2020 Election: Judith Collins to Make Skills Policy Announcement

National Party leader Judith Collins wants to invest $ 250 million over four years in a set of skills-building measures, including training 30,000 unemployed and helping 5,000 companies start their own businesses.

Collins made the announcement of the re-training and skills policy in Nelson today, following last night’s Newshub Reid Research poll that had National with 29.6 percent support.

“Central to this is SkillStart, a rapid retraining and job placement scheme, which will get displaced Kiwis into jobs quickly and provide a strong incentive for polytechnics, universities and private training providers to deliver training courses. short, “Collins said.

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SkillStart would cost $ 120 million over four years and aims to get 30,000 people back to work. Tertiary training providers would be eligible to receive $ 4,000 for each unemployed person they retrain for full-time work in one year.

The new training courses would be approved within three months through a new expedited NZQA approval process, he said.

“This expedited process will only be available to existing suppliers with a good track record.”

The duration of the program will vary from three months to a year, and payment to suppliers will be conditional on the new employee keeping his job beyond the 90-day trial period, which National wants to reintroduce for all companies.

National’s policy also includes:

• Small Business Builder – A 12-week training and mentoring program to provide 5,000 experienced tradies with the skills they need to start a business.

• Small Business Accelerator, at a cost of $ 20 million: a $ 5,000 grant to at least 4,000 small businesses for management training to help them create jobs.

• Job coaches under 25 years of age within WINZ offices to assist with intensive ‘road to work’ plans.

• Skills and Jobs Centers, costing $ 10 million, to expand the national model to match unemployed Kiwis with infrastructure jobs.

• Establish goals to reduce the number of beneficiaries and the number of children in beneficiary households, and manage the money for those up to 25 years of age who do not fulfill their job search obligations.

• Reverse the government’s vocational education reforms

It also includes aspects of the technology policy previously announced by National: 1,000 tertiary scholarships (costing $ 10 million) per year for students in low-decile schools for the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); restore funding (at a cost of $ 28 million) for ICT graduate schools to increase the number of graduates; a global PhD scholarship program (costing $ 12 million) to recruit 50 STEM PhD candidates from leading universities each year to spend at least six months in New Zealand during their PhD.

Labor has already announced its intention to put $ 300 million into a flexible salary scheme, a wage subsidy to help employers hire those who receive a benefit and / or are at risk of unemployment. Businesses would receive a subsidy of $ 7,500 on average, and up to $ 22,000, to hire unemployed New Zealanders.

This morning, Collins joined Nelson’s local national MP Nick Smith in announcing the rebuilding of the earthquake-prone Nelson Hospital by 2028.

Smith said there was some frustration in the community over the lack of certainty about the timeline for rebuilding the hospital.

The government is continuing to strengthen the Bowen House earthquake in Wellington, which Smith said showed the usual propensity to take care of their own before other major buildings such as Nelson Hospital.

The hospital tower and chimney only met 20 percent of the current standard for earthquakes, he said, and by law the building had until 2028 to meet the new standard.

Smith presented National’s schedule, including community consultation next year, detailed work design and costs the following year, consent work in 2023, and construction from 2024 to 2027.

There was no certainty about the cost of the upgrade, but it would be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, he said.

The new hospital would have 200 beds, he said, or a third more than the current capacity of 149 beds.

It would be on the current site of the hospital.

“We don’t want to spend millions of dollars on bureaucrats exploring other sites.”

The announcement follows a Newshub Reid Research poll last night that had National at 29.6 percent, far behind Labor at 50.1 percent.

National’s result was 4.5 percentage points higher than the previous Newshub Reid Research poll, which the party had dismissed as dishonest.

Act was at 6.3%, Greens at 6.5% and New Zealand First languished at 1.9%.

This morning, Collins visited Core Transport Technologies before heading to the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.

She is ending the day with a meeting with the local GreyPower chapter.