The Jobs Challenge: Our readers views

Six weeks after it started, the Jobs Challenge series ends this month with a preview of the growth sectors of the new century.

While traditional BA graduates join the dole queues or head overseas, employers can't find enough people with the skills they need in food technology, forestry, boat-building and of course computing.

The Jobs Challenge team will review the jobs lost and created while the series has been running, and estimate the number of jobs we can expect in key skilled areas in the future.

The team reports on the talent going to waste as we allow highly qualified immigrants to work as taxi drivers and volunteer social workers because they can't find a way to use the skills they offer.

This series began by asking: How can we generate jobs paying incomes that are high enough to ensure people want to live in New Zealand?

The letters on this page are a small selection of the hundreds we received, including many by email from New Zealanders overseas.

In the next year, the Herald plans a number of initiatives to foster what Bridget Wickham has called a "national conversation" on this crucial issue.


Taxes and loans

Cliff Stockwell, Whakatane.

New Zealand could work to have harmonised tax regimes with other countries, which would reduce the availability of tax havens.

We could move even further towards a consumption tax, similar to GST, and away from personal or company tax. This type of tax is more difficult to evade or avoid. It also means a Government wants to keep the economy moving steadily to keep revenues coming in.

We, the general taxpayers, already pay most of the cost of tertiary education. Student loans are available, but who pays them back?

Let's pay the whole cost of education and bond people to either work in New Zealand for, say, 10 years or sign a commercial loan contract if they leave the country. That would at least oblige them to pay back what they have borrowed instead of the present system which makes it a good financial decision to work elsewhere.


Mad bureaucrats
Mike Fabish.

The resource consent process needs to be simplified. Under the Resource Management Act there are delays of years before authority is given, for example, to a marine farming development.

The processing of mussels is very labour-intensive and the spin-off in jobs from additional mussel farms is enormous. There's potential for several hundred jobs there for a start, without any undue negative effect on the environment.

The present process - overseen by the Department of Conservation, itself a rampant bureaucracy out of control in its determination to keep the "Zeal" out of New Zealand - is forcing millions of investment dollars to find another home.

New South Wales has recently implemented a system under which resource consents for marine farming can be considered and approved or not within six weeks.

Capital investment equals jobs. Nothing else does.


Benefit regime

Bob Dutch, Glen Eden.

People either work or they do not, so if they do not they should be paid a benefit which would be the minimum living amount. This benefit would be increased by an amount based on a calculation using the amount of tax that a person has paid in his or her life and other factors.

Some of the benefits: a retiring person, who has worked for 40-plus years and has paid tax all that time, would stand to get a reasonable living for the rest of his or her life. This would help with the superannuation issue.

People leaving school would have an incentive to get a job and pay tax so that later in life, if they were out of work, they would get better than the minimum living amount.

This would encourage school leavers to get a job rather than going straight on the dole.

A person entering the country would also be encouraged to get a job and pay tax for the same reason as above. A person who avoids paying taxes would be encouraged to actually pay tax as an investment in his or her future.

There need only be one benefit, a "not working benefit," and it could apply to all people - unemployed, DPB, elderly or medically/physically disabled and maybe even children.


Internet register

Malcolm L. Moses.

1) Every unemployed person's CV with Winz should be available on the internet under a reference number, stating the experience of the person, area available, etc.

2) Unemployed people should be able to earn the national minimum wage before losing their benefits.

3) Self-employment should be promoted.

4) The skills base of older retired workers should be used.

5) Tax incentives should be given for using our plant 24 hours a day, six or seven days a week.

6) As well as this national register of skills, which is a wasted asset of our country at the present time, we should have a plant register.

For instance, I know one company which has a very high-tech milling lathe, costing over a third of a million dollars, which is used only six hours or less a week.


R & D aid

Michael.

NZ should have a world-leading investment and research and development policy.

The Government should display the qualities it earnestly requires of business: the courage to risk income (taxation) against the chance of greater rewards as the business community grows (with R & D).

Our technology and skills are tops. The way to make them better still is to consciously encourage and enable all enterprises to market themselves internationally.

The Government should not presume to pick winners, but allow the believers in any particular business to follow their own vision, through generous tax advantages for R & D.


Using super

B. Y. Lim.

Why are we talking about a common superannuation fund? It goes against the very fibre of why one works. It is to provide for oneself and one's family. Why not offer a scheme where up to 20 per cent of one's annual take can be channelled into one's own retirement account.

To ensure that it works, this must be tax deductible and guaranteed by the Government.

It should be voluntary at first, but I reckon that in five years so many will see the benefit of this that everyone will want to sign up.

If we can do this, we can immediately tap into a pool of surplus. The Government can then pay interest back to its own people instead of overseas.

This can then be used to reduce our external debt levels and improve our credit ratings so that more investors can put New Zealand back on their investment map.


No place for Govt

Peter Bradburn.

Why don't the Government, local bodies and Government-created entities such as Infrastructure Auckland get out of capital-generating business?

In most instances they are actually competing with so-called private enterprise.

And they compete from a monopolistic podium. The cynical could say that the Government has the highest employee base, from which it expects nothing except that the unemployed should ... not act.

Real wealth is organised capability. The New Zealand Government model is the reverse. It knows this, we know this, we live here because it is home, we are exploited here because successive Governments are prepared to sell our hard-won structures cheaply ... back to us.


Taking a risk

Wilhelmina Eveleens.

High-paying businesses such as those in IT are generally high risk. Thus potential entrepreneurs need access to funds that support the high-risk environment.

I believe that the attitude of many New Zealanders, including financiers, is short-term thinking.

We need the Government to support the development of venture capital funds that take on long-term, high-risk projects.

We need to put some serious thought into where New Zealanders can make a big contribution to the global business world and then encourage the development of those areas.

The Government needs to show its long-term commitment to education and R & D. A three-year time frame is not sufficient.

* These letters are abridged.