National M.P. wants no under-18 dole

Press, 2 June 1986, Page 2

National M.P. wants no under-18 dole

PA Palmerston North The National member of Parliament for Selwyn, Miss Ruth Richardson, wants the dole for those under 18 abolished and replaced with a flexible job-training system. This was one of several measures she promoted in a paper on youth initiatives at the Young Nationals’ annual conference in Palmerston North. She told delegates: “It is our duty to create policies that will see individuals striving for self-suffi-ciency, rather than preside over a series of policies, as in the past, that will inevitably steer individuals towards dependency.” Miss Richardson pinpointed barriers in education, particularly in trade training, and in the social welfare system. “It is sheer madness, as well as reprehensible, to throw conscience money at young people in an unemployment benefit,

and say that this satisfies our responsibility to them,” she said. “We should abolish the unemployment benefit and replace it with a flexible training regime that includes institution and work-based training for all those under 18.”

Attacking the "rigidity” of the apprenticeship system and trade training, she pleaded to trade unions and employers: “For goodness’ sake, recognise that you must serve the interests of young people who are being deprived of opportunities by the system.”

She said education was the key to young people realising their aspirations.

To ensure the process started as early as possible, she also advocated cancelling benefits to any person in control of a child that was not involved in an early child-hood-education programme by the age of three.

If future generations were to find the capacity for self-reliance, initiative and endeavour, she said, “the snares of the State and its increasing welfare dependence must be unshackled.”

Miss Richardson called the present system “useless expenditure for no dividend at all.”

As part of the overhaul, she suggested cleaning up legislation to make the age of adulthood 18, which should be applied to all relevant laws, including licensing. She said National worked hard to attack monopolies where it saw them.

“It is even more important to attack the State monopoly in education,” she said.

It was imperative that consumers of education had a choice, and that choice should be funded by the State, as was the case with Catholic schools, she said.