59080 (2025). Arena Williams to the Minister for Youth

59080 (2025). Arena Williams to the Minister for Youth: What policy initiatives, if any, has the Minister introduced to "advocate for and champion New Zealand’s young people aged 12-24 years?"

Hon James Meager: One policy initiative is to redirect taxpayer funding into programmes that partner with communities, NGOs and charities in order to improve educational attendance, reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training, and reduce the number of young offenders. This new stream is based on a co-funding model which doubles the amount of resource available to these programmes. Another policy initiative is to require new contracts with providers to include clear, demonstrable, measurable outcomes based on actual impact on the young person. This is a shift away from the previous approach which relied on self-reported surveys on how the young person felt a programme benefitted them, rather than evidence of actual outcomes. Another iniative was to support the Multi Party Reference Group's attempt to make the Youth Parliament a non-partisan youth development opportunity and not a taxpayer-funded opportunity for party political broadcasts. Another initiative was to fund the Student Volunteer Army in Nelson Tasman to provide additional support and volunteering opportunities for young people in the 2025 flood recovery.