The fact that economists predicted that it would reachthis level won’t make it feel any better for the 30,000 people who have become unemployed over the past year.
Nor will predictions that a further 30,000 people will become unemployed help those who fear that they are about to lose their jobs. Yet there is not a peep from the Government that it has any intention or plan to help.
I think of my old hometown Kawerau and the generational harm caused by massive unemployment in the 1980s and 90s. Things were just coming right, people were working again, hope had been restored. Sadly I know the base figures of those unemployed will be multiplied back home.
Now we have continued silence about the cost of this to New Zealand.
Tens of thousands of people on Jobseeker Support represents not only a cost to the government, but it’s also a huge loss to the economy, our productivity and to communities right around Aotearoa.
A huge cost in mental health and in dignity for whānau. These aren’t the people responsible for our high inflation, but they are bearing the cost of trying to fix it. It’s a cost they shouldn’t have to face.
In reality, New Zealand is not a poor country. Nor is it a country without the ability to solve problems like unemployment.
'I think of my old hometown Kawerau and the generational harm caused by massive unemployment in the 1980s and 90s.' Photo / Mike Scott
We do however have a Government that seems to be committed to making our current challenges worse.
Right now, we have an infrastructure crisis. There are billions of dollars of projects in transport, power, and housing that need to be delivered. Yet construction and infrastructure firms such as Downer and Fletchers are laying off staff.
Skills we can’t afford to lose are heading overseas because there is no work - more than 80,000 Kiwis left permanently last year.
Yet despite all this, we can find $12 billion in new borrowing that pays for tax cuts to landlords and higher-income earners.
Your tax cut isn’t worth anything if you’re not in work.
For a Government committed to taking a social investment approach, the programme makes no financial or ethical sense. Debt needs to come down apparently. Even when our debt levels are the envy of the rest of the world and better than all our peers.
Okay, but does debt need to come down by throwing 13,000 more children into the misery of poverty? That’s what the decision to link welfare to inflation will do, one of the first acts of this Government. How is that an ‘investment’?
Does the fact that unemployment rose to 9% for Māori and Pasifika communities not ring alarm bells?
The fact that half of all the increase in unemployment involves young people should be a real concern. Persistent unemployment among young people causes life-time issues.
Good financial managers know the difference between good debt and bad debt. They understand when it is the right time to invest and when it’s best to save. The unemployment data is telling us that we need a different approach.
Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck famously said that, “Politics is the art of the possible”.
The Government should be looking at the indicators on jobs and the economy and realising that it is now possible to rein-in the tough talk on spending and austerity.
Failing to do so would be to condemn tens of thousands of Kiwis to a bleak future unnecessarily. There are things that need to be done. There is both the money and increasingly the people who can do the work.
Doing so would not only improve their lives, it would improve our long-term economy too. Setting out a pipeline of infrastructure work would secure jobs and lift our chronic productivity problem.
It would mean that when economic growth returns it happens more quickly and more equitably.
For example, we can ensure that we are supporting people into training rather than lifting the cost of tertiary education fees by 6%, or cutting support for apprenticeships in half as planned. It would mean lower council rates bills in the future by fixing water infrastructure today.
Our debt right now is not the problem.
Our problem is a lack of confidence and demand in the economy, exacerbated by Government cuts.
The real problem is a lack of political will to turn that around. How many more people have to become unemployed for it to count?
