JOBLESS FAILING DRUG TESTS (Letter to Dom Post, March 1)

It’s nice for Bill English to have someone to blame for immigrants supplying for skills shortages (Jobless failing drug tests, February 28). But if I were Prime Minister I’d be asking myself why so many of my young constituents can’t pass a drug test.

 

I’d be thinking it’s more important for our youth to have “some confidence and direction” than an impersonal construct such as “a growing economy”. I’d be wondering if the tail is wagging the dog. I’d be imagining the growth that would occur if the 50 per cent of applicants in the horticultural sector who now refuse even to take a test could pass it with flying colours.

 

I’d be wondering why our drug addiction, alcoholism, violence, homelessness and poverty is growing faster than the economy, and in inverse proportion to the decline in practice or even knowledge of the sublime proposal of Jesus Christ: “love one another as I have loved you”.