First Impressions By Brendan Horan

The most critical issue facing our country is the loss of employment opportunities and the resulting social and economic fallout.

Thousands of jobs have been lost since the National-led government took over in 2008 and this trend will continue under existing policies.

Unemployment is a cancer eating at the heart of our social fabric. There is genuine poverty in a country once described by that great Prime Minister Richard John Seddon as 'God's Own”. We have increasing social dislocation and it is sometimes difficult to reconcile the waffle and spin around Parliament with what is happening in the real world.

The worst injustice inflicted on those relegated to the industrial and social scrapheap is the attitude on high that somehow the victims are to blame for their plight. Actually most of the blame lies with the banks and financial markets and the politicians who removed the legal safeguards that kept these money manipulators in check.

Make no mistake. The world's economic problems were not caused by ordinary people but ordinary people are doing the suffering. In parts of Europe unemployment has reached 25 per cent with the rate soaring over 50 per cent for those under 25 years of age.

There is no quick fix but here in New Zealand we must do everything possible to reduce the social damage. This is why it is so important for us to own our strategic assets, our financial institutions, our land and our infrastructure. At the same time we should be trying to educate, train or retrain those of us who can't find a job or have no qualifications.

We fear that too many workers are coming from overseas to fill jobs that local people could be trained for. There is no excuse for this policy. It is disloyal and discriminates against those who are victims of the financial fallout. We simply cannot afford to lose yet another generation.