Red Alert

Archive for the ‘youth’ Category

A note to those who supported VSM

Posted by David Shearer on October 13th, 2011

Massey Unniversity has responded to the Voluntary Student Membership Act by increasing its fees next year by an amount about equivalent to that paid by students to their Student Associations.

Just to note:
- it seems like the fees are compulsory
- the government will have a big say on what the increase can be used for – not even the university
- it looks like students through their association may be able to negotiate with the university about what services are kept – but no guarantees
- it’s likely to be the model that will spread across NZ – I was in Waikato University yesterday and they are looking at something similar

So all those who backed VSM will still pay the same, but you won’t have any real say about how your money is spent – even less if you decide not to belong to the student association. Taxation without representation it’s called.

And now you don’t even get the choice of a referendum.
What was wrong with an opt-out clause and accountability around association spending as we suggested?

Well done. Everyone loses.

Filed under: Tertiary education, education, students, young labour, youth

25 Comments

Students will lose, but still pay

Posted by David Shearer on September 26th, 2011

ACT and National will push voluntary student association bill through parliament this week on the last Members Day. We can expect a good deal of student opposition around the country. Good for them.

Next year, students won’t pay any fees to student associations. That’s inevitable, would you pay your council rates if they were voluntary? Wherever student associations have become voluntary they effectively collapsed.

What happens next?

Well, the university, polytech or institution will step in, charge students a levy, and continue some of the services through subcontracting companies or students to do it for them. It’s already been gazetted (NZ Gazette No. 138). Institutions can charge students for: advocacy and legal advice, careers advice and guidance, counselling services, employment information, financial support and advice, health servieces, childcare facilities, sports and recreation facilities.

In other words, all the stuff that supports students and makes these institutions of learning vital, interesting places.

So, voluntary student association membership will result in … money taken off students compulsorily, leaving them with no power to determine what services are kept. Taxation without representation is one way it can be represented.

The National-Act spin that student associations are the last bastions of compulsory unionism is bollocks … it’s idealogy pure and simple.

We could’ve had a good, enduring Bill with an opt out clause and some rules around accountability of student association spending. I’d spoken a number of times with Heather Roy about some possibilities. She was willing to compromise when she her Bill looked in doubt but held the hard line when she thought she’d get it through.

Too bad, fortunately it won’t last long.

Filed under: Tertiary education, Uncategorized, education, students, youth

61 Comments

Upbeat about #ownourfuture

Posted by A Guest Poster on September 3rd, 2011

Jordan Carter is a Wellington-based candidate on the Labour list.

This week we announced two policies I really like: a sound position on digital copyright, and some real changes to the policies that affect young people on the way from school to work.

The youth employment announcement was the more important (I’ll leave you to wonder why it got no coverage at all in the Dominion Post or the Herald on Friday…), and is part of what we are funding through the tax policy package we announced in July. It will make a real difference for teenagers stuck without work/training or education.

I haven’t seen anyone arguing that the youth skills and employment stuff is a bad idea — praise is pretty universal, other than the odd angry Tory who has frothed that Labour is somehow stealing their policies. Why a governing party would think an opposition was stealing its policy when said government doesn’t have any policy (just rhetoric) is beyond me, but we’ll let that rest for now too.

These join earlier policy announcements on the cost of living (tax free zone and GST off fresh fruit and veg) and the land sales initiatives we announced last year, to start to give a flavour of where Labour is heading with policy in this year’s election:
•   focusing on the issues that will make a real difference to people in building their futures here
•   tackling really hard and big choices in the interests of New Zealand’s development
•   arguing that in tough economic times, we have to respond by investing in the things that will leave us ready to grow when times improve

They’re summed up with the theme that Phil Goff launched our tax policy with: Own Our Future.

That isn’t a slogan plucked from the air. It is a simple distillation about what many of us Kiwis want to see for the country: a place where we control our own destiny, and where the big picture of economic and social development is happening in our interests, not in the interests of landlords who live somewhere else and to whom we are all mere economic units.

That sense of ownership, of control, of self-determination, is critical to our sense of dignity and self-worth, actually, and it tugs deep at the heartstrings of most New Zealanders. People know that we’re on the edge a bit, and that carrying on down the track of not saving enough, of selling ourselves out to the highest bidder, isn’t the way to build a future here.

I can’t remember if I have quoted him before, but there’s a snippet from Allen Curnow (a Kiwi poet, for those who don’t know) from his 1943 sonnet “The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch” that sums this feeling up:

Not I, some child, born in a marvellous year
Will learn the trick of standing upright here.

Curnow was lamenting the Moa’s inability to adapt to the arrival of people on these islands of ours.

I’m not lamenting anything: I’m demanding something — that we make that dream of standing on our own two feet in the world something real, something tangible. That we have a government that believes in it, rather than one which believes it is impossible.

Tags: future
Filed under: #ownourfuture, jobs, youth

25 Comments

Let’s back jobs for young Kiwis

Posted by Chris Hipkins on September 2nd, 2011

Yesterday Labour launched our Youth Skills policy. Jacinda did an excellent post on the details just after it went public. If you live in Wellington and missed it in the DomPost this morning, look again. You’ll see all the salient details comprehensively covered in the news brief below and to the left of the quarter page article and photo espousing John Key’s babysitting and travel companion potential.

There is a certain symmetry to Labour launching a policy to get young Kiwis into work on the same day the National government signed off on a deal to buy a bunch of new electric trains for Auckland from overseas, rather than build them locally here in New Zealand. I think it’s great that Auckland are getting much needed investment in their public transport infrastructure, but why aren’t we cashing in the potential to create somewhere around 1,000 new jobs and add up to $250 million to our GDP?

The link between these two announcements actually runs a lot deeper than highlighting the contrast between Labour, who want to create local jobs, and National, who want to export them overseas. When I speak to a lot of the tradespeople in my electorate, I’m reminded just how many of them did their apprenticeships at the railway workshops, the post office, the car assembly plants, or the freezing works. With the exception of the railway workshops, that now employs a fraction of the staff it once did, all of those big employers are gone.

Those tradespeople are now sole traders or work largely in firms that employ fewer than 10 people. Taking on an apprentice is something they’re more than happy to do. They learned their trade on the job and they’re more than happy to give future generations the same chance. But it’s a huge commitment financially and a lot to ask of such small businesses. That’s why I know they’ll welcome Labour’s plan to convert the dole into apprenticeships subsidies.

A lot of people have remarked to me in the past how crazy it is we pay a young person to sit at home on the dole but we won’t provide some financial support to those willing to take them on and train them up. Well Labour is going to do something about that. Our Youth Skills policy is one that I’m very proud to campaign on. Our plan to get thousands of young Kiwis into work, education and training is in marked contrast to National’s plan to give a couple of hundred young beneficiaries a pre-pay purchase card.

So while baby-sitter John devotes his time to worrying about how young people spend their pocket money, Labour is focused on providing them with a meaningful vocation and hope for the future. Oh, what was that about nanny state again…?

Tags: apprenticeships, Hutt Valley, Trades Training, Unemployment, Youth Skills, Youth Unemployment
Filed under: Unemployment, jobs, workforce, youth

15 Comments

Getting all under 20s earning or learning

Posted by Jacinda Ardern on September 1st, 2011

At midday today we released our youth employment policy. There was a reason we chose to do it at a plumbing and gas outfit in the Hutt- our policy focuses heavily on apprenticeships. But that is by no means all it does.

You would have heard us pretty consistently challenging the government over youth unemployment on several fronts. First, the need to create sustainable jobs rather than throwing money at make work schemes, second we need more vocational training places (the government has cut $140mill out of this area) and third, the scale of the problem means we need a pretty comprehensive set of ideas to deal with it. That’s exactly what we announced today. Here’s the summary version:

- 1000 placements for at risk youth in the Gateway scheme, which puts young people into work place learning while they’re still at school
-Improving career services and vocational pathways, especially for young people interested in options outside of tertiary study
- Extending youth transition services to make sure that every school leaver is supported into further training, education and employment. This follows the recommendations of the New Zealand Institute and the Mayors Taskforce for Jobs
- Converting dole payments into a subsidy for employers to take on 9000 new apprentices
- 5000 new training places for 16 and 17 year olds, 1,000 of which are targeted at maori trades training, and 1,000 for pasifika young people, with a mentoring component attached (both groups are over represented in our youth unemployment statistics)
- 1,000 additional apprenticeships allocated to group apprenticeships, shared apprenticeships and public service cadets
- An additional 1,500 Conservation Corp places
- Staged apprenticeships in Christchurch, so that apprentices can get basic skills quickly and play a productive role in the rebuild without having to bring in workers from overseas

The whole package comes in at $251 million, but after factoring in the money that is saved through reprioritisation of current government spending, and the savings via the dole, the total cost comes in at $171million and will be funded by our already announced tax plan. Ultimately though, this is a package that has us investing a bit, to save a lot. The New Zealand institute has calculated that the cost of unemployed and disengaged youth to tax payers in $900million.

And finally, job creation. We already know that the demand for skilled trades people exists, but employers just can’t afford to train new people in the job- our dole subsidy scheme will help with that. More broadly though, we also know that our economic policy (supporting exporters, our R&D tax credit, and moving investment to the productive economy) will all play a role in creating sustainable jobs.

There is more to be said on employment beyond young people, but this is a critical area, and one we’re Labour is showing we’re willing to invest in order to save….in so many ways.

Filed under: Employers, youth

45 Comments

Another Key con: or pretending to do something when you really aren’t

Posted by A Guest Poster on August 28th, 2011

Lesley Soper is the Labour candidate for Invercargill

Read with fascination the Southland Times Report (Aug 15, p.2) on John Key’s great National Party Conference announcement of the start of welfare system overhaul. 16 & 17 year-olds first it seems. They won’t complain too much, and rednecks will think they deserve a bit of ‘nanny state’ overseeing. Food Stamps don’t equal opportunity or jobs BUT IT WILL LOOK AS IF WE ARE DOING SOMETHING, WHICH WILL HELP DISGUISE OUR UTTER FAILURE TO DO ANYTHING TO DEAL WITH THE WORSE NZ YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT SINCE THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

Food Stamps can also be the thin edge of the wedge, & extended to others when we ‘have a Mandate’.

Under this new Policy schools will have to tell authorities when 16 and 17 year-olds leave during the year, and the young people will be attached to a “responsible adult”.

Quotes from the PM included : “the first problem that has to be addressed is finding out who the disengaged young people are … we simply don’t know, because we lose track of them when they leave school. … that has to change … and for the first time we will be able to find out who they are, what their circumstances are, what problems they had …”.

But Wait! The photographic memory clicks in from my years as an MP. This has to be nonsense. Didn’t I make more than one visit to a great Youth Transition Service ‘Work’n it Out’ which operates a Call Centre and extended services from Invercargill [readers will know from my earlier blog on proposed IRD cuts in Invercargill that we run excellent ‘virtual’ operations down here]; and operates under an MSD Contract? Yes, I did, and it still exists. Been operating for more than 5 years. Reports performance and outcomes to MSD every month. You can look it up online at www.wio.co.nz. The Social Development Minister & PM could read the reports. They probably have, but perhaps have ‘forgotten’.

What does this service do? [and what has it been doing for more than 5 years?] Well, strangely enough it has been working with 50 Secondary Schools from Timaru South to track every school-leaver at any point through the year, from ages 16-20. There are also some self or family referrals, and referrals from other govt departments, but by & large this is a major project to track and assist school-leavers with the rest of their lives. And it has been working incredibly well!

We are not talking small numbers here. This is thousands of young people added to the database every year. They are systematically contacted by the callcentre; they are asked about their plans for further education, training or employment. They are offered support and assistance, often on a one-to-one customised support basis. They are tracked from that first call or contact on a regular basis till age 20. Few of them are non-contactable; very few reject the contact.

Report Data is comprehensive. We know who these young people are; where they have come from; where they have gone or are going; which industries they are working in; how many are in which other forms of education and training courses; how many return to school; how many head into apprenticeships, full-or-part-time work.

So if this is all already happening, on a large scale, covering quarter of the country geographically [& there are other Youth Transition Services too], and in areas where there are National MP’s [including English, Roy & Dean], and data exists; why the announcement of a ‘First Ever New Policy’; ‘Never Before Tried’ ; ‘Revolutionary First’ as a ‘Key Plank’ of the National Party Conference?

Could it be that some Political Spin was required to distract from the failure of the National Government to actually address Youth Unemployment and to create jobs? Could it be a ‘Key Con’ to pretend to be doing something to distract from actual cuts National has made to apprenticeships and skills training? Could it be a ‘Big Vision’ like ‘The Cycleway’ or the Budget ‘promise’ of 170,000 jobs - with absolutely no substance? Could it be sheer ignorance of what is already in place? Or could it be that no-one in Auckland pays any attention to successful initiatives in Invercargill unless they involve Shadbolt or snow? Take your pick.

Another ‘Key Con’ when what is really needed is a real economic plan that means young people get real jobs. Remember the statistic - when National came in there were roughly 200 under 24 year-olds who had been on UEB for more than a year. The number now?

Filed under: Unemployment, children, inequality, youth

93 Comments

Benefit Card- Priceless

Posted by Grant Robertson on August 27th, 2011

Short, to the point, worth a watch. “Some governments actually set out to reduce unemployment, for everything else, there’s Benefit Card”.

Tags: beneficiary bashing, jobs, youth
Filed under: humour, jobs, youth

55 Comments

Young people need jobs, not welfare reform

Posted by Jacinda Ardern on August 14th, 2011

This afternoon John Key delivered the closing address at the National Party conference. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high- but after calls from across the spectrum (including the business community) for Key to present the country with his plan for economic growth, I didn’t expect a speech as narrowly and as poorly focused as this.

First a little context. Currently youth unemployment for 15 to 19 year olds is the highest on record and we have one of the highest proportions of youth to adult unemployment in the OECD. None of this is new, in fact this is the Government’s third attempt at a youth unemployment package. But surely, when you have 58,000 young people not in employment, training or education, you start looking at a comprehensive education, transition, skills training and job creation package. Surely? Apparently not when there are a small group of young people on a benefit that can be targeted instead.

While John Key has finally acknowledged the youth transition issues we have been raising, this element has been lost amongst his much bigger announcement that the roughly 1600 young people on the independent youth benefit will face new restrictions on how their benefit is managed. Key put it like this:

“We are not going to simply hand over benefit money every fortnight. Instead, we will have a much more managed system of payments… We envisage that: some essential costs, like rent and power, will be paid directly on the young person’s behalf; money for basic living costs like food and groceries will be loaded onto a payment card that can only be used to buy certain types of goods and cannot be used to buy things like alcohol or cigarettes; and that a certain, limited amount will be available for the young person to spend at their own discretion……Most importantly, each of these young people will have to be in education, training or work-based learning.”

A couple of points need to be made in response. First, the threshold for this benefit is extremely high. You have to demonstrate a breakdown in your home environment, and you have to be in education or be actively seeking work or a place in training. Secondly, it’s already illegal to buy alcohol and cigarettes if you are on the independent youth benefit simply by virtue of your age. And finally, if the biggest issue is that these kids are vulnerable, and that they need to be in training, education or need help finding work- how does cracking down on how they spend their $167.83 per week achieve any of that?

The way I see it, this is the crux of the issue- young people want to work, but the jobs aren’t there. In fact when National came into Government, there were roughly 220 young people who had been trying to find work and had been on an unemployment for more than a year. Now that number is 8 times higher. If we want to make a real difference, we need to respond with a decent plan, not food stamps.

Filed under: jobs, workforce, youth

59 Comments

Mr Key and the Child Labour question

Posted by Darien Fenton on July 6th, 2011

On Sunday’s Q and A programme, a prickly Indian Minister cut short a question from Guyon Espiner about child labour in India, saying “it was insulting to India.”

When asked about it, John Key responded by saying that “an FTA was not the forum to address child labour issues. That must be done through the International Labour Organisation and New Zealand had raised the issues there”

No they haven’t. At least not since National has been in government. And Mr Key clearly hasn’t looked that closely at New Zealand’s own question of child labour. While we can’t compare our child labour issues with developing countries, we do have children at work, many exploited and who have few rights.

The classic are the leaflet deliverers. Some are paid around 25 cents an hour. They are employed as independent contractors, so they have no right to join a union, have to pay their own ACC and tax, don’t get sick leave and holiday pay.

Labour helpfully has a bill that Mr Key could adopt, if he really cares about child labour. It’s called the Employment Relations (Protection of Young Workers) Amendment Bill. The Bill provides that all workers aged 15 and under must be employed on employment agreements under the Employment Relations Act 2000 (and its amendments) and have all rights, including the right to join a union, bargain collectively and the rights to personal grievance currently provided to employees under the Act. No such worker can be employed as an independent or dependent contractor.

It’s not such an unusual thing to do. Homeworkers, under New Zealand law are considered employees under the Employment Relations Act, regardless of whether they are engaged, employed or contracted. This is because they are considered (and have been proven to be) vulnerable to exploitation if they are employed as contractors.

So, John Key he could do something about New Zealand’s child workers if he really cared.

Or will he wait until that’s raised at the ILO as well?

Tags: children, John Key
Filed under: Workers, children, workers rights, youth

16 Comments

How to win young workers and influence them

Posted by Darien Fenton on June 27th, 2011

The ACT Party had costly advertisements in the weekend newspapers telling young workers that ACT supports them so much that they will cut their wages.

“ACTs solution (to youth unemployment) is simple, cost-effective and unobstrusive. Allow youth rates again. That would provide young people many more opportunities to get their foothold on the job ladder.”

If there are all these jobs out there for young people on low wages, who’s doing them at the moment? Guess who – workers getting higher pay.

So ACT’s answer to youth unemployment is to take jobs from older workers and give them to young workers on lousy pay – just to do them a favour?

It’s a bit like Paula Bennett telling the House that a young worker of 52 years of age is delighted to have a job as a “checkout chick” when she was asked about a bottom line for youth pay.

Spare me.

Tags: Youth Unemployment
Filed under: Workers, minimum wage, workers rights, youth

34 Comments

2 min 38 secs on the national party leader’s plan – have a look

Posted by Trevor Mallard on June 17th, 2011

Tags: the leader of the national party
Filed under: Cost of Living, Loan Sharks, Pay Equity, Unemployment, coalition management, community, debt, economy, family, inequality, value of work, women, work life balance, workers rights, youth

11 Comments

Youfs or serfs?

Posted by Darien Fenton on June 17th, 2011

There’s been outrage (and rightly so) today at the TV3 piece last night saying that National was planning a youth rate for 15 – 24 year olds.

In just hours, a Facebook page dedicated to fighting the move has gained more than 1,000 supporters.

It’s not that we haven’t had youth rates before. National had youth rates for all workers under 20 at 60% of the adult minimum wage until Labour became government in 1999. Did they create jobs? No.

When Labour became Government in 1999, one of their first moves was to abolish youth rates for 18 and 19 year olds and increase the 16 and 17 year old rate to 80% of the adult minimum wage.

Later on, Sue Bradford’s youth minimum wage bill, which effectively abolished the youth minimum wage for 16 and 17 year olds was passed into law with Labour’s voting power behind it.

But we’ve never had “youth” rates (that I am aware of) for workers over 20. I suspect that the Minister made a blunder in the TV3 piece last night by saying that youth were “15 – 24 year olds”

15 – 24 is a measure used by the UN, the World Bank and several countries to describe “Youth” as a group eligible for special treatment under the law and in society. In New Zealand, the 15 – 24 year old age group is used to measure “youth” unemployment. It is also used in things like road accident statistics and a range of other measures. But this doesn’t mean this age group are eligible for discrimination in the way that youth rates discriminate.

Paying someone less because of their age, gender, race or sexuality is discrimination under NZ law. We wouldn’t tolerate older workers being paid less, so why is it different for younger workers?

I suspect that the government is really looking at the 16 – 19 year old group for a return to minimum youth wages. It’s a way to exploit the competitive advantage of a 30% wage differential with Australia that Bill English says is a good thing.

But this would not only be one step backwards to 16 and 17 year old youth rates, but a giant step backwards to last Century when the National Government had 18 and 19 year olds on 60% of the adult minimum wage.

Cutting wages never creates jobs. We’ve gone there before and now look what a mess we are in with low wages, an increasing skills gap and some of the longest working hours in the OECD.

I despair.

Tags: Youth Rates
Filed under: minimum wage, youth

29 Comments

Young Labour at Labour Congress 2011

Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 23rd, 2011

Filed under: Labour Party, conference, youth

4 Comments

Futile (and desperate?)

Posted by Darien Fenton on May 9th, 2011

As the Parliamentary Term draws to its close, the chances of MPs getting a new members’ bill from the ballot are almost zero.

Tau got a bit of free publicity over Easter by saying he would be putting forward a members’ bill to allow shop trading on Easter Friday. Desperate in Te Atatu? Sounds like it.

Now Roger Douglas has joined the ACT, with this press release today saying he’s going to resubmit his members’ bill to strip young workers of minimum wages. His members’ bill on the same topic was roundly defeated last year. Roger’s on his way out, thank goodness, but Don Brash will gladly pick up the mantle.

Problem for Tau and Roger is that there ain’t going to be any more ballots this term of parliament. Unless, that is, all MPs with members bills up for first readings withdraw them and I can’t see that happening.

Only six Members’ bills awaiting first reading can be on the Order Paper on each Members’ Day. We have six already, but also in front of those bills are :

Local and private orders of the day : These take precedence, and there are currently two at committee stages, with third readings to come. There’s likely to be more.
Two controversial bills awaiting committee stages and third reading : Voluntary Student Membership Bill (Heather Roy) and Secret Ballots for strike action (Tau Henare).
After that, there comes two second readings of NACt MP bills, followed by committee stages, and if they get to it, third readings.

Then, and only then can we begin on the first readings of members’ bills that are already on the Order Paper.

Given that Members’ Days are only held every second sitting week, and the government’s predilection for using Members’ Days for urgency, I can confidently predict there will be absolutely no more ballots for members’ bills this term, including those of Tau Henare and Roger Douglas.

Thank goodness for that.

Tags: Members' Day
Filed under: Holidays, Members' Day, members' bills, minimum wage, workers rights, youth

50 Comments

Annette = substance, Bennett = useless spin, play of the day

Posted by Trevor Mallard on May 6th, 2011

And from what I read she is struggling in Waitakere too.

For those without broadband, the Hansard is below: (more…)

Tags: annette king, Paula Bennett
Filed under: Loan Sharks, Pacific issues, Play of the Day, Victims' rights, Waitakere, disabilities, parliament, poverty, social development, unpaid work, women, youth

24 Comments

Tell the Government: Don’t Cut Our Future!

Posted by Trevor Mallard on April 27th, 2011

Flyer

Create your own ‘nice to have’ poster

Posted by Trevor Mallard on April 7th, 2011

“This is not a time we can afford to indulge in “nice-to-haves”, even though sections of the population feel the loss of those services.” Bill English, 29 March 2011

This quote is from a speech that Bill English gave to public service professionals.

Show Bill and John what would be “nice to have” by going to here to create your own poster, email and share it with friends and family.

Here’s mine:

Filed under: MMP, Social media, Working for Families, economy, education, environment, family, national, perks, police, science, social development, work life balance, workforce, youth

27 Comments

The H.Y.P.E Movement

Posted by Carmel Sepuloni on February 15th, 2011

H.Y.P.E stands for, Helping Youth Pursue Emancipation. I learnt about this programme via facebook about a year ago and was intrigued by what I saw. The movement began in the U.S. by a group of Tongan young people who were concerned about high school dropout rates, incarceration rates, and death rates among young Pacific people in their local community. They wanted to be engaged in bringing about a positive change and they wanted to be involved in a grassroots movement that would bring all youth together.

The movement has now begun in NZ. Last night I had the privilege of attending the H.Y.P.E Fundraising Ball in Auckland. There was a room filled with inspirational people – young talented sports people, musicians, academics, artists and parents who have done and continue to do – a fantastic job of supporting their children to reach their potential.

The movement is not easily packaged as it’s deliberately designed in a way that young people (12 – 25 year olds) have the room to interpret and define the programme as they go. Currently there are 300 H.Y.P.E projects happening across the globe. The projects are all in response to social issues that directly impact on young peoples lives/ well being. Once the young person/ people, identify the issue – they then go on to develop ways of addressing/ responding to/ resolving, that particular issue.

It’s exciting and I’m looking forward to watching how it develops in NZ!

Tags: H.Y.P.E
Filed under: Pacific issues, youth

2 Comments

Young Labour on the road

Posted by Grant Robertson on January 20th, 2011

A group of Young Labour activitists are on the road on their Clarion Tour. A van load are travelling from Auckland down south for 12 days, meeting with other Labour activists on the way taking part in a load of community and political activities. The Clarion Tour started in 2004, with, if memory serves me right a young Jacinda Ardern in charge.

The Waikato Times caught up with this year’s group yesterday. As Eric says in the article the idea is to get involved in grassroots community projects. There has been some awesome stuff so far including at a kindergarten, riding for the disabled and a familiy centre.

Its great to see this kind of grassroots work, just as we have seen from the Te Tai Tonga Poneke Labour Branch’a random acts of labourness. It gives an old fella a warm glow.

You can keep up with progress of the Clarion Tour at their blog

Tags: Clarion Tour, community action, young labour
Filed under: Labour Party, youth

8 Comments

Red Alert

Red Alert

Archive for the ‘youth’ Category

A note to those who supported VSM

Students will lose, but still pay

Upbeat about #ownourfuture

Let’s back jobs for young Kiwis

Getting all under 20s earning or learning

Another Key con: or pretending to do something when you really aren’t

Benefit Card- Priceless

Young people need jobs, not welfare reform

Mr Key and the Child Labour question

How to win young workers and influence them

2 min 38 secs on the national party leader’s plan – have a look

Youfs or serfs?

Young Labour at Labour Congress 2011

Futile (and desperate?)

The H.Y.P.E Movement

Young Labour on the road

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