The reason is that every year and in every debate the goalposts keep on changing when it comes to the response by the opposition parties. When the President presents a vision, they ask where the implementation plan is, and when he presents a report card, they ask where the vision is. I can type, I can write, you see. So, don't worry, I can do that. This did not arrive by e-mail from the provincial legislature of Cape Town. [Laughter.]
In fact, a closer look at the speech by the hon Lindiwe Mazibuko reflects that a response to the state of the nation was already written even before the President delivered the state of the nation address. [Laughter.]
She accuses the President of reheating the previous state of the nation address just so that she can be excused for her repetitive annual "inhlamba" session that she dishes out in every debate. A colleague of mine was showing me a tweet by City Press on line, "Lindiwe Mazibuko repeated the same thing she has been saying for the last four years. So, it's not only me who sees that, even the City Press and the people out there do. [Laughter.]
The response by some in the coalition on my left, which in our view does not honour the title of official opposition, was so weak that even if strengthened, there are calls from afar that we need to be blessed with a new opposition party after the 2014 general election. We have just recently heard people say that we need a new opposition because the current opposition has failed us. [Applause.] Hopefully, when that happens, we will have a valuable debate about the state of the nation address.
Honourable President and hon members, youth unemployment is a global crisis and there is no silver bullet for it. According to the International Labour Organisation, ILO, more than six million young people have joined the long queues of unemployed, and are neither in school nor in a training facility or skills institution. Countries such as Brazil, Russia, India and China, Bric, and all over the world, are battling with the same problem that our own government is dealing with. And because of its global phenomena, our country had to deal with both the internal and external drivers of youth unemployment.
Typically, many nations have resorted to traditional measures such as imposed austerity, increased tariffs on imported goods, stricter control of their borders and oversubsidisation of their mainstream economic sectors.
As governments all over the world steamed ahead to save individual shareholders in the financial sector, our government was bold enough to increase public sector spending, halt retrenchments and introduce new schemes and incentives to encourage job retention and job creation. This has led to the government saving millions of jobs and concentrating their efforts on creating new ones. This required boldness and determination in a period where there was none and as a result we are recognised as one of the few countries that will soon come out of the red in relation to youth unemployment.
Our economy, like all other major economies, has not been creating new jobs and this has affected millions of young people eager to join the labour market. To suggest that youth employment is stagnated by inflexible labour laws and high entry-level wages is simplistic, to say the least.
Go and tell that to the workers in De Doorns who were subjected to starvation wages for years. Go and tell that to 14 000 workers in Gold Fields who may actually be retrenched, and the DA has the pride to come into this House and defend. It is about time that you are exposed for who you are. [Interjections.]