Today, 200 business and community leaders met in Auckland to talk about saving jobs. The Prime Minister, the Minister of Finance and the Governor of the Reserve Bank all spoke to the meeting. They are worried about unemployment and say that many people will lose jobs in the future so everybody must help to save jobs.
Groups of people talked about good ways to help people keep their jobs. They made a list of about 600 ideas. The government then chose 20 of these ideas to think about some more.
Here are some of the ideas:
Workers would work for nine days each fortnight and the tenth day would be for more training or community work. The government would pay for this day.
Both public and private money could be used to help bring more tourists to New Zealand.
The government could help banks to provide money for small businesses to borrow. 97% of New Zealand businesses are very small, employing under 20 people. These businesses need to borrow money so that they can grow and employ more people but banks do not have enough money to lend them.
Another plan would be to build a cycle way from the north of the North Island to the south of the South Island. This would employ 4,000 people and take two years to build. It would be used by tourists as well as New Zealanders.
Now the government has to decide what to do about these ideas. |