I am amazed that Andrew Little is offering to spend $60 million a year to provide work for unemployed young people when the same scheme was tried in the late 1970s/1980s with disastrous results.
Then councils eagerly took up the chance to carry out community work subsidised by the taxpayer. As I was in the building industry at that time I saw that all it did was to take work away from local business contractors.
The classic example was a contractor who had to close his business on a Friday due to lack of council work and was then employed by the council shortly after to supervise the unemployed on council kerbing and channelling work.
Using these unemployed meant the work took much longer because it required greater supervision.
I saw many other wasteful uses of this make-work scheme and after many failures the scheme was quietly shelved.
