Nicola Willis addresses Southlanders’ concerns about economy, teachers, youth crime, and healthcare

National deputy leader Nicola Willis wants children to have a safe environment to learn and grow in while meting out punishment for those who turn to criminal activities.

Speaking to a room full of Southlanders on Friday afternoon, Willis addressed the local community’s concerns ranging from youth crime to the Tiwai smelter agreement.

The politician said that National would make sure that there were more sentencing options available for youth criminals in response to a local boy who raised concerns about his classmates dropping out of classes and ram raiding.

“What we want to see is a new sentence called young, serious offender …

“We also want to introduce military academies as a sentencing option so that young people who are repeatedly doing serious crimes can go to a military academy for up to 12 months to get the support and the boundaries they need to get back on track,” she said.

Tiwai smelter important for Southland

Willis acknowledged the importance of the jobs and economic impact that the Tiwai aluminium smelter had on the Southland region.

When asked about National’s solution for the smelter, Willis said, “We want to see the smelter be able to strike an electricity arrangement … we’re hopeful that the two parties will come to an agreement on that.

“We already realised that the Tiwai smelter is a really important source of jobs and incomes for the community.

So we appreciate how important those negotiations are.”

Training and support to address labour shortage and unemployment

“We need to acknowledge the reality that even here in Invercargill, there are hundreds of people who can work, should work, who are not working,” Willis said.

“And even while there are job vacancies on our farms, in our stores and our businesses, we have people on the benefit,” she said in her speech.

Willis said that wider worker shortage in New Zealand did hold businesses, hospitals and schools back.

“We think that the Government has been too slow to move to have sensible immigration settings, for example, by not putting nurses on the green list for immigration purposes, which would have allowed them to come from other parts of the world and immediately become residents in New Zealand.

“Another part of addressing worker shortages is ensuring we are training and retaining New Zealand workers.

“And third, we also need to ensure that we’re providing good support for people who are currently on our job seeker benefit to get into paid work,” Willis said.