Mike Hosking

And it was deliberately ambitious.

Were you foolish to put out a target given you didn't see the war coming and nobody did and therefore that curtailed thing?

I mean, in other words, the more you promise in a set of circumstances you can't control, the more trouble you invite into your life.

We've got a traffic light system that tells people when they're on track.

There's consequences when they're not.

But the difficulty is, although you say you've got people leaving, which you do, you've also got people arriving, which is the economic story, of course.

And I look at the job ads this morning, the job ads.

They're up.

It's at a two-year high.

Facts.

You can't argue with it.

There are more jobs than there has been for two years.

But your problem with your unemployment is do those people match into a job?

And look, economic challenges will come and go, but it doesn't stop the work that we have to do at the front line, which is to reduce those numbers

I don't think anyone would disagree with that.

I wish you well in your work.

Louise Upston, Minister for Social Development and Employment.

I don't have time to ask you, but the great quandary in the economy, and it's not new, is how come if there are so many people unemployed, there's still so many useless people employed?

I mean, you know, in your interface with places like retail, people who don't have a clue what they're doing, they've got a job, how bad must the people who are unemployed be?

Or do the people who employ them not have a clue how to employ people properly, therefore get the wrong people?