Budget should focus on labour market boost

CTU media release
26 May 2009

Budget should focus on labour market boost

The Council of Trade Union wants Thursday’s Budget to focus on the labour market with a major boost to both job creation and skills development.

The CTU wants to see a large investment in home insulation, Task Force Green, house building, support for domestic firms on government procurement and a fund set aside to support quality temporary employment. In addition, there needs to be more support for the rising number of unemployed. This requires an expansion of training support, flexibility in the benefit system and other measures to boost incomes and opportunities for those made redundant.

Peter Conway, CTU Secretary, said: “In February the concern about the recession was its impact on jobs. Now the focus by the Government seems to be primarily on the credit rating agencies.”

“There is no doubt that rising debt has to be addressed. But gross public debt is 25.1% of GDP whereas the OECD predicts the average in member countries will be 100% in 2010. And the greater concern is the current account deficit where the underlying pressures on debt are from bank borrowing offshore and repatriation of profits to overseas owners of NZ-based firms. That means a policy focus on housing supply and building up domestic savings makes sense rather than huge cuts in government activity and ongoing dismissals of public sector workers.”

Conway said that the Government is allowing itself to be pinioned by the credit rating agencies and has also made mistakes in making tax cuts the major stimulus so far in response to the recession.

“We want to see a Budget that invests in people and our future in the context of a global recession, not an austere Budget solely focused on Standard and Poor’s which also plays to business lobbying for small government.”

ENDS

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