Employment to get $41M Budget boost

Press, 22 July 1988, Page 4

Employment to get $41M Budget boost

By

PETER LUKE,

politicall reporter

A $4l million employment package has taken the lion’s share of the money made available in this year’s Budget for new policy developments.

The Minister of Employment, Mr Goff, yesterday unveiled the package, emphasising that funding for new policies would be strictly limited in the next Budget. Employment-related initiatives had been the main beneficiaries of the policy round, taking $4l million of the $5B million available for new policies. Full-year funding for the package next year

would cost $59 million in today’s dollar terms, said Mr Goff. But the Opposition spokesman on employment, Mr Winston Peters,

said the package lacked substance and was a pitiful response to rising unemployment. The package will boost the labour-market activities of the Labour Department. But while Mr Goff reaffirmed his reluctance for “make-work” schemes, the package does include provision for “work experience” pilot projects. These will share a $3 million allocation with the

Conservation Corps, but Mr Goff emphasised that if the pilot “work experience” schemes did not succeed, he would have nb compunction in axing them. These pilot projects would be run in conjunction with local authorities, who would pick up the costs of supervision and other overheads, such as equipment. Previous schemes, in which employing authorities had no financial commitment, encouraged

people to be put on jobs of

no marginal value, said Mr Goff. The Government would meet the salary component, paying award rates, up to the rate of the unemployment benefit. Mr Goff said this would ensure those employed had enough time to job search. Announcing the package, Mr Goff emphasised that macro-economic policies, to reduce inflation

and interest rates, were the ultimate answer to unemployment. He predicted significant unemployment increases this year, and said that jobless

numbers might not substantially improve before 1990. Registered unemployment for May was about 106,000, but higher figures for June are expected to be announced on Sunday. Under the package, an additional 1000 student places will be created at polytechnics, aimed at middle or upper skill levels. To help close the skills gap, about $lO million would go to employmentrich courses. A further $2.4 million would be spent on ’Link courses, trebling the number of secondary pupils attending short polytechnic courses. The Adult Reading and Learning Assistance Federation will receive about $300,000 in the package. Labour market policies would get about $2O million in the package. This would include: ® Additional funding of $4 million to enhance measures to reduce fric-

tional unemployment — the time unemployed people spent between jobs. ® Another $4 million to help job seekers in depressed labour markets, including further job mobility grants, greater funding for the Community Employment Investigation Scheme, and encouragement for self-help schemes on small business management.

© The Job Opportunities Scheme will receive an extra $l3 million, including $4 million from compensatory savings within the department.

© About $3 million will be spent on pilot work experience and Conservation Corps schemes. The first pilot Conservation Corps schemes are expected to be working by the end of the year. The Government will also provide an extra $2O million, over the next three years to assist ex-port-led employment, with money channelled through the Trade Development Board.

Mr Peters said that the package was a pitiful response to unemployment, which had grown 25 per cent in the last year. The work-experience schemes were stolen from National’s 1987 employment proposals. They were also just a gesture, being pilot programmes for strictly limited numbers.

" ... for the majority of the unemployed this package still offers nothing except the dole queue.”