As July dawns and the winter weather gets colder, I want to bring you some good news about the important changes that our Government made from 1 July that will help many thousands of New Zealanders.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!Most of these changes are related to the government’s COVID economic response to help New Zealand recover and rebuild from the impact of the pandemic.
We are providing free apprenticeships across all sectors, and free trades training in key sectors to ensure that young New Zealanders have the opportunity to develop skills and a career path during this challenging time. We have recognised that we need our tradies now more than ever with construction and infrastructure playing such a huge role in our economic recovery plans. Many people in our communities have lost their jobs to COVID and our Government is making it easier than ever to retrain and get moving again.
As part of our employer assistance programme, we are also allowing employers to access up to $16,000 of government funding to help them hire a new apprentice or to retrain an apprentice they have already hired. This programme will be up and running in August and it will help employers keep their workers on the job as well as helping us to rebuild the country faster and better.
We are a nation of homeowners and DIY enthusiasts and there is some good news for those of us too. We have reduced the Building Levy from 1 July and we will be relaxing the requirements for needing building consents for simple additions like car-ports and sleep-outs. These changes will help remove barriers to homeowners from improving their homes and also employing people in the construction industry to help them Increasing Paid Parental Leave was one of our election promises in 2017. We have now increased Paid Parental Leave up to 26 weeks and the maximum payment rate by $20 a week. Paid parental leave matters a lot for new parents as it helps new babies and their parents to bond as a family during the crucial first few months of an infant’s life. Close bonding with infants in those early stages helps set them up to thrive and succeed later in life. As a very much hands-on father of three young boys, am proud to be part of a government that has helped strengthen those family bonds across our country.
We’ve also delivered on long overdue pay increases for our qualified Early Childhood Education teachers, helping them as they give the next generation the best possible start in life.
I am positive that these changes are part our government’s plan to make sure we’re rebuilding a better New Zealand post-COVID than the one we inherited.
We are now in this privileged position because of New Zealand’s successful health response to COVID-19. There’s no playbook for this kind of pandemic, but our team of five million worked together and made big sacrifices so that we could get the virus under control here faster than in many other countries around us.
Our government has a clear plan to help New Zealand rebuild and recover, the work is now underway, and we are determined to keep New Zealand moving.
-Michael Wood, MP for Mount Roskill, Auckland. Parliamentary Under Secretary to the Minister for Ethnic Communities.