House Chair, the DA notes the release by the Presidency of the draft National Youth Policy 2014-19. The draft policy provides a good diagnostic overview of the key challenges facing our youth, chief among which is joblessness, with the youth accounting for 67% of the unemployed.

But the draft policy is too statist and too interventionist. Its economic proposals are all state-driven. It trumpets public employment schemes in the form of youth brigades, a state-run mass youth enterprise creation programme, continued support for the hopeless National Youth Development Agency and a variety of measures that are likely to undermine job-creating economic growth.

Instead, the youth policy should put forward bold proposals to promote jobs by, firstly, introducing a real youth wage subsidy; secondly, deregulating the labour market so that the youth can find work more easily; and, thirdly, creating incentives for, rather than imposing penalties on, the private sector to take on first-time employees and get more involved in training.

If we do not do this, and if the Presidency continues to look to the state as a saviour, to be in thrall to the left and to view business as an adversary, our youth unemployment rate will continue to climb. Thank you.