National Non-Concern

NZUSA's General Vice President David Merritt also spoke at the forum. He focused on the National Party, stating that at its recent conference no mention had been made of the economic crisis and scarcely any attention was given to unemployment. He told a long story about how difficult it was for students to get the unemployment benefit, how we are one of the only groups in the community to be means tested before we get it, and how students are rapidly approaching the situation where they can only go to university if they have both a holiday job and parental support.

Labour was represented by Eddie Isbey. He began with a perceptive analysis of unemployment as it affects students; ie he said it affected holiday employment and graduate employment. The jobless were growing in number by 1,000 a week, he suggested, and this did not account for married women and the under 16s. Half of all the unemployed were under 21.

Then it was into party politics. Labour recognised the right to work, he claimed, which is why there was low unemployment under the last government. Labour would "never tolerate using unemployment as an economic weapon," he asserted. That was precisely what National had done and now it had run away with them.