Another glossy publication, still no plan for jobs

The latest glossy report by Steven Joyce fails to deliver a plan for sustainable jobs, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

Dr Norman was responding to the another of the Government's so-called Business Growth Agenda Progress Reports.

"This latest report is just another rehashing of the same old ideas that have failed to create jobs over the past four years under National," said Dr Norman.

"The National Government has completely ignored the ideas for sustainable job creation put forward by groups such as Pure Advantage. Instead, National has stuck to a narrow plan of agricultural intensification and dangerous deep-sea drilling.

"The report tacitly acknowledges how jobs-poor National's approach is. It states that National's favoured oil and gas sector creates just 7,700 jobs and indicates that number is likely to fall in coming years. In contrast, manufacturing creates around 200,000 jobs yet gets the cold shoulder from National.

"Over half of the GDP contribution of manufacturing goes to workers in their wages but for mining the figure is just 15%. Mining makes huge profits for often foreign-owned companies, but contributes little to New Zealand families' incomes.

"National should be concentrating on sustainable, high-tech manufacturing to create jobs to make the most of our natural resources, not putting all its efforts into making profits for foreign oil companies," said Dr Norman.

"National's obsession with fossil fuels has failed to create jobs. Petrobras and Anadarko have both failed to make the big investments in exploration that National promised; the drilling boom hasn't eventuated.

"Continuing to let sustainable job opportunities pass us by while we bet all our chips on massive new oil finds that would, at best, create a small number of short-lived jobs is a gamble that New Zealand can't afford.

"One good aspect of the report is that it confirms the government is still looking into green growth indictors. I would encourage the Government to adopt Kennedy Graham's Public Finance (Sustainable Development Indicators) Amendment Bill, which would help to bring environmental sustainability to the heart of economic planning," said Dr Norman.