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I stand here today for the same reasons I first stood for parliament back in 1969 - a sense of being able to contribute to improving social and economic justice in New Zealand.

We look around us and we see the many good things New Zealand offers in the 1990s; qualities we can all be proud of and share as New Zealanders.

But we also see a lot of the good things about New Zealand being eaten away in a tide of waste, incompetence, violence and sheer indifference.

These are things that we as New Zealanders are increasingly fearful of - our declining health care, education, welfare and retirement standards. Out sense of community is fraying and decaying all around us.

The basic concept of social justice that nurtured New Zealand through its formative years is crumbling.

Our belief in security, social dignity, of being class free, those essential Kiwi values are rapidly disappearing. The old, tired ways of dealing with these problems have proved themselves hopelessly, pathetically inadequate.

ACT New Zealand intends to breathe new life into New Zealand politics. Just as I challenged the conventional wisdom that threatened to ruin New Zealand a decade ago, and from which we are now benefiting, so we are now going to challenge what's left of that political wisdom that continues to fail each and every one of us.

ACT shares the sense of foreboding that prevails among many decent New Zealanders about the dangers to our society if New Zealand continues on its present social path. We are losing our way as a nation.

The economy may be improving but our community values are declining. Our biggest challenge is to find a way to overcome the State's inability to provide the basic necessities of life.

We see it in our street kids and battered women. We see a whole group of New Zealanders locked into poverty, many of them third generation beneficiaries.

We see a health system with more than 77,000 people waiting for operations. We see an education system where sometimes a fifth of the students are playing truant and at least a half of the students leave without achieving a basic level of education.

We are creating a permanent underclass of unskilled New Zealanders.

We see a superannuation system which takes $300,000 from ordinary people over their working lives and gives them a pathetic pension of eight or nine thousand dollars in return.

Our political leaders respond to all these with cynicism and indifference. They imply this is the price of living in the real world. That is a huge lie, peddled by politicians who only know how to look back and not forward.

New Zealand politics today can be summed up in two words: intergenerational robbery. Not only are we bequeathing a huge debt to future generations, but, far worse, they will inherit a social legacy of frightening dimensions.

The State has failed New Zealanders by stripping their sense of New Zealand-ness. The numbness, the powerlessness that so many New Zealanders feel about their inability to stop this social reverse, to restore our inherited belief in a progressive and caring community, is no more than a symptom of our bankrupt politics, and even emptier leadership.

Small wonder that so many New Zealanders have lost faith in their governing institutions. It is time we took back the fundamental right to manage our own lives and provide for our own education, health and security without the threat of State mismanagement.

That does not mean there is no role for government. Under ACT's policies, government will continue to set the rules, maintain essential services and provide for those who cannot provide for themselves. That should be all that future governments do.

ACT is going to put politics in its place. We are going to give real power back where it belongs - with the people, the consumer and the taxpayers. Only then will New Zealand be able to prosper economically and socially.

ACT's key policies, which will be outlined in detail shortly, represent a refreshing common sense way to provide a decent future for all New Zealanders. They represent a new way of looking at the relationship between the State and individuals, the State and families.

Our way will make all New Zealanders of whatever income bracket, racial origin or educational background, all of us, better off.

ACT New Zealand has pledged to restore the basics of social justice, New Zealand values of fairness, dignity, security, opportunity and prosperity. We do not subscribe to any labels or to any particular position in the political spectrum. ACT New Zealand is a party for all New Zealanders.

You will recognise it in our spokespeople and advocates, in our policies, in the way we campaign, in our look and feel, and in our attitude to our political opponents.

By this time next year, ACT will be unmistakeably a broad-spectrum party because we will have continued to draw people from all walks of life and all backgrounds.

ACT is very different, different from National, Labour, the Alliance, NZ First and all the rest. And New Zealanders are going to be increasingly attracted by our difference, our innovation, our logic, our common sense.

If we do our job well, the next election will be about ACT versus the rest. They collectively represent the politics of self-preservation, privilege, incompetence and sheer nonsense that is so utterly despised and rejected by common sense New Zealanders. Only ACT is going to be really different.

ACT's time is just coming. We have some completely new ways to correct New Zealander's problems, ways that we urge every New Zealander concerned with our society's ills to weigh up and consider.

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