The Devil Is In The Detail - Goff light on policy in his latest photo-op
ACT New Zealand’s Labour spokesman Chris Simmons today said he isn’t surprised that Labour Leader Phil Goff was light on policy detail during his recent photo opportunity.
Mr Simmons was responding to the article in today’s ‘Dominion Post’ on Mr Goff’s visit to engineering firm A. E. Tilley yesterday.
“In light of Labour’s policies on raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour – and even higher for some industries – Phil Goff visiting small businesses is akin to Daniel entering the Lion’s Den,” Mr Simmons said.
“The factory owner, 78-year old Don Tilley, stated he didn’t know what Labour’s policies were. I suspect if Phil Goff had informed him, he would have been aghast.
“Mr Tilley specifically stated that he doesn’t like laying staff off. He still pays double-time when his guys work overtime, and his workers are supporting him currently by taking unpaid leave during the current hard times. For 89 years the Tilley family has run this business – it is hard to think he needs the government telling him how to do anything. Yet, here is Labour promoting Labour policies that would leave him no other choice – and would likely mean that we will not see 100 years of A.E. Tilley.
“The business environment is hostile enough already. Statistics show that more small businesses closed in 2010 than in any other year over the last decade. When one considers that small businesses employ most of our workforce, and drive our economy, this is very bad news indeed.
“Last year, almost 98 percent of new businesses started with between zero and five employees. Such businesses are the most vulnerable to failure. Under National that has proven particularly so – and Labour’s plans will drive many more entrepreneurs out of business.
“The only Party that recognises the potential of business entrepreneurs is ACT. ACT knows that business entrepreneurs drive our economy. For everyone’s sake we need an economic environment in which they can survive, then thrive.
“With 18 years of running my own management consulting business, working with entrepreneurs around the world, and networking with leaders in the field of entrepreneurship, I know how important it is to have a regulatory environment that supports business owners.
“ACT is the only Party with a vision to create an entrepreneurial economy that supports and attracts entrepreneurs to build businesses from a New Zealand base,” Mr Simmons said.
Labour Launches Attack on Small Businesses - ACT
ACT New Zealand’s Labour spokesman Chris Simmons today slammed the Labour Party’s new ‘Work and Wages’ policy, labelling it an unprecedented attack on New Zealand’s small business sector.
“Labour’s plans for raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, a return to the archaic award system, and the abolishment of the 90-day trial period will do nothing but increase costs for employers and put more workers out of jobs,” Mr Simmons said.
“We can already see so many empty shops in our towns and cities around New Zealand. At a time small businesses are hurting, Labour wants to well and truly put small business owners out of their misery.
“Unemployment will go up not because businesses have one or two spare staff to lay-off. It will go up because businesses will fail outright. Most small businesses have lean profit margins; squeeze them too hard, as Labour plans to do, and they will have to shut up shop.
“The costs grow larger still: in many medium-sized businesses the minimum-wage worker is being supervised by a staff member who is most likely currently earning around $15 an hour. When the minimum wage goes up, the shift co-ordinator’s wage must also go up.”
Mr Simmons also dismissed Labour’s proposal to Mondayise public holidays as yet another costly bribe.
“We have never recovered from the productivity hit of giving every person four weeks leave. To Mondayise public holidays will further reduce the country’s overall productivity and directly hit the bottom-line of every small business in the country.”
Self-employed for 18 years, Mr Simmons strongly suspects that Labour’s policy was devised by “people who have never employed a person in their careers; have never been responsible for covering a payroll; have never had their family home on the line.”
“Small business owners are already looking at the return they get for being an entrepreneur and asking themselves ‘why bother?’ It is easier just to let someone else take the risk and move their families and their skills to Australia and start again.
“This sort of craziness is exactly why government should never try dictating how people run their business. ACT policies will let New Zealanders get on with their lives and cut the bureaucracy that holds back employers and employees alike,” Mr Simmons said.
Labour’s Work and Wages Policy Will Hurt More People Than It Helps
Labour’s Work and Wages Policy announced today will cost us jobs and will hurt the very people Labour claim they are trying to help – those on low incomes, ACT Leader Don Brash said today.
“Labour just doesn’t seem to get it - the more something costs, the less people buy. Employers are no different to their customers in this regard. Higher minimum wages will cost us jobs – particularly among those with low skills,” Dr Brash said.
“It is a disgrace that Labour pretend to champion the rights of workers, but at every chance push policies that harm those on low-wages rather than help them.
“Creating more restrictions to employment laws and raising the minimum wage will see employers hire fewer staff. It is the people on the margins - the lowest paid and unskilled - that will be the first to suffer.
"We only have to look at what has happened with the abolition of the youth minimum wage to see this effect. This legislation was passed with the best of intentions but has had pernicious effects.
“The Department of Labour found that up to 9000 young people are now out of work as a direct result of the abolition of the youth minimum wage. Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour without an increase in productivity will be equally disastrous.
“Labour cannot disregard the laws of economics. We need to focus on policies that create growth, delivering liveable wages to all New Zealanders.
“Like Labour, ACT wants to see wages in New Zealand rise. But, unlike Labour, ACT knows the best way to achieve that is to reduce taxes and regulations so business can grow, invest and create more jobs. Labour’s Work and Wages policy will see more people at home on the dole than ever before,” Dr Brash said.
$15 Min Wage Will Push Up Prices And Cost Us Jobs
Joint Release: ACT Finance Spokesman Sir Roger Douglas, Youth Affairs Spokesman Stephen Whittington
Labour’s policy to raise the minimum wage to $15 will throw more people on the scrap heap and shows how out of touch with reality Labour really is, ACT Finance Spokesman Sir Roger Douglas said today.
“Labour claims to be the Party that cares about those on low-incomes but raising the minimum wage is not the answer - it will only push up prices and cost us jobs,” Sir Roger said.
“Labour would have us believe that the majority of employers are big nameless corporations out to maximise profits while screwing their employees. Yet, small to medium sized business makes up 97 per cent of all enterprises in New Zealand and employ one third of the work force.
“Last year more than 50,000 small businesses shut up shop, the highest number in a decade. Of that figure, 3877 employed between 1 – 19 people. Small businesses are struggling and increasing the minimum wage to $15 would simply see more businesses close their doors.
“Even Mark Peck, former Labour MP turned small café owner, agrees Labour’s policy is out of touch:
“… in an industry with low margins, wage costs are very significant. I don’t think people understand the effect a $15 minimum wage would have on businesses like this. Prices go up…if prices go up, customers, already feeling the economic squeeze, change their spending habits… The result: less profit for owners; less money to employ staff.”
“Increasing the minimum wage to $15 will hurt the people that Labour says they are trying to help. By pushing up prices, people will have to spend more money to buy necessities and will have less to spend elsewhere. This will be made even worse by the fact that there will be even fewer jobs available in the first place,” Sir Roger said.
ACT Youth Affairs Spokesman Stephen Whittington says this increase would be particularly pernicious for young people.
“The Department of Labour have already estimated that scrapping youth wages reduced the number of jobs for those aged 16 and 17 by 4,500-9,000.
“This proposed increase will further marginalise young people, who are most susceptible to unemployment as a result of high minimum wages,” Mr Whittington said.
“Former Labour MP Mark Peck has woken up to reality. It’s time for the Labour Party to do the same,” Sir Roger said.
Beware Greens' Orwellian Double-Speak - Brash
The Green Party's newly-announced 'For a Richer New Zealand' advertising campaign is really a push for a poorer New Zealand, according to ACT New Zealand leader Don Brash.
"On the face of it, it's full of feel-good bromides that could be uttered by anyone," says Dr Brash.
"Who would want to disagree with rivers being clean enough to swim in, children having enough to eat and jobs that are good for the environment?
"But make no mistake—when the Greens speak about 'green jobs' they mean subsidised jobs in enterprises that make no commercial sense. They mean jobs created by crony capitalism, where firms favoured by the government are showered with taxpayer largesse. They mean jobs in firms like solar panel-maker Solyndra in the United States. Solyndra has just gone bankrupt notwithstanding a $538 million federal government loan.
"America affords us a salutary lesson in what not to do," Dr Brash adds. "Billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on creating hundreds of these 'green' jobs: $4.7 million per job according to one estimate I have seen! The net effect has been simply to add to the country's indebtedness—hardly conducive to jobs for all, well-fed children and clean rivers. Yet this is what the Greens are proposing for New Zealand.
"ACT's policies would deliver genuine prosperity. Foremost among them, an investor-friendly—indeed, investor-irresistible—tax and regulatory regime, the opposite of the Greens' high-tax, heavy-regulation plans. Getting government off the job-creators' backs is far more effective in creating jobs than Soviet-style central planning.
"A prosperous economy can easily afford to keep its rivers clean. A destitute economy might clean its rivers even when it couldn't afford to (though the rivers of the old Eastern bloc would suggest otherwise)—but that would be cold comfort to the hungry children who lacked the energy to swim in them.
"By 'rich,' the Greens mean something different from the rest of us. They mean the 'richness' they think comes from destitution. In that sense, I wish their campaign for a 'richer' New Zealand every failure," Dr Brash concludes.
ACT Position Vindicated
ACT MP Sir Roger Douglas today heralded Department of Labour research that demonstrates the effect of ending youth wages: a significant increase in the number of youth who cannot find jobs.
"When I first introduced the Bill to re-establish youth minimum wages, those in Labour and the Greens cited research undertaken by Dean Hyslop and Steven Stillman, which indicated earlier increases in the minimum wage for youth had not led to unemployment," Sir Roger said.
"We argued vociferously that the rates were so high that they were locking youth out of jobs, and that the earlier figures were not relevant. Today, a further study undertaken by Hyslop and Stillman proves that we were right.
"The study concluded that 'this minimum wage increase accounted for approximately 20–40 percent of the fall in the proportion of 16 and 17 year olds in employment by 2010. Overall, this implies that the introduction of the NE minimum led to a loss of 4,500-9,000 jobs for 16 and 17 year olds (employment of 16 and 17 year olds fell from 61,400 to 39,500 between 2007 and 2010).'
"If Labour and the Greens want any credibility on this issue, they must now reverse their position. The study and methodology they relied on to argue their case has now demonstrated that they were wrong, ACT was right, and youth are suffering.
"However all the reports in the world will not put a single young person back into work. Reinstating the youth minimum wage will. Sadly ACT has been the only Party with the courage to propose this. If National really cares about the thousands of young people struggling to find work it must pledge to do the same," Sir Roger said.
Reinstating Youth Wage Is Realistic Option
ACT New Zealand MP Heather Roy today called on the Government to heed its own words and take a more ‘realistic’ approach to youth unemployment by reinstating the youth minimum wage.
“In response to my question on youth rates in the House today, Finance Minister Bill English replied that it has become apparent in the last couple of years that the long-held consensus that higher rates of pay for young people would not affect their employment prospects wasn’t realistic. The ACT Party could not agree more with the Minister’s comments,” Mrs Roy said.
“ACT has always argued that in abolishing the youth minimum wage, the Government forced young people to compete against older, more experienced workers for the same rate of pay. The skyrocketing youth unemployment rates show that employers are choosing experience nearly every time.
“The September 2011 Department of Labour report: The Impact of the 2008 Youth Minimum Wage Reform confirms what ACT has been saying all along. The report found that abolishing the youth minimum wage ‘accounted for approximately 20-40 per cent of the fall in the proportion of 16 and 17 year olds in employment by 2010.’ The report goes on to say this led to a loss of 4,500-9,000 jobs for 16 and 17 year olds. Scrapping the youth wage has clearly been a disaster.
“ACT believes that it’s important to give our young people a step up onto the career ladder, where they learn valuable skills and become productive citizens. This sets them up for a successful career in the future.
“Rather than continuing to introduce expensive schemes which pay employers to take on young people who are not productive enough to compete with adults, the Government should simply reintroduce the youth minimum wage. It’s the realistic thing to do,” Mrs Roy said.
ACT Solutions Needed Urgently - Brash
A new report showing just over half of the 200,000 New Zealand children living below the poverty line are Maori and Pacific Islanders is a further vindication of ACT policies and pointer to how urgently they are needed, says ACT New Zealand leader Dr Don Brash.
The report, commissioned by a coalition of child advocacy organisations called Every Child Counts, has found that ''a combination of high dependency on welfare benefits, high rates of single parenthood, and a concentration of workers in the manufacturing industries keep Maori and Pasifika families trapped in poverty."
"ACT has been saying since its inception that welfare dependency, particularly dependency on the sole parent benefit, creates a poverty trap that has ensnared Maori and Pacific Islanders in disproportionately high numbers," says Dr Brash.
"The solution, however, is not more of the same policies that created the problem.
It is not, as the Greens have already demanded in their knee-jerk response to the report, higher benefits and a higher minimum wage.
"Nor is it, as report co-author Hone Kaa has demanded, a shift away from what he calls 'a Pakeha approach'—whatever that might be—to the problem of a 'brown underclass.'
"Poverty is no respecter of race. Nor are its cures. There are approaches that work and approaches that don't.
"Another one that won't work is a government task force, such as Dr Kaa is also seeking, likely to be stacked with politically correct lobbyists with a separatist agenda.
"The government must press ahead with its overhaul of our welfare system, not just to get more beneficiaries into work or training, but with a view to uprooting the very culture of dependency whose disastrous results for children this report so tragically highlights.
"It ought also to reinstate youth rates and thus pave the way into work for thousands of youngsters currently condemned to the dole because employers can't afford to take them on.
"I don't want to see an underclass of any colour. I don't want to see any children of any race living below the poverty line. With that in mind I'll be delivering a major speech on the entire subject of welfare reform in the near future," Dr Brash concludes.
ENDS
Labour Created Record Youth Unemployment
Labour’s policy to spend $251 million subsidising young people into work is an expensive band-aid on the problem of youth unemployment that Labour created by abolishing the youth minimum wage, said ACT New Zealand Leader Dr Don Brash.
“Labour is absolutely right to focus on combatting New Zealand’s record level of youth unemployment – they created it,” Dr Brash said.
“Since Labour abolished the youth minimum wage young people have been priced out of the labour market and youth unemployment has increased from 15 percent to over 27 percent. Labour’s decision is estimated to have cast up to an additional 13,100 young people on the unemployment scrapheap.
“With a net cost of $171 million, Labour’s youth employment package can only be paid for by creating yet another tax. Reinstating the youth wage would impose almost no burden on taxpayers and would result in more young people being put into work.
“If Labour was really interested in fixing their mistake and reversing the growth in youth unemployment they would pledge to reinstate the youth wage if re-elected. Instead we have the usual Phil Goff prescription of spending more money that New Zealand does not have,” Dr Brash said.
ENDS
Woodhouse On Jobs: 5/10. Must Try Harder.
Dunedin based ACT MP Hilary Calvert today gave Michael Woodhouse 5/10 for his comments in today's Otago Daily Times on job creation, saying he and the National Party still rely too heavily on government schemes to try to create jobs.
“Michael Woodhouse is right to say that job creation is largely the role of business. It is business, not government, that responds to consumers’ needs, creates jobs, and generates wealth,” Ms Calvert says.
“However the best thing government can do for job creation is to develop good infrastructure, create an environment in which business will thrive and otherwise stay out of the way.
“What government should not do is spend millions of taxpayer dollars on pointless ‘make work’ schemes such as the Job Ops and Community Max schemes lauded by Mr Woodhouse, especially when options, such as reintroducing the youth minimum wage, would achieve better results at almost zero cost.
“For example Job Ops will cost the taxpayer $55 million and, at best, employ 12,000 young people. Yet, reinstating the youth wage would cost virtually nothing and put up to 13,000 young people into work.
“I challenge Mr Woodhouse to truly back business by renouncing expensive schemes such as Job Ops and Community Max. If he does that, those looking for jobs in New Zealand might actually have something to celebrate,” Ms Calvert said.
ENDS
