The many thousands of jobs Jacinda Ardern’s Government promised New Zealanders its initiatives would create looks more like a pipedream than reality, National’s Employment spokesperson Louise Upston says.
“The Government promised 20,000 jobs would be created as a result of its shovel-ready projects. But through Written Parliamentary Questions it doesn’t look like that will be the case.
“11,740 FTEs is a far cry from the promised 20,000 jobs. There’s also no way to tell how many of these are new, sustainable jobs, or just more consultants and existing jobs.
“While the Government has shovelled billions of taxpayer dollars into schemes supposedly aimed at supporting people into jobs, not enough is being done to make sure this funding actually delivers new jobs.
“The so-called jobs plan Labour promised New Zealanders is just more hot air. There have been many promises of jobs and plans, but hardly any have been created.
“The Prime Minister promised the extended flexi-wage scheme would be in place by Christmas to help business owners to take on workers over the holiday period. That didn’t happen.
“The $50 million Maori trades and training fund has only delivered four jobs. And the employment ‘action plans’ for Maori, Pasifika, women and jobseekers are still on the drawing board.
“Labour’s inability to deliver is hurting New Zealanders who want to work.
“While government investment in infrastructure does have a role to play in New Zealand’s Covid recovery, Labour isn’t doing enough to make sure its promised jobs are materialising in return for the billions of dollars being spent.
“There are almost 200,000 New Zealanders without work, the Government needs to be taking more decisive and focused steps to help get Kiwis into work and back on their own two feet.”
Written Question Answers Are Below.
12598 (2021). Hon Louise Upston to the Minister for Infrastructure
Published date: 12 Apr 2021
Hon Louise Upston to the Minister for Infrastructure (12 Apr 2021):
Further to WPQ reply 2267 (2021), what is the most recent forecasts the Minister has received regarding the total number of jobs, if any, that will be supported by the shovel ready infrastructure projects, and what are these forecasts broken down by individual project?
Hon Grant Robertson (Minister for Infrastructure) replied:
The total projected FTEs for IRG is 11,740.5 which differs slightly from the total of 11,766 provided in the answer to written question 2278 (2021) as a result of revisions to forecasting.
As I outlined written question 9675 (2021), information about jobs numbers on the projects is being collated and will be reported on in due course.
4177 (2021). Hon Louise Upston to the Minister of Finance
Published date: 22 Feb 20214177 (2021).
Hon Louise Upston to the Minister of Finance (22 Feb 2021):
Do the figures for jobs created included in Government press releases about Shovel Ready projects still stand given his answer to WPQ 2267 (2021) that “it is too early to give a firm estimate of the number of jobs to be supported from the Shovel Ready programme”, if so, what were these estimates in the press releases based on?”
Hon Grant Robertson (Minister of Finance) replied:
The figures for jobs in the press releases were the estimates based on the data provided by third parties at the time and included in applications made to the Infrastructure Reference Group in April 2020. These job numbers are then validated during due diligence of the projects, and adjusted accordingly after engineering reviews.
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