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Helen Clark, Mike Cullen and Steve Maharey say: "well, we do reluctantly want a billion more, but just from National supporters, to spend on our people and anyone who comes to us from Alliance".

Jim Anderton sees that as a dopey strategy. He wants the most he can grab from anyone who might even conceivably vote National, to throw in high heaps at Labour voters, as a sure-fire winner for Alliance on Election Day.

And this farce passes for considered public policy in New Zealand today.

We have doubled public spending in the last 30-40 years. Nobody likes what we got back from government. Every year, half the nation's children fail in state schools. Without education, young people can't get jobs but more teenagers than ever before in history play truant from schools that can't or won't provide what they need.

We have case after case of misdiagnosis in public hospitals that have 77,000 people on their waiting list. Nobody younger than 55 has the least idea what they'll get from the government ten years from now as income in their retirement. And if we're not careful, we'll soon reach a stage where there's more law and order on primetime television than there is in the street.

That's what the state has done for the families of this country, with the money it took from them, over the past 30 years and what it took from them, you'll remember, was the totality of the extra income they earned in the whole of that period.

How much will it take of the total national income for the state to do a good job for the people of New Zealand in all of those areas? Will 50% be enough? Sixty? Seventy? Seventy-five? Eighty? Well, we don't know, do we? So let's break off for a moment. I'll tell you a story.

A young couple get married and have the good fortune to inherit from a distant and eccentric relative, a big house in a glorious location. How lucky can you get! They move in. the view's terrific. But uncle's décor was a little off-key, and the atmosphere somehow makes their skin crawl.

So they paper the walls. Not right yet. Fresh curtains, new carpet, redo the upholstery. It's better, but still it doesn't quite work.

They put six months' work and planning into that house and tell themselves that every change must be improving it. But in the secrecy of their hearts, they know it is still thoroughly unpleasant, gloomy and upsetting to life in.

Then one night, that young wife looks up and sees, to her immense surprise, that every light in the house has a blue light bulb. She climbs on a chair, puts in a white bulb, turns on the light, looks down, and finds to her horror that every decision they made in the last six months, redecorating the house was entirely misguided and wrong.

We all live in the light of the past. Without our knowing it, the light of the past colours the world and the way we see it.

Our light in New Zealand has been coloured for a generation by politicians who see votes for themselves in pretending we should look to them and the state as the primary source of security personal benefit and wellbeing.

They so coloured the sunlight surrounding us that the average New Zealand family willingly parts with nearly half of its personal income in the firm and fixed belief that, without financial help from the government, the average New Zealand family would have no education, no health care and no income in retirement.

We have lived in that dismal blue light long enough and it's time to change the light bulb. The average New Zealand family on the strictly average working wage is paying enough tax today to fund without the least problem:

• The education of their own children in quality schools of their own choice.

• A quality health policy for the whole of their life that won't keep them waiting for treatment.

• A better retirement income than the government pays now in National Super.

• And on top of all that, have half a million dollars in the bank on the day they retire.

All they have to do to obtain those benefits is keep the money they presently hand the government for providing their own family with those three services, put it in a bank account in their own name, pay the bills themselves and save the large amount left over.

Under ACT, any family that wants to do that, and presents valid evidence that it's undertaken the obligation can forget about income tax. They won't have to pay it.

If you don't want to do it, you won't have to, because ACT doesn't intend to make you. It's a voluntary choice. If you want to go on paying income tax, and you want the State to provide those services for you, that's fine with us. Under ACT, that will be your choice and your right, either way.

GST will remain in place and will not increase. At the present rate, it provides ample money to go on funding the rest of the Government administration (Police, Justice, Ministry of Agriculture, Industry Assistance and so on) at present levels.

And in addition to that, to provide an improved system of support for low-income people who need and deserve the help of the Government. So in that sense, those other areas, the rest of Government administration is not affected by the changes we propose.

If you happen to be a low-income person, paying very little income tax and you want to be able to take personal charge of your health care, your family's health care, their education and guarantee yourself an assured level of income in retirement, here's what ACT will do for you.

Given evidence that you're undertaking those obligations, ACT will top up your family income, through the tax system, by the average amount of government spending per head on education, health care and National Superannuation. That money will be more than adequate to pay the bills for your education, health insurance and superannuation savings.

If you have a head for figures, and you sit down and work out what that means, you're going to be stunned by the result.

Let me tell you why ACT is approaching the matter this way.

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