Tonight on Close Up ` in an increasingly cut-throat job market, what lies ahead for our young people trying to get work? He's going places fast, so what sets this stoic teenager apart from the rest? Since 2010, I've placed first in every series I've competed in. Sam ` this is his sport. This is his thing that he's good at. Hey. But you know what I find really, truly exhilarating? Bang smack in the middle of nowhere ` Close Up visits the grass roots of theatre... literally Maybe we're weird. Due to the live nature of Close Up, captions for some items may be incomplete. ONE News captions by John Ling and Richard Edmunds. Close Up captions by Glenna Casalme and Virginia Philp. Good evening. Well, you would have heard the news this week that our unemployment rate is at its worst level in 13 years. Doesn't that seem a while back? Back in the days of Y2K; back in the days of Britney Spears or Ricky Martin. Now, this shows you what's been happening with our unemployment since then. Looking pretty good until 2008, when, of course, the global financial crisis hit and the National Party took office. Here's some other numbers for you. In the year to June, redundancy payments topped $39m. And in the last year, 20,000 more people have found themselves unemployed. What's also interesting is that full-time employment has dropped almost 1%, while part time employment has increased 1.4%. That's showing a shift in the country's work pattern. So what does this all mean for those of you looking for work? How has employment changed in the country? How daunting is it for our youth? Massey University's Paul Spoonley has written extensively on employment trends and leads a programme there focused on labour market changes. IS IT FUNDAMENTALLY DIFFERRNT? IS THAT JUST A SIMPLE MORE PART-TIME, LESS FULL-TIME? THE GFC HAS ENHANCE THE TREND BUT IT'S BEEN GOING ON SINCE THE 1990S. THE FULL-TIME SECTOR HAS BEEN CONTRACTING IS THAT GOOD OR BAD? A LOT OF PEOPLE GET TRAPPED THERE, NO OFFENCE TO THE CALL CENTRE INDUSTRY ARE YOU TRAPPED THERE NOW, START LOW STAY LOW? YES, ONCE YOU START LOW, YOU STAY LOW. THEY WILL FACE WHAT WE CALL SCARRING. LOW-TERM. DOES THIS THING GO BACK TO KIDS LEAVING SCHOOL WIHTOUT QUALIFICATIONS IF YOU GO INTO THE WORKFORCE WITHOUT QUALIFICATIONS, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE, AREN'T YOU? ALSO EMPLOYERS ARE EXPECTING MORE QUALIFICATIONS THE DEGREE IS PRETTY MUCH ESSENTIAL. HOW LONG ARE YOU STUDYING FOR? THIS IS DEPRESSING NOW I'M STUDYING TILL 40 I LEFT SCHOOL AT 16. YOU WERE TOLD SCHOOL CERT, UNI ENTRANCE WAS IT. SINCE 2000 WE SEE MORE PEOPLE WE DO SEE A LOT MORE PEOPLE REQUIRING POST-SCHOOL QUALIFICATIONS. WE'RE HEADING TO THE AMERICAN SYSTEM IF YOU HAVE A BACHELOR'S, YOUR EARNING RATE HAS BEEN CONTRACTED. HERE'S WHAT I'VE LEARNT WITH NO OFFENCE TO ACADEMIA IT'S THE ABILITY TO DO THE JOB, ISN'T IT? IF PEOPLE HAVE A PIECE OF PAPER, NO OFFENCE TO ACADEMIA, IT DOESN'T MEAN AS MUCH. I DON'T DISAGREE WITH YOU, BUT EMPLOYERS NOW THINK IT'S THE WAY TO SIFT THROUGH EMPLOYEES AND THERE'S SOMETHING HERE THAT'S GOING ON. THERE'S A GREAT MORE EMPHASIS ON SOFT SKILS. A LOT OF US ARE WORKING IN THE SERVICE AS BEFORE PRESENTING WELL, COMMUNICATION, AND HAVING A GOOD WORK ETHIC. WHAT I'M SEEING ALSO IS A MISMATCH. YOU'RE SEEING JOBS IN ONE PLACE, AND PEOPLE IN ANOTHER. YOU'RE SEEING A LACK OF DOVETAILING ` WE HAVE DONE RESEARCH, AND PEOPLE SAY PEOPLE COMING OUT OF OUR INSTITUTIONS AREN'T QUALIFIED THERE IS ONE SIGNIFICANT FACTOR, AND THAT IS YOUNG PEOPLE DON'T HAVE WORK EXPERIENCE. UNDER 25 UNEMPLOYMENT RATES DOUBLED WILL THAT EVER CHANGE? GREECE SORTS ITSELF OUT? IN 20 YEARS TIME, WILL MY CHILDREN ENTER THIS WORKFORCE? WILL IT GO BACK TO WHAT WE KNOW? NO. I DON'T THINK IT'S GOING TO REVERSE I THINK WE'RE GOING TO SEE MORE AND MORE POST-SECENDARY EDUCATION. APPRECIATE YOU COMING IN TONIGHT Over the years, we've done many stories highlighting the link between obesity and fast food. But there's another story that hasn't been told. You could call it the inconvienient truth about fast foods. They're actually good for our economy. McDonald's, for instance, exports $300m in cheese and dairy products ` more than our entire aquaculture industry. That's oysters, muscles and salmon. This story's about a burger which is beefing up, or maybe I should say lambing up our farming economy. Hadyn Jones is in Taranaki following the meat and the money. UPBEAT GUITAR MUSIC When it comes to tending their flock, John McMurray... Get in, Bud. ...and his workmate Bud are an efficient team. (WHISTLES SHARPLY) For 35 years, John has worked with lambs mostly. I always spend the summer milking cows for the neighbours up here, and that was enough to put me off for life. You see, John's animals are his livelihood. Their muscles become meat on dinner plates around the world, and that money goes in John's pocket. Money. Yeah. Very important word, that. John has 2800 lambs. Soon 2200 of them will be taken from their mum and sent to a factory in Wanganui. They will be killed and cut up. This should not shock you. It's not new. In fact, it's what we've always done. For all of last century and a bit of the one before that, we made our money from putting dead lambs on boats and selling it to the world. ARCHIVE: NZ lamb is packed for other markets these days ` for markets in North America and the Middle East. But in the last two decades the world has fallen out of love with lamb. Slow down, Bud. Slow down. John McMurray knows this. He's got less lambs than ever before. And less colleagues too. Since 1985, we've probably gone from 22,000 sheep and beef businesses down to about 12,000 now, so... it's a hell of a lot of businesses. Our national flock is now less than half of what it was in the early '80s. But if you follow the meat, you can also follow the money. And that journey tells a little story about a ray of hope for farmers everywhere. SLOW, MYSTERIOUS MUSIC In Waitara the staff car park at the Anzco Production Plant is half full. Back in the day the freezing works employed 1000 people. Then it closed and everyone lost their job. So the locals are pretty happy that some of the jobs are back. SLOW MUSIC And it's here in 100 locals have been employed to turn John's lambs into burger patties. We can do about 20,000 an hour. Hamish McCook is one of the bosses. He says the fast food industry has been good for Waitara. The Waitara community has benefited from having this operation here because we've got just over 100 jobs that we're able to give people, and they can be productive, and we see families coming through here as well. So I think it's been really good for the community. It means Cissy spends eight hours a day making sure each patty is just right. MACHINE WHIRRS And in a little room, three women are employed to taste burger patties. They do 32 a day. Hey, girls, testing time. There are no men employed here. They'll come in and eat them. Yeah, they will come and eat them. UPBEAT MUSIC I was born 1.5 K's up the road; I educated 1.5 K's down that way. I work in the middle of town; I live on other side of bridge, and within 2 K's here is my probably final residence up top of the hill of Waitara. and within 2 K's here is my probably final residence up top of the hill of Waitara. So, yeah, I call it my 2 K life. I've never left the place. I love it. Craig McFarlane is the only member of his family not to have had a job at the freezing works. My dad started working at the works; my older brother used to work there; my younger brother and my younger sister. Even my mum worked in there. He owns his own garage and is a local councillor as well. He says it's good meat production is back even if it is fast food. To know that they're actually made in Waitara here and be distributed all around NZ, probably south Australasia, it's probably got to be a boost to that meat industry, and it's certainly a boost to Waitara. XYLOPHONE MUSIC This is the burger that's got the farmers and the meat workers in small towns all excited. It's a McDonald's lamb burger. Doesn't look like much all naked on my kitchen table, but it's a serious bit of eating. It's got 826 calories ` more than any other McDonald's burger. Eating it would account for 40% of your daily energy intake. And in this restaurant in little old New Plymouth, they're selling 1500 lamb burgers a week. The launch of the lamb burger was even more successful than the Angus burger, which was extremely successful, so we're very happy. That's New Plymouth franchise owner Peter Foster. Just don't dress it backward, eh, guys? He tells us he can make the burgers that he sells, he reckons, from bun to box, 20 seconds is the aim. Two at a time saves time. So, this is the very vision former prime minister and trade minister Mike Moore had 30 years ago. If we managed to sell one lamb burger for every 100 hamburgers that are sold in the United States or in Japan, even our 70 million sheep wouldn't be enough. It's a whole area of fast foods that I believe NZ ought to get into. McDonald's NZ is the first in world to sell a lamb burger full time. Australia are trialling it, and the boss here, Patrick Wilson, says people are taking notice of how it sells. The McDonald's region will be watching what we are doing, and I'm sure any success that they see here, they would love to replicate if the economics and the opportunity stacks. So markets maybe like North America. It could be in markets like India, where they don't consume obviously a lot of beef. McDonald's already buys nearly $500m of NZ products a year. What's lesser known is that it's also an exporter. McDonald's says $300m of product gets shipped to its restaurants overseas. JOHN WHISTLES SHARPLY Here, Bud. John McMurray might go to McDonald's once a year if he's lucky. I grow the stuff at home so I don't have to eat out. But he doesn't have to eat burgers to know how important they could be to his livelihood. It's got to be huge for the industry that` There's just millions of people out there that it's gonna be put out in front of. Coming up ` the 19-year-old who's got the need for speed, but also needs the cash to race. And the good old-fashioned K hoedown. The thespian troupe turning woolsheds into theatres. In the world of motorcycle racing, money talks. We're not talking about prize money; we're talking about the cost. With the bike, the maintenance, the entry fees, it's pricey. So if you've got the talent but don't have the cash, what do you do? That's the dilemma of Sam Croft (19). He's a K champ in motorcycle racing and is setting his sights on the European Junior Cup, but he needs 60 grand to get there. Jehan Casinader has the story. It's very tricky with your mind. You've got to be very very focused. 4km of track,... It's absolute concentration. 100% concentration. ...14 tricky corners. That's the stress of it, just being focused on what's coming next, where you're going to brake, how you're going to throw in, lining up the next corner. There's a whole gaggle of riders straight through there as well. Imagine hurtling down these straits at 300 K's an hour. All of a sudden you're coming out of here, thinking, 'All right. Here's a straight coming along,' and then you've got to think about braking, cos it's that fast. Lots of people play rugby. Lots of people play different sports. Sam, this is his sport. This is the thing he's good at. He's good enough to win NZ titles. Now Sam wants to try his luck in Europe. Sam (19) is the national champ in Prolite 250 motorcycle racing. Since 2010, I've placed first in every series that I've competed in. A lot of my mates, they think, 'Oh, motorbike racing's not a sport, it's just a hobby.' It's a really big part of my life, actually. I've been riding bikes since I was 8 years old. It was Dad who got me into it, and I got my road licence when i was 15. A high achiever at school, Sam was hoping to become an engineer. For now that's on the back-burner. I didn't go to university, which was a big sacrifice for me because a lot of my friends went to university. So I've given up a lot of that university social life as well. I've stayed at home and got a job. I'm saving up all the money to go towards this. Especially cos I'm just above minimum wage, I'm looking at a week's worth of wages for a set of tyres for one weekend. So I've got to budget out a lot of things just so I can race. Then you've got to set up the bike, then you've got to maintain the bike, and then you've got to get that bike to the racetrack. Sam's older brother also doubles as his manager. Financially, they've got by on the smell of an oily rag. We basically did it rough. We camped out in a tent for three weeks, lived on 99c packet pasta. Sam's bike is an older model and, unlike others, it's not fuel-injected. There's a lot of guys out there that have more experience, and they've been riding bikes for longer than I have been riding faster bikes, but at the end of the day, it all boils down to your skill and your mindset. Uh, number 24. Sam? Oh, it's Sam! We're trying to do some fundraising to get Sam to the European Junior Cup. The European Junior Cup is a support class in the World Superbike championship, the world championships of production motorcycle racing. It's an opportunity that comes at a big cost. MUSIC STOPS ABRUPTLY The total amount is around $60,000. 60 grand? > Yep. Dad's selling his race bikes, and he's working overseas to support Sam as much as he can. I'm also selling everything I own and putting in my life savings to help him get there. These boys are pulling out all the stops to raise enough cash. Most of his peers will be hanging round home. Some will be hanging outside the dole office. That's a reality of life. Others will be at university. Others will be making their way into careers and jobs where they've got money coming in. Sam is looking for money coming in for him to which he's going to spend on motorcycle sport. That means he's got less money for the usual teen pursuits, like partying on the weekend. It's not really something I see myself doing. It's a bit of a dead end, really. There's better things to do. The thrill from the racing just doesn't compare to anything else. We've had more world champions in motorcycle racing than any other sport in NZ's history. I'm impressed with what the family's doing for him. His older brother Andrew is very cool-headed, very, very, very coldly determined. Mum is trackside too. She can't bring herself to watch Sam race. It takes a bit of a toll on her nerves. But every time he reaches the finish line, there's a quiet thrill. Today Sam's taken out his class in the Bridgestone Winter Series. I'm definitely proud of myself. I can go a little bit faster, but everyone says that. Now he's just hoping he can fast-track his way to the big time. ANDREW: Here's a young guy, the NZ champion, taking a risk to have a once in a lifetime, life-changing opportunity. Because if you're not taking risks, and if you're not taking chances, there's no point in living. And Sam needs your help to get to Europe. To give him a hand with his fundraising, head to our website. Just after the break, the K entertainers taking their talents to the sticks. It's been a big week of entertainment here in Auckland. We've had Mumford & Sons, Radiohead, Ben Harper, and Coldplay are playing tomorrow night. and Coldplay are playing tomorrow night. But outside of the main centres, though, good gigs can be a bit thin on the ground. But things could be changing down on the farm. The Bitches Box ` that's right ` The Bitches Box ` a play about two farm dogs on heat ` could be coming to a woolshed near you. Here's Matt Chisholm. The woolshed has that sort of quite nostalgic thing for a lot of people. We come in, we throw in our chairs, we throw up our curtain. Sound, lights,... Bar. ...bar. Box office. Yep,... (CHUCKLES) it all goes up. We've each got our own little bits that we do. I'm on chair duty at the moment. Yeah, uh, Mel is stringing up the curtain there. It's girls on tour. 42 shows across the country. You know, kinda picking your way through paddocks around cowpats and sheep shit to get to the stage is a pretty unique experience. 42 woolsheds from way down south in Riverton to Clevedon in the north. I'm on. Piss and shit. Ah. Ah. Test. A lot of the times recently we've turned up, and farmers have actually water-blasted their shed out. You couldn't afford your more traditional venue? Pretty much no,... (LAUGHS) in a nut shell. There is an element of that it's a slightly more viable way of touring. (PANTS) Listen. Truth is these country girls know their audience ` rural folk who, in the past, may have been somewhat neglected. Burrow. Warren. Den. Shaft. Cave. Chasm. Cavity. Recess. Cranny in a nook. Passage in a peephole. BOTH GIGGLE We turn up to some places, and they say, 'God, we haven't had anything here for 20 years,' and actually they're telling the truth, sort of thing, so mostly if they want to go to something, they've got to travel to Wellington or Auckland or the city. Not tonight here in Ohawe, southern Taranaki, in what is show number 38 ` now a top-notch gig. No offence, Naki, but smack bang in the middle of nowhere. The evening kicks off with Mel Parsons singing songs from her first two albums. Well, yeah, only two albums, but her first two albums. (LAUGHS) # And you're so sick of trying. # Mel's Indi-folk music a real hit with at least one fan in Otorohanga. I got proposed to, so, uh,... WHOOPING Thank you. (LAUGHS) It wasn't by my boyfriend or anything; it was just, like, a random ` a random fencing contractor guy, so, uh... Next on show, The Bitches Box,... Truck! ...a play about a day down on the farm told through the eyes of six different canine characters. The best is yet to come. (HOWLS) One of them is a randy old hound. She's been around for a while. She's going, 'Yeah that's me.' She's on heat yet again, and she is joined this time by the young pup. This isn't a case of art imitating life, is it? BOTH LAUGH Let's hope not. I've just had my 30th birthday, so hopefully I've got a few more heats. (LAUGHS) I don't really know what that means. AUDIENCE LAUGHS The polished performance was born out of a chance meeting at an artist collective 18 months ago. Emma and I got paired up as complete strangers. We were told we had two weeks to create a piece of 10-minute theatre, and so it was this mad, kind of, in the rehearsal room ` 'Right, what do you like?' 'Uh, I'm in to comedy.' 'Yes, me too.' 'Like dogs? 'Yep, great.' And then we liked the idea of being in a confined space, and then, voila, it was two dogs on heat in The Bitches Box. BOTH: Never chew on a ewe. I think the best feedback we get after the show is, 'Oh my God, that's exactly what they're like.' We're, like, 'Yes, that's fantastic.' Do you think it takes a special person to play the character of a dog? (LAUGHS) Yeah, I think there's a lot of hours of observation in there or just a general love of the animals. # What if I'm wrong? # And the local punters can't get enough of it. So many of the places that we've been, everyone just says, you know, 'You can come back next week or next year, and, you know, we'd fill the place again.' Would you take this concept to the big smoke? The girls are putting The Bitches Box into the Auckland Fringe Festival this coming summer, so that will be interesting. I'd recommend heading along but somehow feel the best place to see it, hear and even smell it would be back in the sticks. How do you top a 42-show woolshed tour? > (LAUGHS) Go round again. BOTH LAUGH Yeah, go round again or take on a bigger country. Yep, more woolsheds. Yeah, Aussie` Australia has considerably more woolsheds than NZ. And you think they'll like a couple of K bitches over there? BOTH LAUGH Yeah, I reckon. (LAUGHS) Bitches are the same the world over, aren't they? BOTH LAUGH That's all for tonight and the week. Have a great weekend. That's NZ Close Up. Captions were made possible with funding from NZ On Air. Copyright TVNZ Access Services 2012