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ACT New Zealand Leader - Hon. Sir Roger Douglas

Welcome

It's been a great couple of weeks since we launched two new forces onto the New Zealand scene - ACT New Zealand and the Warriors.

Some of you will be aware of my close association with the Auckland Warriors Rugby League Team. I am Deputy Chairman of the Warriors Board and along with many others have worked very hard for a number of years to see New Zealand field a team in the Winfield Cup.

We lost a nail biter. But what thrilled me and millions of New Zealanders was the fantastic spirit and commitment of our players. We went in as the underdogs and we almost produced one of the biggest upsets in the cup's history.

How often in our short history as a nation have we seen that Kiwi spirit overcome the odds in so many fields of human endeavour. We make up for our smallness with a spirit that makes us rightfully proud to be New Zealanders.

It is the same with the new political party, ACT New Zealand. Up until a few weeks ago we were also being told it would take us a long time to make any impact. They told us New Zealanders wouldn't listen, they wouldn't be interested because they were content and didn't want further change.

Well, they've underestimated us. They have also underestimated the New Zealand public's ability to understand what's right for New Zealand. Only last Friday the opinion polls showed ACT had trebled its support in the two weeks since we launched some of our policies. The public are listening, more importantly, polls show that 10-12 people are looking closely at us for every one who is saying they would vote for us. They are interested and we are going to be a political force to be reckoned with.

The other interesting thing about that poll was that ACT New Zealand is gaining support at the expense of, not only National, but also from Labour and Alliance voters. You can expect the trend to continue because it is the socially disadvantaged, the poor and less well-off in our community who stand to gain most from ACT New Zealand's policies.

ACT's overriding philosophy is to attack disadvantage - where it is to be found in New Zealand society today. That's what Labour and the Alliance also claim to represent. The big difference is that Labour and the Alliance are offering a mixture of the same, tired policies that made a lot of New Zealanders poor in the first place.

Only ACT is offering a new, common sense way to rid this country of its social ills. And we have laid out those policies in minute detail so people can see for themselves how they can improve their lives.

Over the coming weeks and months, the one thing you won't hear from ACT is empty promises. ACT's policies deliver and we show you how we can deliver. That is what makes us very different from the established political parties. New Zealanders are coming to be increasingly attracted by our difference, our innovation, our logic and most of all our basic common sense.

I've attended at least a dozen political meetings in the past two to three weeks and I keep on getting asked the same questions: Why do you bother? Why are you back? Why do you want to re-enter politics? The answer is simple, it's what drove my grandfather and my father to enter politics before me. It's what I grew up listening to as a small boy at the dinner table.

It's that sense of wanting to improve the lot of ordinary New Zealanders. I want - what I believe all of you here tonight want - to live in a country where everyone is getting the same opportunity to be healthy, to be well educated, to get a job and to look forward to old age with grace and self-respect.

I'm back also because I believe New Zealand has this unique one-off opportunity to lead the world again in all these areas. But it's an opportunity that will be lost if the current crop of politicians have their way.

That's my gut feeling - deep down I know the current crop of politicians can't change and grab this unique one-off chance that New Zealand has, and so do you.

To understand how we can achieve these goals, I think it is important that we take a moment and reflect on some recent New Zealand history and to some extent my role in it. My role is important because as we all know today's politicians want to take the credit for the good things I did while blaming me for the bad things I didn't do.

15 years ago, in 1980, along with other New Zealanders - I knew that New Zealand was heading for third world status. That's when I wrote my first book 'There has to be a better Way'. In that book I outlined what I felt needed to be done economically to save New Zealand from an impending disaster that few at the time were prepared to talk about.

In 1980 the only disaster was the one that befell me - Bill Rolling sacked me from Labour's front bench. if you can call that a disaster.  The economic disaster I warned was coming did finally arrive in 1984. We hit the wall, a record level of unemployment, a massive national deficit and suddenly we were faced with the biggest money crises this country had ever experienced.

Sir Robert Muldoon had brought New Zealand to the brink of bankruptcy. He did it by polarising and dividing this country, playing one section of society against the other, pandering to prejudice and, worst of all, bribing one generation with money borrowed from future generations.

Fortunately, and in the nick of time, Muldoon was defeated in July 1984, and a new government, of which I was Finance Minister, was elected. Finally I got the opportunity to undertake the type of measures I had been publicly advocating for years in opposition.

Today the result is there for all to see - record economic growth, record job growth and budget surpluses. I have no reason to apologise for the steps I took along with my colleagues in the mid to late eighties to save this country from becoming a banana republic.

I acknowledge the early, upfront costs involved for many people in those wrenching changes. We had to make them and most sensible New Zealanders know the inescapable truth of that. In fact to have done nothing would have made those costs ten times worse that they were. We had to make those changes if New Zealand was to survive as a reasonably well off country.

More importantly, we should remember the spirit of those reforms during the period 1984 to 1988. I dismantled economic privilege in New Zealand (tax, low interest loans). These privileges were making New Zealand poor. It was simply not fair.

My next step, signalled in the last chapter of my book "Toward Prosperity 1987", would have been to attack social privilege in New Zealand, the system that for many years has denied some sections of our society the right to a decent education, proper health care, the opportunity to work and retire in comfort and dignity.