Mediawatch: Bad Stats And Stereotypes Boost Bootcamp Bid

Colin
Peacock, Mediawatch Presenter

On Anzac
Day, pundit Matthew Hooton floated the return of national
military service in his weekly New Zealand Herald
column headlined ‘The
case for universal military training’.

After
setting out the country’s current financial problems, he
proposed getting a bit more of a social bang out of the big
bucks that – like it or not – we’ll soon be spending on
defence.

“Why not invest it in universal military
training – not as an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff,
like boot camps, but as a fence at the top?” he
asked.

He described the idea as “Outward Bound for
everyone” but with military skills added – along with
“cooking, cleaning, changing a tyre and making a school
lunch – skills their Gen X and Gen Y parents have failed to
teach them or develop themselves.”

Each year 70,000
New Zealanders turn 18, and he reckoned about 9000 of those
aren’t in employment, education or training and they’re
already costing taxpayers anyway.

It’s an interesting
idea. Many nations – including several in the EU – have
compulsory national service and there could be social and
individual benefits to such a scheme.

In 2023
political party TOP floated
a national civic service programme offering a $5000
tax-free savings boost to under-23s.

But this week
that talking point morphed into a talk radio pile-on
deploying stereotypes and misusing statistics.

Talk
radio amps the idea

Universal military service got
universal backing from talkback callers to the Herald’s
stablemate Newstalk ZB this week.

“Kids that have got
ADHD and some on the spectrum could actually benefit a lot
from it,” one caller confidently claimed on Monday, basing
her opinion on reality TV shows where people are “stuck on
an island and left to fend for themselves.”

But ZB
Afternoons host Matt Heath reckoned the problem
wasn’t young people on the spectrum – but on their
phones.

“They’d be scared to be stripped of their
digital rights, but a lot of them know that that would be a
good thing for them. There’s no doubt that you would feel a
lot better after a day’s physical activity out in the
wop-wops,” he told ZB listeners last Monday

When
Gen-Xer Heath created the irreverent youth TV show Back
of the Y 30 years ago, you’d have got long odds on him
endorsing military service for young Kiwis on talk radio
thirty years later.

But he wasn’t alone.

“I love
the idea,” ZB Wellington Mornings host Nick Mills
said the same day.

“We’re not talking about someone
that wants to be a doctor, a teacher or an apprentice
mechanic. We’re talking about directionless people. Off you
go to compulsory six months in military training. What’s
wrong with it?”

“One in four 15-to-19 year olds do not
have a job. 25 per cent of young, healthy New Zealanders
don’t have work,” he told listeners.

But many of the
25 percent without a job are still at school, university,
polytechnic or in training. Universal or compulsory military
service would also capture the would-be doctors, traders and
tradies in work, education or training.

But Mills’
callers – most of whom sounded like their working lives were
long behind them – still liked the sound of it for today’s
young Kiwis nonetheless.

Sounding the alarm with
stats

While he wasn’t explicitly backing universal
national service, columnist and broadcaster Duncan Garner
also reckoned compulsory bootcamp was an idea whose time had
come.

“Our teenagers aren’t working! One in four 15 to
19 year-olds are not employed, not working, not in education
or training. One in four! 25 percent!” his Editor in
Chief podcast proclaimed.

“The stats don’t lie,”
Garner insisted in his podcast.

His column for The
Listener headlined When
did our teens stop working and whose fault is it? seized
on Stats NZ data to the end of 2024 showing 23.8 percent of
15-19 year olds were jobless.

But that included those
still in school, university or in training and the actual
proportion of under 25s not in employment, education, or
training (NEETs) was 13.2 per cent in December
2024.

In the Listener, Garner lamented “tens of
thousands of young men and women who don’t attend school,
work or some form of training … who are idle at
home”.

“It’s not just a ticking time bomb. Because I
truly believe the bomb’s gone off with these
numbers.”

“They’re gaming. They’re on social media,
doomscrolling. Not in any form of training or education,” he
claimed on Editor in Chief.

If Kiwi youths
really are doomscrolling in their tens of thousands, that’d
be great for the media – given that it means flipping
through troubling news headlines many times each
day.

How many are there really?

The MSD
Insights report in 2023 said 39,000 people under 25 were
receiving a main benefit in 2023 – and about half of those
were getting Jobseeker Support.

It’ll be a bit more
than that by now given rising unemployment in 2024, but it’s
likely there would be roughly 20,000 under 25s currently
classed as ‘work ready’ but not working, learning or
training today.

The unemployment rate is higher – and
growing faster – for 15-19 year olds than in any other age
group. And the rate of young people who are NEET – not in
employment, education, or training – went up more than one
percent to 13.2 percent in the quarter to December – the
last period where stats are available.

Not
good.

But in the
past decade the previous annual peak was 12.8 percent in
the year to March 2021. The low point was 11.2 percent two
years later.

A Stats
NZ analysis of 2004 to 2024 showed the NEET rate was
higher than it is today from the GFC of 2008 until
2014.

Even when we had a so-called rockstar economy
back in the 2010s, the rate didn’t go below 11.5 per cent,
according to MSD stats.

Jobs harder to get

In
his Listener article, Garner acknowledged it’s harder
for young people to get jobs now because older people here
are working longer and we’ve had record immigration in
recent years.

An 20
percent analysis by Berl in March confirmed
that.

But Berl also found the labour force
participation rate for 15-24 year olds increased in the last
quarter of 2024 by 2.5 percent to 66.4 percent.

It
reached a high of 69.2 percent in 2024. In September that
year, recruitment company Eclipse identified a “surge in
participation rates among 15-19 year olds in the last two
years”.

“Factors such as tightened education policies,
economic conditions, and evolving job market dynamics have
influenced youth decisions,” Eclipse said, which – if true –
means more young people adapting and not opting to sit idle
at home.

“They are eager to work,” said Berl’s
analysis in March.

“It could also mean that youth and
young adults are exploring other avenues of occupation, such
as tertiary education – including vocational
education.”

And also Australia.

“The brain drain
could become a brain flood if young adults … move there to
take advantage of the stronger job market.”

In which
case, the prospect of compulsory military service would
probably become another push factor for thousands of young
Kiwis who do have education, training and
plans.

Unemployment for 15-24 year-olds is
significantly lower in Australia, as Duncan Garner pointed
out in The Listener, and welfare rules are also
tighter.

But in the first two months of this year
alone, it climbed from under
8 percent to over 10 in Australia.

Mediawatch
couldn’t find a rash of comment in the media there claiming
a lost generation of jobless, directionless Australians are
heading straight to the social welfare scrapheap, clutching
their digital devices.

Youth unemployment and welfare
dependency are a real – and expensive – issues. National
service is an interesting idea that could deliver social and
individual benefits.

But putting thousands of young
people with prospects into military service alongside a much
smaller number of jobless, undereducated ones is unlikely to
ease the main problem of an underperforming, unproductive
economy.

And those in the media opining about it
should deploy more of the discipline they claim is lacking
in the young when they seize on statistics to reinforce
stereotypes.

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