Govt seeks ‘best use of people’

Press, 29 July 1987, Page 1

Govt seeks ‘best use of people’

By

LINDA MILLAR,

NZPA chief political reporter The Labour Government would implement a comprehensive labour market policy during the next three years, according to its employment policy released yesterday. The document says the policy was designed to make the best use of people, and to make sure they could achieve their full potential. It would integrate job-search assistance, skill training and mobility assistance, identify new employment opportunities, and help the development of new enterprises. In specific areas it would help job creation. The policy announcement was made shortly before the Prime Minister, Mr Lange, toured Access training schemes in the marginal Rangiora electorate. Access was designed for those who did not go. on to formal tertiary education or apprenticeships. Between 60,000 and 80,000 New Zealanders are scheduled to take part in Access and related polytechnic training this year. Labour was committed to providing income support for those out of work and genuinely seeking employment, but at the same time the Government was working towards a system aimed at avoiding abuse of the unemployment benefit. Mr Lange said that while there could be dole bludgers in New Zealand, there was an active policy to unearth them. He said he had promised 25,000 new jobs in a year in 1984, and, in spite of scepticism, that had been achieved in seven months. Present unemployment totals were less than when Labour had taken office, in spite of restructuring of the public sector and rationalisation of the meat industry. "Those things have been achieved -— not at the cost of countless human suffering. We

have contained it below the level at which our former Government operated unemployment or special work,” he said. Labour did not accept that the Government should invest heavily to prop up declining industries or fund make-work schemes such as project employment programmes. Mr Lange said traditional trade training had also failed to keep pace with the needs of a modern ' society and economy. The Government had worked to seek agreement by workers, unions and employers to reform the apprenticeship process. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, said Labour’s employment policy would do nothing to solve the growing tide of unemployment. He said New Zealand under Labour now had the highest level of registered unemployment since the Depression. “Labour is now offering to develop a policy over the next three years to respond to the crisis which Rogernomlcs has caused,” said Mr Bolger. i “Labour’s 1987 employment policy is committed to the same soul-destroying approach of paying tens of thousands of New Zealanders to do nothing.”

National’s alternative was to provide worth-while work in the community and generate jobs through its regional development policy, said Mr Bolger. The Minister of Employment, Mr Goff, released his costings of the National Party’s employment policy. He said that, on present unemployment levels, another $694 million would be needed for the policy to succeed. It would cost another $2150 million if National’s forecasts for unemployment were right. , r Mr Goff said that while National was now promoting a “no wqrk, no dole” scheme- Mr Bolger had rejected the idea three years; ago as not being possible to introduce. _