✨ Government Policy Announcement
3354 NEW ZEALAND GAZETTE No. 125
crime through recognising and tackling its root causes. The strategy targets
family violence and child abuse; other violence, including sexual violence;
burglary; theft of and from cars; serious traffic offending; and youth offending
and re-offending.
Special emphasis will be placed on the importance of reducing youth offending.
Today’s youth offenders are all too often tomorrow’s hardened criminals. It is
crucial to turn young offenders into productive members of society and away
from a life of adult crime.
New programmes will be established to change the behaviour of high risk young
offenders. These include a pilot residential programme; day reporting centres
and a Youth Drug Court; early intervention programmes for children and youth
at risk; improvements in the effectiveness of family group conference; and the
establishment of a youth crime information database.
Consistent with the confidence and supply agreement with United Future, my
government will seek the cooperation of all parties to pass the Victims Rights
Bill this year. Other measures to support the victims of crime will be
implemented, including ensuring the security needs of victims are met.
Further expansion of the restorative justice pilot programme will ensure victims
a greater voice in responding to offending against them and reduce the
prospect of offenders going on to commit further crimes.
Honourable Members,
Health and law and order are not the only significant areas of personal and
social security that my government will focus on. Housing, social security and
employment rights also figure prominently in its plans.
The state housing stock will continue to be increased, reversing the decline of
the 1990s. The existing stock will be modernised and upgraded. The Special
Housing Action Zones initiative will be enhanced.
Work will be undertaken to develop partnerships with local government in
housing provision and to encourage retention of local authority owned housing
stock.
My government’s approach to the wider areas of social assistance will focus on
better supporting families and children, simplifying the system, and improving
opportunities to move into paid employment. It is intended to move towards
annual reviews of Family Support and Family Tax Credit rates and thresholds.
Priority will also be given to increasing the maximum number of subsidised
childcare hours to support parents moving into employment and the introduction
of an “abatement free zone” for people receiving income support and
accommodation supplement, encouraging and rewarding movement into
employment.
These moves will be backed by improved case management for sole parents,
improved programmes to help people moving into work, including better case
management and employment programmes to assist people to gain skills.
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Online Sources for this page:
VUW Te Waharoa —
NZ Gazette 2002, No 125
Gazette.govt.nz —
NZ Gazette 2002, No 125
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
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Government Policy and Economic Strategy
(continued from previous page)
🏛️ Governance & Central AdministrationCrime reduction, Youth offending, Victims rights, Restorative justice, State housing, Social security, Employment rights, Family support, Childcare subsidies