JAMI-LEE ROSS MP for Botany

I am pleased to see action being taken at the highest level on this issue.  The reforms announced this week will help rebalance the changes made in 2002 and focus councils on achieving their core tasks at the least cost to rate payers.

More places with the Youth Guarantee

The Government is keeping its focus on helping young people by announcing that there will be 9,616 training places available under the Youth Guarantee Scheme.

The Youth Guarantee Scheme is designed to help 16 and 17 year olds for whom school is not working and who are at risk of being left behind. 

This year there will be 7,345 fee-free places available through various Institutes of Technology, Polytechnics and other education providers.  Courses will include priority trade areas like carpentry, engineering, horticulture and plumbing.

There has been a significant increase in demand for a place in these courses so it is great to see more opportunities being made available.  Obviously these programmes are working for our young people and word is getting around as to how beneficial they are.

Member of Parliament for Botany, Jami-Lee Ross is pleased to see national and local progress towards achieving the Government’s health targets.  The latest figures from the Ministry of Health show the Counties Manukau District Health Board has improved against four of the targets: shorter stays in Emergency Departments, improved access to elective surgery, increased immunisation and better help for smokers to quit.

“National health targets are an important tool to ensure better health services are delivered to New Zealanders. Delivering better public services is one of the Government’s four key priorities for this term.  We campaigned on that platform and it is great to see it being achieved already.” Mr Ross says.

“The latest results, which cover the three months to December 2011, have shown record improvements nationwide.  District Health Boards are focusing even more on patients, and in turn, patients are benefiting from the Government’s $1.5 billion extra funding over the past three years.”