Government failing to take the sharp edges off
Confirmation that 2000 people are being made unemployed each week shows the Government is failing to take ‘the sharp edges off the recession’ for hurting New Zealand families, Labour Social Development spokesperson Annette King says.
“Today’s Household Labour Force survey shows unemployment has leapt to six per cent in the quarter to June – the highest quarterly increase since September 1988.There are now 138,000 people unemployed, an increase of 24,000 people in three months.
“This is deeply worrying. It makes a mockery of John Key’s claims earlier this week that Labour has been scaremongering on unemployment and serves to underscore the Government’s ongoing failure to take the recession seriously.
“John Key’s attempts to underplay what is a very dismal situation for many New Zealand families in order to defend his own Government’s inaction is now being revealed for the nonsense that it is. It’s time he took off his rose-tinted spectacles and found out what is actually happening in our communities,” says Annette King.
“We’ve seen very few jobs created in the last nine months and the spectacular failure of the two flagship recession schemes. There have been just 33 applications made by businesses to sign up to the nine day fortnight scheme and only about 400 jobs temporarily saved.
“And the Government’s ReStart package is supporting fewer people each week despite rising unemployment. It set aside $50 million for Restart over a two year period, but has spent only $2.7 million on it to date,” says Annette King.
“It is extremely clear the criteria for this support package are far too restrictive and need to be urgently reviewed. Even more alarming is the fact that the Government is bragging that they are spending no money informing New Zealanders about ReStart.
“New Zealand’s unemployment rate is now higher than Australia’s. The Government has regularly defended its pitiful stimulus package on the basis that our unemployment rate was lower. It is now obvious that the Rudd Labour Government’s response, which has been much more proactive,
is giving a better to deal to Aussies than this Government is giving to Kiwis.
“This Government came in saying their priority was to reduce long term unemployment, but in fact the numbers have doubled in the last year.”