Uncertainty swirls around Gaurav Sharma's future, what’s in store from Brian Tamaki’s new political party and how long’s the wait for practical driving tests nowadays in the latest New Zealand Herald headlines. Video / NZ Herald
Opinion
OPINION:
It is a two-week wait for a GP appointment at our local clinic. You can wait weeks for a plumber. It is going to get worse. The baby boomers who supplied much of the skilled workforce have now retired.
The Medical Workforce Review in 2015 revealed 40.1per cent of GPs were over 50. The Waikato DHB and University proposed in 2016 a community medical school to produce 300 GPs a year. The Minister of Health Andrew Little says he is "considering it".
The apprenticeship system has been a mess for decades. The polytechs that were supposed to produce modern apprenticeships have never done so.
Labour's solution, co-governance and centralisation, has made the crisis worse. Centralising health and the polytechs has not produced a single extra doctor or plumber, just paralysis.
The Government is going to rely on immigration and is issuing 12,000 special work visas. New Zealand is not just short of doctors and plumbers. There is no one to milk the cows, pick the fruit or make the coffees. The estimated labour shortage is 100,000 people.
The developed world's workforce is ageing rapidly. There is worldwide competition for skills.
According to a survey of immigrants in 53 countries, New Zealand is the most undesirable country, bar Kuwait. Our challenge is not just attracting skilled migrants to come but how do we persuade the skilled to stay?
The Department of Statistics reports in the year to June, 11,500 more people permanently left than arrived. Half were citizens and half residents. It has been a trend for 16 months.
For 20 years permanent arrivals have outnumbered departures by 30,000 a year. It is a swing of 40,000. Most of those who are leaving are skilled and young. Now the border has opened the planes are full not of tourists but Kiwis. The Reserve Bank says the border opening will exacerbate skill shortages.
The Government has treated skilled migrants appallingly. They were attracted with the promise that their partners and children could also be able to join them. Labour reneged on that promise.
I know a computer technician who was separated from her 11-year-old daughter for more than 18 months. They were traumatised.
Now they have discovered the state of our schools and health system. They are experiencing the cost of living. Why would they not leave for Australia, rated by immigrants as the seventh best country to migrate to, where she can earn 40 per cent more?
For the families of skilled migrants the border has not opened. They must obtain a partnership visa. Radio New Zealand reports last week just 1000 have been issued. People are waiting on the phone to Immigration for up to five hours.
When other countries are making it easier for skilled migrants New Zealand is continuing to make it very difficult. In the next 12 months the brain drain will become a flood.
The government should fund what we need, a skilled workforce, says Richard Prebble. Photo / 123RF
In the 50s when GPs made house calls and plumbers were available we had open immigration from Britain. We could have open immigration from countries that share our democratic values. But immigration is a temporary fix.
The real solution is to train our own. We have to start with the schools.
The latest data released by researchers last week reveals just 22 per cent of secondary pupils in decile 10 schools attended regularly last year. That is not a misprint. Seventy-eight per cent did not attend regularly.
The Labour Government's all-spin solution is yet another TV campaign.
We know from Charter schools that paying schools for the number of pupils they teach rather than the number they enrol will solve attendance.
We must stop funding education for "bums on seats" or rather "bums enrolled". The policy just produces bums.
The Government should fund what we need, a skilled workforce.
We know the skills we need. It is the skills employers want visas for.
The Government should call for proposals to train New Zealanders for those skills. Not just from our Soviet-style state monopoly education system that has failed to produce these skills but from the whole community.
I headed a Cabinet committee to tackle long-term unemployment. Our research showed the long-term unemployed were those with no skills.
The Access training scheme, to the horror of the Education Department, called for training proposals from anyone who could teach an employable skill. Courses were measured solely by their success in getting full-time employment. It was a huge success. Why not? For hundreds of years people have learned skills on the job.
The Access Scheme failed when the bureaucrats persuaded the next government that graduating from one course to another was success. Trainees went from one useless course to another.
If we only pay for what we want we could very quickly upskill the country. Otherwise, you know what you are in when there is no plumber.
- Richard Prebble is a former leader of the Act Party and a former member of the Labour Party.
