Delahunty Catherine: General Debate 
Delahunty Catherine: General Debate 
[Volume:659;Page:8388] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena koutou katoa. I seldom agree with anything written by the  
New Zealand Herald 
’s conservative commentator Garth George so I was astounded to find myself in full agreement with his column last week in which he called Don Brash’s 2025 Taskforce report “economic and social bullshit”. He suggested that every copy should be recycled into toilet paper. I have the document here if anyone would like to use it for that purpose; it cost us as taxpayers only $150000. I also liked someone else’s description of the Brash “playgroup” spending their time photocopying old ACT policy leaflets and calling it a task force. 
“Planet Brash” is a strange parallel universe in which the reduction of the minimum wage to the same ratio as the average wage that prevailed in 1999—that is to less than $11 an hour—will somehow increase New Zealanders’ wages to the level of Australian wages. On “Planet Brash” the sick disabled and mothers of young children are forced to work for the reduced minimum wage and students are saddled with further debt through the reintroduction of interest on loans. On “Planet Brash” all businesses owned by central government that operate in markets where competition is actual or feasible are privatised. Well that one worked really well for the railways and Air New Zealand did it not? On “Planet Brash” water is not a public good; it is a tradable commodity to be hocked off along with local government trading enterprises to predatory big business. And the list goes on. 
The report reads like a cut and paste from Sir Roger Douglas’ unfinished business—the dream of a few extremist neo-liberals who would have our economy heading rapidly in the direction of Iceland rather than Australia. Even the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance have rubbished it so why do they not just scrap the task force? The answer of course is that they have some particularly unpalatable policies of their own to deliver and they need Brash’s far-right rantings out there in the public domain to make their own social and economic policies appear more moderate. That will help the country to accept their policies and to be quite comfortable and relaxed as the Prime Minister often says about more punitive approaches to beneficiaries. 
Bill English hinted at some of these policies on  
Q+A 
 last month when he announced that National’s pre-election welfare policy which read like “Brash-lite” was back on the agenda now that the recession was easing. The jury is out on the question of whether the recession is really easing or whether we are just having a temporary respite from it but regardless of trends in economic growth it is undeniable that the unemployment rate is continuing to rise. Figures released by the Ministry of Social Development this week state that 57000 more people have been relying on the unemployment benefit since November 2008. 
So where will they come from the jobs that Bill English and Paula Bennett want to force upon invalids and sickness beneficiaries who are assessed as having some capacity for work? And where are the flexible working environments for single parents whose youngest children are aged over 6? These people will be among the most disadvantaged in the labour market: people with mental and/or physical impairments and people with childcare responsibilities. There will be no jobs for many of them to go to and Work and Income’s persistent efforts to force them to find work will in the current job climate be tantamount to harassment. Pushing more people into the labour market especially people who will be significantly disadvantaged in it will have the exactly opposite effect to the purported objective of the task force; it will drive wages down. 
Ten days ago I spent a day outside Work and Income’s Rotorua office and I met literally hundreds of poor disabled and mainly Maori whanau who were on benefits and were utterly disheartened by the approach of some case managers to their poverty and their need. They did not even want to walk in the door any more and that was even before we had any more bright ideas from Don Brash Bill English or Paula Bennett. Those people were totally disheartened by being disrespected when they went in to try to get a $20 food grant. 
So “Happy Christmas” to the poor and hungry of this country. The food bank is empty and “Scrooge McBrash” is creating a smokescreen for the more subtle methods of keeping the Christmas stocking empty for the apparently undeserving poor. There will be no Christmas bonus for them but $150000 of their money—and I include beneficiaries because they pay taxes through their benefits—has been spent on this sad sideshow while people go without food and children go without shoes. They are going without power and fuel.