Reactions to National Party leader Don Brash's Orewa speech

Sue Bradford
Green MP

"It's dreadful that Dr Brash and the National Party have seen fit to head in this direction. To go back to an era where you were forced to work for the dole and where solo parents are forced to enter the workforce or training. There is no acceptance of the role of parenthood being a worthy job. Their attack on the DPB is atrocious and paints a nightmare vision of how National see the future. It will get traction among a group of people that unfortunately has always existed in NZ, who see people on benefits as scum, less worthy than others. It's really sad Dr Brash thinks he can build his party's vote by appealing to people who don't realise being sick or out of work can happen to anyone."

Roger Kerr
Business Round Table executive director

"I think it is a sound analysis of welfare issues. It is in line with what I think are the lessons from welfare research. I don't think it is a speech that would be at all controversial in Australia, let alone the US. Don Brash refers in his speech to the US, which has demonstrated to the rest of the world the big gains that can be made from well-conceived welfare reforms. The basic issue Don Brash argues is not only the large cost to the country, which he is right about - and he is also right to say that hard-working New Zealanders feel unhappy when people who could get jobs in today's labour market aren't taking them - but, more to the point, it is a terrible life for many people."

Rodney Hide
Act leader

Rodney Hide welcomed Dr Brash's call to toughen up on open-ended welfare but said creating a work environment that rewards workers is also important.

"Labour offers little incentive for people to get off welfare and into work. Not only is the Government soft on welfare but its policy of overtaxing is no incentive for anyone to get off the couch. Tax cuts for every worker should be part and parcel of any plan to reform welfare. We need to make sure that work pays - for too many New Zealanders it doesn't. The loss of potential is huge and the drain on hard-working taxpayers is massive."

Mike O'Brien
Associate professor in Massey University's School of Social and Cultural Studies

"The speech says it is a set of welfare proposals for the 21st century, but it is more reminiscent of what was done in the 17th and 18th centuries, rebuilding the notion of deserving and undeserving poor. His arguments are absolutely unrelated to the evidence here and around the world about people on benefits and their circumstances, and about their lives and aspirations. Brash says we shouldn't punish children yet proposes cutting benefits if mothers have another child, or their children aren't vaccinated or going to school. He says children shouldn't be harmed, then gives proposals that would do exactly that."

Trish Grant
Manager for advocacy at the Commissioner for Children's Office

She had a "deep sense of discomfort" with Dr Brash's comments. His view that adopting babies out was a more acceptable alternative to having women on the DPB was retrograde. "It flies in the face of any universal acceptance of children's rights - their right to an identity; their right to family; their right to whakapapa, to blood links; their right to know who they are."

Ms Grant said advocating that children should be given away "is absolutely out of synch with what is decent and right". Teenage mothers needed help, not blame.

She said if Dr Brash's ideas were to become policy, the negative impact on children would be immeasurable.

Peter Dunne
United Future leader

"I would be supportive of some of those [points in the speech] and not supportive of others. Frankly, I don't think that, taken collectively, they represent a particularly radical or different package. I think most people would say, 'Oh yeah, so what?"'

A spokesman for Winston Peters
New Zealand First leader

"Most politicians know there is a problem but Dr Brash does not have the answers."

The party's policy would be released shortly.


Three women on benefits respond

Glenis King

* Four years on Emergency Unemployment Benefit while raising two grandchildren. Had about nine years on the DPB raising her four sons after her marriage of 14 years ended.

"I don't like [Brash's] attitude, that he sees us as dole-bludgers. I don't want to be a beneficiary. I didn't ask to go on it, but I ended up there because of my marriage breakup. It's not as if I'm just sitting there raking in the benefit."

She agreed with the need to clamp down on those who saw benefits as a free ride.

"That's what I hate, people who rip off the benefit. I'm honest but there are some who have partners they don't tell Work and Income about.

"I hate that because there I am trying to make ends meet for me and my grandchildren and there are these others with however many dollars coming in the back door but they still can't live on it. How do you justify that?"

She also agreed that women on the DPB should get part-time work or training once the children were at school, as long as it fitted in with school hours. She volunteered as a budget adviser and with Mangere Maori Wardens. "A little bit of community work won't hurt."

She was against putting pressure on teenage parents to adopt out their children.

"Who is he to judge, to tell young people to adopt their children out? I wouldn't want my children to adopt out if they couldn't afford it. I will gladly give back the children when my son is in a position to have them, but I will support them now."

Agnes Tupou

* DPB for the past month after leaving her job at Work and Income to look after her 3-year-old son.

"My son was showing behaviour I didn't really like so I want to spend more time with him. I'm a solo mum and his dad is not in the picture so it was important for me to do this.

"I don't see the DPB as a long-term way of life. I would love to work full-time, and maybe get into business, but the DPB is there to help those who have got into this situation."

She said having more children while on the DPB was a matter of personal responsibility.

"They [the women] should think about what they are doing. I know I would not want to have another child because I'm on just enough for me and my son as it is."

On encouraging adoption for teenage mothers: "I've had a child, so it's my responsibility. It will have cultural implications, especially in Pacific Island communities.

"But some might welcome it. There are a lot of grandparents who would take children because they want their own children to continue with their education. So if it's interfamily, they would welcome it."

Fran Quinn

* Invalids' Benefit for 20 years, in a wheelchair with spina bifida. Has three children in their 20s now. Did voluntary work in the community.

She disagreed that parents on a benefit stifled children's aspirations.

"I drummed into my children's heads all the pros and cons of being on a benefit - not that I said a lot of good about it.

"Unfortunately, my eldest daughter didn't take it all in and is a young mother on the DPB who wanted to be with her baby. She knows she can't financially depend on me.

"My son has financial problems so he's got himself three jobs, has worked his way up in Baker's Delight and been offered jobs with them in Canada or Australia."

She said making medical checks tougher was nonsense for some, but people who abused the system should be investigated.

"People rip off the system but with people like myself, who have congenital problems, there is no way it's going to get any better."