The sad reality is that the numbers give the lie to what the Minister has said. The truth is that even in the best of times, when New Zealand had record terms of trade, when the whole world wanted what New Zealand's industries produced and the things New Zealanders consumed were comparably cheaper than ever, the conditions where we might think that it would be easy to get people off welfare into work, we had 300,000 working-age New Zealanders on a main benefit and growing.