Maryan Street

By Maggie Tait of NZPA

Wellington, Aug 3 NZPA - Labour says unemployed youth will fall through the cracks under the Government's new policy.

The Government announced a raft of schemes to get youth into training or employment at the weekend but the independent youth benefit will no longer be available.

At his party's conference in Christchurch at the weekend, Prime Minister John Key announced $152 million would be spent on creating work, education and training opportunities for unemployed youth.

The number of 16-24 year-olds on the benefit had increased from 4000 last June to 17,000 a year later.

One initiative was a $20 million Job Ops programme to give 4000 low-skilled people a wage subsidy of $5000 over six months to get them into jobs.

A business would get $3000 for employing a person up front and then $2000 at the end of the six-month period.

Mr Key told Radio New Zealand the measure was short term to deal with the recession and would wrap up by the end of next year.

Young people could go to school, take up training which the government would pay fees for, or go to work, he said.

"In all of those circumstances why should the state be paying someone the benefit?"

It sent the wrong message to put a young person on a benefit and expectations needed to be set higher, Mr Key said.

Labour's Maryan Street was concerned by the blanket rule and she was concerned some youth, for example who had been thrown out of home and had personal problems, would suffer.

"When any government lays down a blanket rule like this some people will fall foul of it for no fault of their own and will effectively be punished for being in more desperate situations," she told NZPA.

"I do have concerns around that...it looks to me like this policy opens up cracks that young people can fall through."

Ms Street said Labour's Schools Plus programme was interlinking schools and later training. She said that would have helped pick up youth in "desperate" situations.

Sometimes a youth's own rebellious nature made life difficult for them but they still needed help.

"Punishing them by not making any support available and compelling them back into either dysfunctional or unhelpful circumstances is not going to be the answer."

Mr Key said that under the scheme when there were exceptional circumstances youth still be able to get the dole.

He said the Government was not claiming it could stop youth unemployment rising.

"What we can do is try take the rough edges off the recession and we're providing 16,900 places in the next 18 months -- that's a lot of opportunities for young New Zealanders and I think it will help, it will make a difference."

Another $40.3 million scheme to be known as Community Max will get 3000 people places in community programmes paying the minimum wage for 30 hours a week and a $1250 training payment paid to the community group.

Mr Key said that initiative would get valuable jobs done while also keeping youth employed.

The Government was expanding its Youth Guarantee policy with a $52.7m injection. This would create 2000 new places for 16 and 17 year-olds not engaged in school to study at polytechs.

Other measures included:

* $5.3m to encourage developers of cycleway projects to hire 500 young people;

* $2.6m for extra training places in the defence forces;

* $19.1m for 1250 more places in six-week military style training programmes;

* $8m for 700 more students in polytechs; and

* $4m for 1600 new places in summer research scholarships.

Of the $152m, the total new spending is $120m between 2009 and 2011.