Budget Speech

I listened to the Budget last week with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it contains much for which the Government must be congratulated, from the moves towards income related rentals and a fairer industrial relations framework through to substantial increases in mental health funding. On the other hand, by the end of Dr Cullen's presentation, I was asking myself the questions I've been asking on Budget Days for the last seventeen years: "What's in it for unemployed people and beneficiaries? What's in it for the community based organisations who each day work at creating jobs and providing services for those who are the economic and social outcasts from the great New Zealand dream?"

Fortunately, some of my concerns have been relieved by the release yesterday of the Government's response to the Hunn Report into WINZ. It is great to see the Government's commitment to an increased focus on employment within the Department of Work and Income, and the Green Party commends the decision to transfer the Community Employment function to the Department of Labour.

The Community Employment Group and the community organisations with which it works have suffered immensely since it was restructured into the WINZ conglomerate, and I hope that this shift to DOL will revive and strengthen its potential to assist with grassroots community economic development and job creation projects.

I would also like to congratulate the Minister and Departmental officials on their willingness to work with and listen to representatives of beneficiary advocacy groups in terms of making some long needed changes to the culture and operations of Work and Income.

However, my initial worries about an apparent lack of any move towards increased infrastructure support in the Budget for the community sector at large remain. While the Budget does provide very welcome funding increases for building the capacity of Maori and to a lesser extent, Pacific Island community sector groups, there appears in fact to be nothing extra at all for capacity building in the voluntary arena at large.

Nine years of National governments have already pushed a lot of dedicated and hard working groups to the wall, and many more teeter on the brink of disintegration right now. I am talking here about all kinds of organisations, not just those working with unemployed people and beneficiaries, but also groups right across the board dealing with issues from housing to human rights, from disabilities to community economic development, and many many more.

Many such groups also work with people from across the racial and ethnic spectrum, that is, with nga iwi tatou katoa - Pakeha, Maori, Pacific Island people, immigrants and refugees. If the Government is serious about its good will in moving towards a productive NGO/Government agreement process and towards strengthening the role of volunteers and of voluntary sector organisations, it must also begin to get serious at helping to build the capacity of the whole sector, not just parts of it.

It is apparent that the Government sees the Ministry of Economic Development as a place where progress on both job creation and third sector capacity building can take place. I hope they are right, but the benefits, in the short term at least, are not immediately apparent, and I know that while, for example, some unemployed and beneficiary groups do welcome the changes to DWI announced yesterday, there is a deeper overarching concern about the real extent to which the new directions will in fact help lower unemployment especially in the light of closures and redundancies being announced daily at present. We need a proactive and immediate programme of job creation, and if the Government would like advice on this, there are those of us with a lot of grassroots experience who would love to offer our assistance.

Which brings me to another underlying concern I have about the direction of the MED - that the programmes of business support offered appear focused on assisting principally businesses which can offer hundreds of jobs at once. Where is the support for unemployed and low income people, and for community groups, who might wish to set up their own businesses? What is happening with the Enterprise Allowance which has been scaled down hugely in recent years? Why are contracts for business mentoring going to places like Chambers of Commerce who have little feel for what I'd loosely call the bottom end of the market, rather than to organisations with years of experience at working at providing business training and support to unemployed people, Maori, refugees and migrants? If this Government is serious about closing the gaps, it needs to pay a little more attention to what is actually going on with its day to day operations in this area.

At the time of the last Household Labour Force Survey in March this year, the official number of jobless was over 205,000 people. I have a feeling that the number is going to keep rising unless serious measures are taken. This Budget and the Government's response to the Hunn Report contain a lot of steps in the right direction - I just hope that they're implemented in a way that will bring positive outcomes for unemployed people before months - rather than years - go by.