Will the Budget give young people a reason to stay in NZ? – Shane Te Pou

Shane Te Pou (Ngāi Tūhoe) is a commentator, blogger and former Labour Party activist.

OPINION

More than a thousand New Zealand citizens a week are packing their bags and leaving the country permanently.

Many of
them are in their 20s – fresh out of school or uni and deciding to build a life somewhere else. And who could blame them?

The largest exodus of my whānau since the introduction of the Employment Contracts Act.

With unemployment set to rise by 26,000 in the next year, the prospects for young people aren’t looking bright. Add in the rising cost of living, unaffordable housing, and the Government cutting public services, science investment and infrastructure – no wonder the grass looks greener in Australia and Europe.

This Budget, Christopher Luxon and Nicola Willis need to give people a reason to stay. A tax cut isn’t going to be the answer.

We now know that only around 3000 families will get the $250 a fortnight that National campaigned on last year. For many it will be $2 a week, for some it will be up to $20. But who cares about $20 a week (if you’re lucky) when you can go to Queensland and get hundreds more a week to do the same work, with a lower cost of living?

A Budget that cuts into the public services and infrastructure that our families and businesses rely on all to pay for tax cuts that won’t move the dial isn’t going to keep our young people in Aotearoa.

It feels more like a razor gang going through a failing business, undermining its future to pay a dividend now – and only hastening the end point of asset sales.

The Government’s incoherent economic policy was highlighted this week when it said Kāinga Ora has to stop building so many houses (it’s currently building one in every seven new homes in the country and helping to avoid a total building bust), even though it has $30 billion in net assets and access to low-interest loans.

At the same time, it’s ordering NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi to take on billions more debt through more public private partnerships (PPPs), which are really just high-interest loans, for roads we don’t have the workforce to build.

When there’s money for landlords to have tax cuts, but no money to build state houses, when there’s money for charter schools, but state school building upgrades are on ice, when there’s money to build a PPP prison but not to hire staff for North Shore’s new surgical hospital, you’re not seeing a plan for New Zealand’s future.

You’re seeing a Government that is stripping public services to give money to the favoured few.

Young people would have found themselves nodding along at Chlöe Swarbrick’s speech last week when she said: “The reason it feels like no matter how hard you work, you can’t get ahead is because we have a set of rules in this economy that actively exploit people and the planet for the benefit of a wealthy few. The reason that the system feels like it’s rigged is because it is.”

We need an economic vision that’s about high-quality housing and infrastructure, great education and healthcare, and sustainable, cheap green energy to power hi-tech industries. That, along with better workers’ rights, is how we create good jobs with good pay, and give our young people a reason to stay. The countries that our young people are flocking to are doing those things and better than we are at the moment.

Both Swarbrick and Chris Hipkins laid out similar visions for a better Aotearoa, one that our kids would want to stay living in when they’re adults, in their speeches last weekend. But Luxon and Willis have no such vision and certainly no plan to get there.

All we heard from them was the same old campaign lines about public service cuts and tax cuts. Beyond that, the Government doesn’t seem to know what it wants to do.

Surely, Luxon wants to do something more meaningful than spending the next two and a half years hosing down whatever silly culture war David Seymour and Winston Peters try to ignite next, and avoid suffering the ignominy of being the first one-term National Prime Minister. He and his Government need to move beyond their Opposition talking points and myopic focus on tax cuts, and actually start to lead the country to a better place.

This Budget will either give young Kiwis hope and a reason to stay in Aotearoa, or it will give them the final push to buy their tickets and head overseas.