‘Strong push’ for jobs to relieve pressure on state

Youth MPs got social with submitters at a social services select committee meeting during day one of Youth Parliament yesterday.

The committee addressed how public expectations for social services could be balanced against likely rising costs.

Ros Rice was a submitter from the New Zealand Council of Social Services. She had a problem with the assumption that there will be “rising costs” and said that the government is “doing a lot of work about getting people into work”.

“There is a very strong policy push to get beneficiaries into work, there’s a very strong push to create new jobs.

“If all that happens and people do get these jobs then pressure on the state is actually going to be less, not necessarily more.”

Rice proposed that costs should only rise through upskilling New Zealand’s people, particularly beneficiaries.

“There needs to be investment in people so they can get qualifications, learn to step up and step out and go and get those jobs.”

She added that there are a lot of people who are vulnerable and living in poverty, including some middle class who “dropped down into poverty” because of the recession.

“It’s not because they want to be lazy, it’s not because they’re drug ridden and all these myths we that we hear where minority behaviours are being put onto majorities, it’s because of the situation in the world market,” she said.

Youth MP Jess Palairet asked Rice for her thoughts on the youth pay rate, an initiative to pay those between 16 and 19 years old at $11 an hour.

Rice said that she realised how a lower hourly wage for youth could create new jobs but disagreed with it, saying that youth still faced the same expenses as anyone else.

This afternoon the select committee will present a considerations report from the meeting to the House.

Youth Parliament is a two-day event that happens every three years as an opportunity for 121 nationally selected youth MPs to learn about New Zealand’s democracy system.