I just read a story about a young woman who feels “defeated”. “I know New Zealand doesn’t have work for me, because that’s the economy right now.” She is tired of the endless cycle of attending the MSD (Ministry of Social Development) seminars and applying for jobs. 

So far, 130,000 have left Aotearoa and we’re still bleeding. Often the ones leaving are the best qualified who we’ve spent money educating. They also know our culture and our ways. 

As a result, we’ll need to educate more when our job market recovers because we can’t always rely on poaching from poor countries and putting more burden on to them. 

We also need to look after New Zealanders so they can get decent jobs. 

The act of sacking people and discontinuing government contracts to save money is a false economy. 

Training replacement people is a lot more expensive and houses, hospitals, schools, roads, public transport etc will need to be paid for and built and staffed eventually. You can’t put that off forever. 

Then there is the gap in between, where our overall productivity diminishes and we go backwards. 

Our Government is again making illogical, short-term, ideological choices. Totally! 

Mary-Ann de Kort