Phil GOFF
Labour Leader
1 November

Work better than welfare

The best welfare reform is to get people into work. Renaming benefits and penalising parents won’t create jobs, Labour Leader Phil Goff says.

“Kiwis want to work. John Key has been promising 170,000 more jobs since early 2010. Where are they?

“Fiddling with the welfare system and punishing parents won’t create them. A long-term economic plan will. As Business NZ said, National obviously doesn’t have one,” Phil Goff said.

“John Key says he plans to get 46,000 people off benefits within four years. Yet there are now 60,000 more people claiming a benefit since he became Prime Minister.

“National has done nothing for three years about the escalating numbers of Kiwis forced onto benefits. Now four weeks before an election it announces a policy that just tinkers with the system.

“Kiwis will see this for what it is – an admission of failure. National hasn’t created jobs and has no plan to do so in the future. All it is proposing is to rename benefits and tell parents with children to get back to work. What you have to do is give them jobs to go to and affordable childcare,” Phil Goff said.

“Labour is committed to lifting people out of poverty, and to tackling unemployment. We will do that with a suite of measures that include paying the dole to employers to take on apprentices, creating more industry training places and up-skilling our young people.

“Providing jobs and skills - placing people in work, education or training- is the best welfare policy and we have a plan to do that,” Phil Goff said.

ENDS

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