencies, local authorities and community groups, work together.
- How will you encourage community groups working in this field?
Community groups are being encouraged to become an integral part of local employment co-ordination initiatives throughout the country.The Government has announced a shift in focus of the Department of Labour's Community Employment Group supporting employment initiatives for those groups most affected by long-term unemployment. These groups are Maori and Pacific Island people, disadvantaged rural and urban communities and women.
- Will you make any changes or additions to NZES programmes?
A number of enhancements and additions were made to the programmes and services offered by the New Zealand Employment Service and Community Employment Group as part of the Government's focus on Employment strategy announced last year. Broadly, these changes include $191 million injected over the next three years into programmes to address individual employment needs (including the expansion of the Youth Action and Job Action programmes), $18.3 million allocated to address local employment needs, $19 million for a Maori employment strategy, and $6.5 million into Pacific Island employment initiatives.- Will you make any changes or additions to ETSA programmes?
There are no plans to change any current ETSA programmes. All ETSA programmes are regularly monitored to ensure they meet the needs of trainees. Equity issues will be kept under particularly close review. A recent change in this regard has seen voluntary workers included in the Industry Training fund coverage.- Will you make any changes or additions to CEG programmes?
The Community Employment Group is progressing away from funding ongoing activities that it has traditionally been associated with, in order to redirect its efforts towards assisting those groups most disadvantaged in our communities. These groups are Maori and Pacific Islands people, disadvantaged rural and urban communities and women.- What are your policies and initiatives on subsidised work programmes?
Government is committed to funding subsidised employment programmes where those programmes clearly provide job seekers with opportunities to learn new, and update current work skills, and where subsidised employment projects will lead to sustainable paid employment for those job seekers. As part of the Focus on Employment strategy, new government programmes have been developed and implemented to assist job seekers who have been out of work for longer than four years into work with private sector employers (Job Connection) and a variant of the Job Plus programme has been initiated to allow Maori communities to use Job Plus subsidies for temporary work related to the development of Maori-owned assets.- What are your policies and initiatives on education and training for the unemployed?
The Focus on Employment strategy sees the development and implementation of a number of initiatives to ensure that, with NZ's ever-changing labour market environment, people can continue to learn new skills throughout their working life. Improvements have been introduced in the areas of early childhood education, assistance for schools to become more responsive to the individual needs of their students, development of the NZ Curriculum Framework, the National Qualifications Framework and the Industry Training Strategy and enhancements in the delivery of careers information and guidance.- What are you planning to do about welfare benefits?
National thinks the present unemployment benefits and DPB are adequate for a modest standard of living. National's policies will improve the position of those under pressure in the community by increasing family assistance, reducing unemployment and encouraging people into work and training.
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