Peters: Jobless costing $2.58

Press, 8 March 1989, Page 2

Peters: Jobless costing $2.58

By

ROBYN BRISTOW

The Labour Government said it opposed subsidies but it was subsidising 100 per cent 188,000 people at a cost up to $1.5 billion, said the Opposition’s spokesman on employment and Maori affairs, Mr Winston Peters, yesterday.

He told about 250 people in Amberley that the $1.5 billion to support the unemployed and those on training schemes was only a transparent cost. Added to this was an increase in law enforcement, clogged courts, clogged social services and other hidden costs which could amount to $2.5 billion. The unemployed were the “new untouchables” in New Zealand. Most were unskilled, uneducated and were from right across the race spectrum. They had been dumped on the scrap heap. “The tragedy is they are just too, too, young just to be abandoned and disbanded in our land,” said Mr Peters. The “new untouchables” were not aliens or foreigners; they were New Zealanders who were given money to do nothing. People wondered why there was a race problem in New Zealand and why crime had risen.

“I make no apologies about my desire to intervene in people’s lives,” said Mr Peters. A National Government would not abandon 188,000 people who had no skills, no jobs, or selfesteem to welfare dependency. There had to be much closer links between economic growth, education of young people, postsecondary education and future employment, said Mr Peters. A Treasury document leaked to Mr Peters last year had shown that the Treasury was warning the Government of a third wave of unemployment. It was time to start worrying because unemployment had reached the metropolitan areas. It had not been a matter of concern when there were tens and thousands unemployed in the rural areas of New Zealand, but when the metropolitan areas had started to be affected it was, said Mr Peters.