Australia's biggest provider of work-for-the-dole programmes, Mission Australia, says it is keen to move into New Zealand if an incoming National Government puts such programmes up for tender here.
The organisation, formed by merging seven local city missions which earned A$254 million ($322 million) last year mainly fromgovernment contracts, was invited over by National's shadow welfare minister Judith Collins to talk about the Australian work-for-the-dole system.
Ms Collins this week denied a claim by Green MP Sue Bradford that National planned to use Mission Australia as a "lead contractor" to manage contracts with smaller non-profit agencies if it won this year's election.
"There are no proposals whatsoever to use them here to do anything," she said.
But Mission Australia's chief executive, New Zealander Toby Hall, told the Herald from Sydney yesterday that the organisation would be keen to cross the Tasman.
"We have an Australian operation, we have an operation in the United Kingdom and in several Asian countries, so in the longer term in the right environment we would be happy to work in New Zealand," he said.
"If the National Party put programmes up for tender, particularly in the employment field, we would look very seriously at coming and providing our services.
"We are very effective at helping long-term unemployed people back into employment. We believe we do that well and we would be interested in working in that field in New Zealand."
Mr Hall, 41, was chief executive of the South Taranaki District Council until he took a job with World Vision in Australia in 2004. He became head of Mission Australia in 2006.
The last National Government introduced a compulsory work-for-the-dole scheme in 1998, but it was scrapped after Helen Clark's Labour Government won power the next year. A 2001 evaluation found that the scheme reduced the chances of people getting a job by cutting the time they had to search for jobs.
But John Howard's Liberal Government persisted with a similar scheme for the long-term unemployed in Australia, placing about 64,000 people a year into part-time work. Mission Australia managed 15,300 of those placements last year.
National proposed compulsory work or training for the long-term unemployed before the last election. Ms Collins said last year that the scheme would be trialled initially for people under 26 in South Auckland, Northland and Gisborne.
