November 23, 2016
Maori unemployed could help quake rebuild
Winston Peters says the Government needs to act now to start training unemployed New Zealanders and especially Maori for the work that will be need to rebuild roads and houses after the latest earthquakes.
The New Zealand First leader is highly critical of the way the local workers have been shunted aside by cheap foreign labour in the Christchurch rebuild.
He says with 128,000 unemployed and 74,000 young New Zealanders not in employment, training or education, it’s not right that recruitment firms are talking up the need to bring in workers from places like the Philippines.
"It is utterly out of kilter. Unless we set out to address that, we are buying ourselves serious problems, and in the Maori world we all know things are not going forward in the way people are claiming. In terms of who is dropping out, we’re going backwards," Mr Peters says.
He says in the past training schemes proved highly effective at producing skilled Maori tradespeople, but now everything is left to the market, resulting in a massive failure.
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