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Celebrating positive, healthy lives

The Youth Development Strategy guiding the Ministry of Youth Affairs calls for enhanced participation by young people.
Darren Hughes, a 1997 Youth Parliament­arian and currently Labour Member of Parliament for Otaki, says that participation needs to be across the board, not token. He believes we need to include young people in all levels of decision making, rather than saying, "we need a youth rep for this ..."
Young people, he points out, are affected by everything that happens to them and to New Zealand, just as much as other population groupings in the great patchwork quilt of our society – senior citizens, Māori, Pacific peoples, people with disabilities, women – and others.
“ Raising the level of participation by young people so that they are another voice at the table, in their own right, is really important,” he says.
" That is why the Ministry of Youth Affairs has produced documents that ask: How do you include young people? How do you get youth involvement in some of these projects?" This really confronts organisations, Darren suggests. "Then they say, 'this is where we are light, we are not actually including young people'.”

Blankets, not mops

The young MP says the Youth Development Strategy provides a “positive blanket over young people, rather than a mop for problems”.
He suggests that government is quite good at is responding to the problems faced by young people. Solutions are being implemented to the problems of truancy, bullying, drug abuse and sexual health. And this is as it should be: there is nothing worse than having a “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” approach to issues with young people. "You have to be right up there in the community, addressing it at the coalface," he says.
But the Youth Development Strategy is different. It is coming from the other end. It says young people are leading very positive, healthy lives. "Even those young people who do have problems in different areas – their lives, looked at as a totality, are very positive," he says

At the New Zealand Youth Parliament 2000 (pictured above) young people learnt about the functioning of Parliament as a centrepiece of New Zealand democracy, and also represented their fellows in challenging the Wellington establishment to rethink youth issues.
The fourth Youth Parliament, late in 2004, is a show piece at the 150th anniversary of the formation of the New Zealand Parliament. Youth press gallery press gallery members are also being selected.