Mr Speaker, We in the Green Party cannot remain unmoved by last week's ascension of Don Brash to the leadership of the National Party. While we congratulate Dr Brash on his new position, I feel honour bound to sound a note of warning about what his elevation might mean for low income workers, unemployed people and beneficiaries in this country. Not that it's a secret, but I think it's important that all voters remember that for the last decade Dr Brash has been promoting, among other things, further sell-offs of State-owned enterprises, tax cuts for the rich, deregulation of the labour market (including getting rid of the minimum wage), and an extremely right wing manifestation of welfare reform. In perhaps his most famous utterance on the subject since he became a member of Parliament, Dr Brash advised the good people of the Orewa Rotary Club in January this year that abolishing the unemployment benefit, quote, 'could not be done in isolation, but it might well be done in conjunction with other measures such as having local governments become employers of last resort offering a job to anybody who turned up at, say, the local post office at 8am, with payment for that day's work at the end of the day, in cash." This declaration seems to have been made in blissful ignorance of the facts that firstly, post offices as such no longer exist; secondly, that local councils around New Zealand tend to be extremely wary of taking on job creation on behalf of central Government, having been burned badly by such schemes in the 1980s; and that thirdly, such a scheme, if applied to all jobseekers registered with Work and Income, would cost thousands of millions of dollars more than the dole to put into practice. Subsequent comments on welfare reform from Dr Brash reveal a slight retraction from this position, possibly through the efforts of his colleague Katherine Rich who does actually have some real understanding of her social services portfolio. However, her new leader continues to make no bones about his commitment to time limited benefits and to forced work for the dole. This is scary stuff. While I know there are plenty of people out there who still think these things are a good idea, I would have thought someone who'd been heavily involved in economic matters in the 80s and 90s would know better. For example, is Dr Brash not aware that a report written by the National Government's own officials towards the end of their time in office showed that even the limited work for dole scheme in place at that time simply wasn't achieving the goals they'd hoped for? And are he and his National Party colleagues not cognisant of the results of time limited benefits in other jurisdictions, where the real consequences are transience, begging, homelessness, family breakup, mental and physical illness, crime, and ultimately, death? The idea of limiting the amount of time someone can spend on welfare in their lifetime, for example to two years or five, may sound tempting to someone on $500,000 or even $100,000 a year, but have they considered the reality of ending up in a situation where there is literally no means of support for oneself or one's family? These kind of answers to unemployment and poverty trip off the tongue in Parliament and at the Rotary Club, but what they'd bring, if they were ever implemented under a National-ACT Government would be the 1930s Depression revisited, with bells on. Mass forced work for the dole and limits on access to welfare will mean in the end a society in which rich and poor are driven apart even further than they are now, and in which crime, prostitution and begging become the only means of survival for many. Dr Brash is right about one thing — we do have around 300,000 people unemployed and a lot more should be done about it — but the solution isn't stopping the unemployed benefit or imposing workfare — rather it lies in creating real jobs at real wages for all who need them. Alongside this, National's new leader appears to be trying to bribe his old mates back into the fold by offering tax cuts to the rich and a chance to loot more state owned assets. I hope all those New Zealanders who think the National Party under Dr Brash is the shape of the future will have a little rethink about what kind of country they really want to live in. Instead of pandering to corporate greed at the expense of those who already have too little, National should, if it has any social conscience at all, consider supporting policies like ours — full employment as a primary goal of economic policy, the first $5000 of income to be tax free for all New Zealanders, a Universal Child Benefit, and a benefit system reformed not to create more inequity but less. We want to move forward into a secure more fulfilling future for all New Zealanders in the 21st century, not back to the 90s — or the 30s.