Unemployed school leavers need to “get off the couch, stop playing PlayStation and go find a job”, Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has told Rotorua business leaders.
The audience applauded his “tough-love” message yesterday, linking the city’s high unemployment rate to poor school attendance.
With Rotorua MP Todd McClay, Luxon answered questions at the Rotorua Business Chamber’s Westpac Smarts Luncheon at the Pullman Hotel.
Earlier in the day, Luxon visited Ngāti Whakaue’s Manawa Gardens housing development to announce $28 million in Government funding towards stage two.
Chamber chief executive Melanie Short asked what the Government would do about Rotorua’s “really worrying” jobless figures.
According to economic consultancy Infometrics, 6.3% of the Rotorua population was unemployed in the year to June 2025, above the national average of 5.2%.
The NEET rate – those aged 15 to 24 not in education, employment or training – was 17.3%, above the national rate of 12.9%.
Short relayed these statistics to Luxon, adding that the chamber worked with the Ministry of Social Development to place jobseekers with local businesses for mentorship, even if they had no jobs to offer.
“We really believe in ‘you have to see it, to be it’.”
Despite these efforts, she said unemployment remained “really high”.
Luxon told the audience that improving school attendance was “job number one” for reducing future unemployment.
“Get the kids to school.”
He said 47% of Rotorua secondary students attended school 90% of the time, meaning “53% of your kids are not in school regularly”.
The NZ Herald reported last month that, nationally, just over 58% of students attended school more than 90% of the time in Term 2, a 5% improvement on the same term last year, but well short of the Government’s 80% goal.
Luxon said many teenagers had been “trained” to believe they could “come and go” from school as they wished, with parents and caregivers failing to hold them accountable.
“When did [it] become acceptable just to say it’s a bit relative as to whether I go to school today or not?”
He said this mindset left many young people disengaged from learning and at risk of long-term welfare dependence.
Unemployment rates were not high compared to those in the past, he said. For example, the rate reached more than 10% in the 1990s when he left university.
Yet a record number were on the jobseeker benefit, and “that dog don’t hunt real good”.
Luxon said people who went on a main benefit before 25 typically stayed on it for 20–22 years, costing the country roughly $20,000 a year each.
It would be better to “pull that money forward”, and invest in keeping young people in school by showing them “we care about you, we love you, we want you to do better than consign yourself to a life of welfare”.
For the 18- and 19-year-olds already out of school, he said: “I’m sorry, we’re not paying your benefit … That’s your parents’ responsibility … You’ve got to get off the couch, stop playing PlayStation and go find a job.”
The Government’s “parent test” change to Jobseeker Support and Emergency Benefit eligibility was announced in this year’s Budget and is set to take effect in 2027, affecting nearly 9000 young people.
Luxon told the 120 business leaders at the event, “You’re having to do so much investment.
“You’re having to be the mum, the psychotherapist, employer, everything”.
There were plenty of jobs available, such as in horticulture.
The Government’s job was to make sure young people were work-ready for employers, he said, and it was introducing measures to “retrain” under-25s to understand that welfare dependency was “not a pathway for success”.
Steps were being taken, such as making driver’s licences easier for teenagers to obtain so they could get to work, and overhauling NCEA, “because it turns out you get credits for form-filling at the moment”.
It was a “tough-love conversation” and “maybe a bit of a reality check”, but said the “brutal facts” had to be confronted to deliver a “common-sense plan”, he said.
The audience applauded.
Short also asked McClay when Rotorua would start seeing regional transport connectivity improve, saying businesses saw this as a “barrier to growth”.
McClay said significant money had been spent on “almost every” road into Rotorua over the years, but two areas still needed work.
The east side, near the airport, could be improved with a roundabout or traffic lights, and he said funding discussions were happening with the Rotorua Lakes Council.
The Waipā industrial zone was “much more challenging”, and discussions were taking place.
Annabel Reid is a multimedia journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, based in Rotorua. Originally from Hawke’s Bay, she has a Bachelor of Communications from the University of Canterbury.