A good summary in The Herald yesterday:
Expect radical changes to economic policy, says Robertson
Grant Robertson says New Zealanders can expect a radical shift in the Labour Party’s economic policy ahead of the 2017 election as his party looks to prepare workers for huge changes in the labour market in coming decades.
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“If we look ahead two decades, there will be enormous change,” he told the Herald from Paris. “Up to half of the jobs in the economy today won’t be there.”
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Mr Robertson said addressing these changes would mean a radical change of direction for his party. “I do think there will be some big shifts because that reflects the magnitude of the change that is happening,” he said.One of the ideas he has been discussing in Paris is Denmark’s “flexisecurity” model. The Danish system has three parts. It has flexible rules for hiring and firing workers, to make it easier to cut staff in downturns and easier to hire new staff when an economy rebounds. It has a generous unemployment benefit of up to 90 per cent for low-paid workers. And it has an “active labour market” policy, which means unemployed are helped into work, given guidance or re-trained.
Mr Robertson said New Zealand already had a flexible labour market, but it needed to be balanced with greater security and income support.
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“I expect big changes in the education and training system to be one of the things that comes out of the commission,” the Labour MP said. …
Well worth reading the whole piece in The Herald. It’s a good thing that one of the major parties is thinking seriously about the future…
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