Job benefit for Bay linked to drug test

The president of Federated Farmers believes a move to drug-test beneficiaries has some merit while a major Hawke's Bay apple producer believes it would help keep people in jobs and ease the labour shortage in the primary industries.

Hawke's Bay farmer and Federated Farmers national president Bruce Wills said initially he was upset that the media climbed on top of a ``five-second comment'' by Deputy Prime Minister Bill English at the organisation's annual meeting in Auckland.

Mr English suggested some people on the unemployment benefit should be tested for drugs to make sure they were capable of taking up job opportunities.

``It was just in response to a question one of my staff asked Mr English, about what the Government was doing to move New Zealand into employment.

``The five-second comment was all the coverage we got on television so I guess we weren't discussing anything else important.''

Mr Wills said the comments had ``picked up the pace'' this week. ``And even though it was a bit of a side comment, from my view it has some merit. The reality is this country relies on agriculture as a big export earner but it seems bizarre we can't find enough New Zealanders to work on farms.

``We have a huge problem in the South Island alone where we have 1500 Filipino people working on dairy farms because Kiwis don't want the work, yet we have an unemployment rate of 6.7 per cent.

``Or maybe it's because New Zealanders are hard to employ as they often fail drug tests.''

Mr Wills said Filipino people had earned a reputation as being ``hard workers'' and ``didn't do drugs''.

``It's not as if the pay rates are bad. They are attractive. The dairy guys are earning well above the minimum wage.

``There are some people that have a real need to receive a benefit and I have no problem with that, but there are others who haven't even got a vocation or focus and it makes me grumpy to think there are people failing drug tests excluding themselves from being able to work.''

Hawke's Bay's Apollo Apples director Bruce Beaton said the company already used random drug tests and had completed two this year.

``That is something that we are very aware of as we have a lot of machinery and equipment, so we want to make sure our place is safe for the people to work.

``I would say it would be of benefit to have drug tests for beneficiaries, anything that would prepare people, to get them and keep people in jobs would be good.''

Mr Beaton said the other side to the issue was the fact there were not enough workers to meet the peak of the harvest season.

``There are not enough people coming forward to work, which would enable us to harvest the fruit at the right time. ``We employ, in the peak of the season, around 850 to 900 people. A third would be RSE workers, the rest are Kiwis as well as a few internationals.''-->-->