One of the favoured parliamentary question approaches of recent times has been for a government backbencher to ask ” Has the Minister seen any reports of alternative approaches to dealing with the economic crisis” (or whatever issue). This is followed by (often irrelevant and meaningless) comparisons to something a former Labour Minister said 20 years ago.
Well, for the benefit of the Ministers of Finance and Education, here is an alternative approach for dealing with the effects of the recession. The Australian Government is providing training places at TAFEs (polytechnics) for those who lose their jobs. This is exactly what could have been part of the nine-day fortnight, or indeed a stand-alone policy. It recognises that if you are serious about improving productivity, training and skill development are the key.
I am particularly taken with Kevin Rudd’s quote
The government cannot stop the global recession from bearing down on communities across Australia but it can reduce the impact by taking local action to support training and jobs.
John Key seems to understand the first half of that quote, but is a lot less focused on the second half, and NZ is the poorer for that.
It recognises that if you are serious about improving productivity, training and skill development are the key.
Truly breathtaking hypocrisy from the tax and welfare party.
Does the Labour Politburo really believe that the electorate will forget nine long years of crippling taxation to pay the welfare bills? Where was “productivity,” “training” and “skills development” when Labour were in office?
I was in Australia last week and was struck by the differing Government attitudes to the recession. Instead of the NZ government’s use of the recession as an excuse to cut back on programmes (eg adult education)and for not investing in any new initiatives, the Australian govt is using the recession as a reason TO invest in new initiatives. They also seem to have a much more confident attitude that they will ride out the recession with good planning and investing in things like training, whereas the NZ Govt is acting like a possum caught in the headlights.
Bang on Hilary! Not even so much as ‘new’ initiatives as hanging on to the ones that were working for communities, look at the initiatives in communities that were working for the bare 3% of the communities who were jobless pre-2009 and now, of all times, crank those up – don’t pull them apart. – Funding these initiatives was not what caused the deficits we live with today – they were enabling resilience in communities to protect against these times. There were some inefficiencies in Com Ed – this was recognised in 2005, and years of work since then in needs analysis, outcomes based research and moving toward optimising Com Ed was progressing and showing the outcomes we planned for – before the Government changed and rhetoric reigned.
And Simon, Off you go and read the Tertiary Education Strategy 2009-2012 – its all there in black and white. The sector is on that waka – we helped to shape it, through engagement with policy, planning, collaboration, and being the first to put our hands up and state – IT COULD BE BETTER! We know times are tough – Government or not, we know the resource is limited and we are endeavouring to work with (what we have) to prioritise, tighten up and ensure that our learners, our communities are still able to access the learning opportunities that will ensure optimum skill levels as we climb out of the hole and employment rises again – and it will!
It’s about meeting Community Learning Needs through Education – not Welfare. You seem to confuse the two things – put funding into one and you reduce the other, strip the education budget in these economic times and you find the welfare bill seems to rise – you’ll work it out in another year.
While you’re at it Simon – have a look at the unemployment figures and the subsequent welfare bill from 2002-08 and compare that to today’s and the projection for the next (what is it? 15 years – your MinFin is promising) – then come back and tell us all about ‘breathtaking hypocrisy’and then lets chat about FALSE ECONOMY!
This is seriously THE big issue that I think Labour should be jumping on here. Our government is basically ignoring the recession in its policymaking, or actually using the recession as an excuse to implement cutbacks that it would have absolutely done anyway.
Meanwhile in Australia their government is actually responding to the economic situation and actually doing something about it. I suppose time will tell which approach has worked better. However, certainly if we start to see Australia coming of the recession and their unemployment falling but things don’t get better in NZ there will be a very receptive audience to a “right National are fiddling while Rome burns, THIS is how we’d bring the country out of the recession!”
I agree with what others have said above. ‘There Is No Alternative’ is no longer operative.
Has the minister any reports on what Mr Rudd promised to do in 2005, and yet has failed to deliver or even consider?
No?
Well… there’s a whole song about it now… a song for Mr Rudd:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg5l9J4Qj1k
Would the minister like to tell the world when Mt Rudd is going to back up his statement? or is he waiting for her to die, so he can jump off the hook?
That singer is American and the song gets airplay there (but is supressed on Australia, which is another appalling story), so it appears that the world IS watching.
Keep your word Mr Rudd.
Hilary… I was not aware that Australia was in a recession. Apart from which, they have resources that we do not have. Little things like mountains of minerals. That they can sell. We have cows. And water, don’t forget. But when the minerals have gone we will still have the cows and the water. Really, we can’t compare the two countries. Do you really think that tax and spend is a good policy long term? Oh, of course you do. That is how Labour would do it.
johnbt – Australia is affected by the Global Economic Situation too.
NZ has resources too – they are called people. Invest in people and people will get us out of this.
Nicola,
Create a whole post (on Grassroots) – your issue is important – but so is this one!
Go Hilary! It’s all relative johnbt! (What an idiot! fancy thinking that Australia isn’t in a recession)- get busy looking around at our stats and demogs, we’re in a marginally more comfortable position than most others – because we have had good management – sustainable good management – for nine years!
It’s sliding down now though – like a rocket on a rail! No investment in the people or the infrastructures you understand!
Grant’s right to identify and contrast the approach followed in Australia with that of NZs. There’s a range of initiatives being implemented, the funding for retrenched workers is only one part – the significant additional funding in the Productivity Places Program is another and most states have implemented their own arrangements (NSW for instance has given gaurantees to apprentices whose work is affected by the crisis). The federal Treasury expects the economy to recover in 2010/11 and given that prior to the crisis there were significant and persistent skill shortages in most states, increasing the training effort now is essential.
Chez, sorry to rain on your parade, but, I am sure that Australia is not technically in a recession. We are now in our 7th quarter of recession. That will ,no doubt, be the fault of National.
If that good management that you mentioned was so good how come we ended up facing 10 years of deficits as at the end of last year? After the best economic conditions we have ever had. Remember the PREFU? Remember the $4.5 billion of extra spending in Cullen’s last budget? And how he smirked that the cupboard was bare? Don’t mention the train set. Let’s blame National.
It is crazy to compare NZ and Oz because of so many differences in economies and the asset bases. Let us just be grateful for what we have. (Including competent economic managers after so many wasted years). Smiley face.
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