Hon Peter Dunne MP
Leader, UnitedFuture
Speech to UnitedFuture Annual Conference
Brentwood Hotel, Wellington
Saturday 1 September 2007 at 10:45 am

When we met in Christchurch last November I challenged our party to grow, to reach out to New Zealanders of all walks of life and backgrounds, and to become more flexible and adaptive to the changes occurring around us.

I called for UnitedFuture to become a modern centre party with the breadth of vision and policy to appeal to all New Zealand families, whatever their situation or circumstances.

As we gather here today, we can look around us with some satisfaction at the progress we have made over the last few months to achieve those objectives.

Our new logo and style are not only external manifestations of a more modern and dynamic party, they are also indicative of the way we now do things.

They reflect our commitment to supporting those who support others, the theme we have adopted for this conference.

That theme is also reflected in the tone of UnitedFuture today:

* Our first two life members Hon Graeme Lee and Hon Margaret Austin are people whose lives and careers are outstanding examples of selfless support and encouragement of others for the betterment of our society, and I congratulate them warmly.

* The leadership of President Denise Krum and the Board brings a fresh vitality, coupled with wisdom and experience to the growth and development of this Party, and they are a pleasure to work with.

* Deputy leader Judy Turner is one of Parliament's most respected voices on matters relating to parents, family and community organisations, and is a true asset to United Future, and I am extremely proud to have her as a colleague and friend.

* Our staff, both inside and outside Parliament, are in tune with the modern aspirations of parents and communities and are tireless in their commitment to our cause, and I thank them profoundly for all that they do.

* While we have not been afraid to challenge the positions of other political parties on various issues, we have been at the forefront of bringing the MMP parties together on a number of occasions where we have had common cause on issues like a code of conduct for MPs, the repeal of the sedition laws, and curbs on access to public genealogical information to use our collective influence positively to achieve change, and we will continue to play that brokering role in the future.

* And our membership has grown substantially in the last three months, reflecting the better public appreciation of the vital niche we fill in the New Zealand political spectrum, and the fresh and more compassionate approach we are taking.

In short, we have stopped being a party that rails from the mountain tops about all that is wrong with the world and appears to some to be the nation's self-appointed moral guardian.

Instead we have become much more engaged with and focused upon the New Zealand community as it really is today and its needs and aspirations for the future.

Not only are we all the better for that, we are also far more united, focused, determined and in tune than at any point in the past.

Our approach has been based upon the building blocks I set out in my speech to last year's conference:

* Ideas and principles are more important than serving special interests.

* Promoting social advances involves all of us, not just the state.

* Participation is the key to successful communities and nations, and families are the building block of these.

And this year, as part of our confidence and supply agreement with the government, we have made great strides in each of those directions.

As a result of our business tax review, the business tax rate will be cut from April next year, and new incentives for research and development will be introduced, amounting to a $3.4 billion business tax cut over the next four years.

The rules for New Zealand companies investing offshore are also being rewritten to make it easier for them to expand their businesses offshore, while remaining New Zealand-based.

These changes will support the growth and development of New Zealand business, which in turn will support the growth, prosperity and vitality of New Zealand households.

From next year we have ensured all personal and corporate donations to charities will be tax deductible, with the existing restrictions being abolished.

These changes will be a tremendous boost to the growth and development of our voluntary and charitable sector, being a huge recognition of the valuable role they already perform, and a significant encouragement for them to do even more in the future.

But they are only the start, and later this year, I will be releasing further proposals to enhance charitable giving, to build on the steps we have taken so far.

And then there is the pest control and game management task force set up this year with Margaret Austin as chair to develop a balanced approach to pest control and game management, which acknowledges for the first time the respective interests of agriculture, conservation, and outdoor recreation as both different and legitimate.

These initiatives are all about supporting critical elements in our society to do their respective jobs well, and in so doing, help our country as a whole to do its job well, and help New Zealand to be the best place in the world to live and raise a family.

Let no-one be in any doubt.

None of these major changes would have taken place if UnitedFuture had not been in the key role that we are.

And to anyone who questions our worth or contribution, let us constantly and vigorously ram home these points:

* We are the party that has brought about the first business tax cut for 20 years.

* We are the party that has made all donations to charities tax deductible.

* And we are the party that has ensured the interests of outdoor recreation are being listened to for the first time when game management issues are being considered.

It is as simple as that – does anyone really believe Labour would have made any of these changes without UnitedFuture's pressure?

In each of these areas we are supporting those who support others, but there is much more to do yet.

Shortly we will hear from a group of community organisations about the work they do, and the challenges they face in their interaction with the government.

Their causes are our causes, and we must embrace what they have to say.

Whereas National in its patrician way "respects" the role of the community and voluntary sector and Labour prefers to rely on "the redemptive power of the state", UnitedFuture positively enthuses about the community and voluntary sector and what it can do.

Our country has been built on the efforts of community organisations and local people coming together to apply their time and skills to the resolution of a common concern.

This great tradition continues to underpin our society today, and we endorse that.

Seldom does a week pass that is not the dedicated week of support for one concern or another – for example, this coming week is National Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder Week; Epilepsy New Zealand Awareness Week, and Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week.

And there are more than 35,000 charitable organisations and over 1 million community volunteers active across New Zealand today.

We want to see all the community and voluntary sector empowered and encouraged to do more of what it does so well, often far better than the state, in education, in health care and in welfare services.

Our policy is all about making that happen, so that more dynamic and responsive community services can flourish and the leaden and often far too politically correct hand of state intervention can be put to one side.

Take the area of community and family services as an example.

There are many community organisations active in this area already.

They deserve our support and encouragement to prosper, not the establishment of a new Family and Community Services directorate within the increasingly Orwellian Ministry of Social Development to second guess the functions they and the Families Commission already perform.

The solution to our national scourge of child abuse does not lie in a one size fits all top-down approach, but in first, getting individual communities to face up to the problems within their communities, then to accept responsibility for those problems, and finally, to work with the core agencies to resolve them.

We have to get beyond the culture of blame and meaningless expressions, about climates of oppression or dysfunction or colonialism, and deal with the issue.

Children bruise and bones break, whatever the colour of one's skin, or the social background of the family.

But that not does mean to say we should continue to turn a blind eye to circumstances where child abuse is more prevalent in some communities than others.

Rather, it is time to work with the responsible leaders of all communities where such abuse is prevalent to put an end to the outrage.

UnitedFuture will continue to be the party of the community and voluntary sector, committed to the role of philanthropy and the establishment of a culture of giving in New Zealand, and to supporting closer partnerships between business and the community to meet the needs of the community.

But there is more to philanthropy than looking after our own backyard.

We have an international responsibility to those less fortunate than ourselves – both through the overseas development assistance our country provides, and through the individual support of our people.

We want to see New Zealand giving 0.35% of its gross national income in overseas development assistance by 2010, and reaching the accepted international standard of 0.7% by 2015.

We want to see our government continuing to play its part in helping reduce the debt burden faced by developing countries, by taking an active role in helping less developed countries and newly emerging states develop the infrastructure, democratic governance systems, and social services they need.

And we support New Zealand's non-government organisations working so actively and tirelessly in this field.

For us, it is much, much more than passively and dismissively "respecting" the community and voluntary sector, and it has never been about the "the redemptive power of the state".

Rather, it is all about understanding that promoting social advances involves all of us, not just the state, and that participation, from the neighbourhood upwards, is the key to successful communities and nations.

Participation means inclusion, and inclusion inevitably leads to recognition.

It is often said that taxes are the dues we pay to belong to civil society – a form of inclusion, if you like.

The recognition that flows from that is that taxes must be as fair as possible, and reasonable.

Recent policy initiatives such as the introduction of the Working for Families tax credits, and the Kiwisaver tax incentives have provided significant targeted tax relief, which we applaud.

But taxes remain too high – and unevenly imposed.

Nearly two thirds of all personal taxes come from the top 20% of taxpayers.

That burden is getting greater every year.

And, at a time of rising mortgage rates, the tax system does not adequately acknowledge its impact on parents and households.

We have just introduced new rules for the tax treatment of business and professional partnerships, but the tax system still overlooks the unique role of parents as equal partners in the running of a household.

We bow to nobody in our commitment to furthering the interests of parents and families as the most basic and precious foundation unit of our society, and we will continue to champion their concerns, and to support parents of all shapes and sizes in their awesome task of supporting their children.

But we will never dare to be so arrogant and self-righteous to stoop to lecturing them about how they should and should not live their family lives.

While families today come in many shapes and sizes, they all share the common defining characteristics of being the source of love, nurturing and connection for children, and the point of identification, support, comfort and joy for all of us as we grow older.

The institution of the family is one of the defining characteristics of humanity, and it is an institution well worth preserving.

But in an ever changing world, we must never make the mistake of treating the family as mono dimensional, for all that will do is alienate and embitter those who do not fit the pre-determined model.

Every child, whatever their circumstances, has a right to the love and attention of both their natural parents, regardless of the form of their relationship, and that is why I support Judy Turner's Bill providing for mandatory paternity testing.

As you know, we recently put out a UnitedFuture position paper, "Made in New Zealand: Kiwi Parents", setting out some issues that affect parents and families today, and inviting public responses to assist us develop policies that are in step with the real issues parents face today.

We are not afraid to listen and learn, and to adjust our policies to ensure they remain relevant to the community's needs.

Next year, I will be releasing a major government discussion document on income splitting and the impact of the tax system on households, which I expect will contain specific policy proposals for the future, that will ensure this issue is a live part of both next year's election agenda and subsequent government formation talks.

This has been a key UnitedFuture policy for some years and I am very pleased that we are now in a position to make some progress on it.

After 2008, we will be looking to whoever forms the government for action on this front.

In the meantime, UnitedFuture is working on other detailed tax reform plans involving all aspects of the current system, including a universal tax free threshold, and other threshold adjustments, and I will be announcing the details of our policy in due course – but not today.

We are the one party that can hold our heads high as a tax reform party.

As well as bringing in the business tax cuts this year, I was also Minister of Revenue when the National/United Government cut personal taxes in the mid 1990s – the last time we had a personal tax cut.

And it is worth remembering that since then, both National and Labour have put personal taxes up.

So while others may talk about what they would like to do, we are the only party with a consistent record of cutting taxes whenever we get the opportunity.

And we will continue to work, in this Parliament and the next, with this government and the next, to apply our consistent approach to reducing the tax burden on New Zealand families, to ensure tax reform is a high priority for government action.

At the same time, we want to see New Zealanders encouraged to save for their futures, which is why we have been such strong supporters of the Kiwisaver scheme, which has already enrolled almost 130,000 New Zealanders.

In particular, we welcomed the member tax credit of $20 per week introduced in this year's Budget, as a positive incentive to join Kiwisaver.

The beauty of Kiwisaver is that it is a voluntary savings scheme, which is why I believe it will succeed, unlike the two previous attempts to impose compulsory savings schemes on New Zealanders.

However, in the longer term, when Kiwisaver attracts the support of the majority of the workforce, it is UnitedFuture's firm view that we should look to converting it to a compulsory scheme, and allowing future Kiwisaver contributions to be offset against personal income tax levels.

Over the last year climate change has moved beyond sloganeering and the sceptics to become a very real issue to be confronted and resolved.

We must promote a comprehensive, science based approach to climate change issues – based upon sustainability, and involving incentives for industry sectors to curb greenhouse gas emissions, targeted emissions charges, attainable international commitments, and the promotion of greater domestic energy efficiency, for example.

This is not just a problem of industrialisation: it is a combination of economics, politics, and lifestyle issues, and the solutions will need to be equally broadly based.

At a government level, for example, future immigration programmes and overseas aid policies will be as important as some of the economic and energy efficiency issues we have to address.

But I remain extremely concerned that this issue which, if unresolved, has the capacity to destroy future generations, is being treated in such a partisan way by the government.

I have called on a number of occasions for a genuine multiparty approach to climate change policy, but each time I have been rebuffed, because the government apparently fears the Opposition will try to highjack the issue to its advantage.

With respect, this is a far bigger issue than protecting this government's political advantage in the lead-up to an election, and the decisions to be made should not be held hostage in this way.

Business and the wider community are looking for leadership on this issue, which has not been forthcoming while the government continues to keep all the cards to itself.

On this issue, unlike perhaps any other today, the politics of inclusion demand the laying aside of personal political advantage in the national interest, and call for people working constructively together to achieve viable and sustainable solutions.

This will not happen while the government continues to play politics with this issue because it perceives electoral advantage.

That is a dangerous game which runs the risk of ensuring that the solutions eventually reached have no durability beyond the life of this Parliament.

And that would create more uncertainty than ever.

Unfortunately, the same approach has characterised the way the government has handled election finance reform.

There is no argument that following the funding controversies that dogged the last election campaign reform is necessary, but the electoral system is property of all New Zealanders, not just the government of the day.

The rules governing election finance affect all political parties and therefore all should be involved in their development to ensure fairness and certainty.

I bitterly regret that the new legislation has been framed without the input of the major Opposition party, and that the current war of sleaze between both Labour and National makes it unlikely now that either will lay aside their differences in the interests of developing good law.

Everywhere I go people tell me how turned off they are by the personal attacks and gutter politics of the two old parties, who seem to be more interested in protecting their own vested interest, than achieving an outcome that is fair and reasonable.

The people are right – it is time the two old parties stopped treating the political system as their personal plaything, to be twisted and tweaked as it suits them, and got back to the task of promoting their plans for New Zealand’s future.

We say that in a free and open society, every New Zealander should have the opportunity to participate in a free and open way in the electoral process – indeed, that is one of UnitedFuture’s core principles.

The law currently rightly imposes spending limits on political parties to ensure the electoral process is as fair as possible, and not open to external manipulation.

At the same time, I think it is equally fair to extend similar restrictions to outside groups who seek to take part in elections, not to prevent their involvement in the democratic process, but to ensure they are not used as a device to thwart the spending limits on political parties.

But $60,000 is hardly a realistic fair maximum level of expenditure in such cases, and the current definitions of both what constitutes a third party or outside group and political activity are far too broad, and need to be substantially modified.

While UnitedFuture was pleased to have been one of the parties consulted in the development of the legislation, we have long been concerned at the narrowness of this process which seemed more focused on getting the bare 61 votes for the introduction of the Bill, than developing legislation that the greatest number possible of MPs could sign up to.

My biggest fear now is that no matter how well the select committee does its job, the election finance legislation will be fatally tainted by the nature of its construction.

To describe UnitedFuture's unique role in the New Zealand political environment, let me recall the famous words of the great Irish poet, William Butler Yeats writing in the first third of the 20th century:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

Well, contrary to Yeats' pessimism, we are the party that makes the centre hold, that promises dignity, respect and conviction in all that we do, and views the world as it is in reality, not through the bias of some rigid ideological or other prism.

We shun the passionate intensity of shallow, populist or dogma driven politics, in favour of a more substantial and constructive approach, where reason and commonsense prevail.

Our commitment to fairness, decency and individual responsibility provides the bridge across the political spectrum which gives families, neighbourhoods, community and voluntary organisations the opportunity to play a positive role in today's political settlement once more.

We are the bridge of comfort to disillusioned Labour voters who could never bring themselves to vote National, and disillusioned National voters for whom voting Labour is a step too far, but who both seek a stable and reliable direction for the country.

We are the bridge of empathy for young families, committed to doing their absolute best for their children, but who feel no-one is really listening to them, or truly understands their challenges.

We are the bridge of reassurance to our senior citizens who look back on the values they consider New Zealand has left behind, but still feel as passionately as ever about our country's future.

And we are the bridge of hope to those who simply want to see competent people in government, able to deliver the things they say they will, without the mudslinging and name calling the two old parties think passes for political debate today.

Commentators often scoff that the political centre is too crowded these days for the politics of reason UnitedFuture advances to be heard, and that the real political space is at the extremes.

But they overlook a couple of critical points.

We are not and never will become a party of extremes, the prisoner of vocal minority groups, or the strident voice of a better yesterday.

Politics today may well be about the lowest common denominator, or the most shallow and populist cause to grab the media's attention, but we stand for something different.

We are for the politics of reason and inclusion, where working co-operatively on common ground to make common sense policies and economic progress is the noblest of causes.

While we are driven by values and principles, we do not seek to impose them on others, but rather to use our values and principles to guide the development of the policies we promote.

Our overriding ambition is to make New Zealand the best place in the world to live and raise a family, the world's first truly successful multi-ethnic nation, where every citizen, whatever their background, race or creed is recognised as bringing a positive feature to our national table, and where all have the chance to enjoy everything that is good in our country.

By election time next year we will have been a support partner to Labour and National governments for 9 of the 12 years MMP will have been in place.

We are the one constant in MMP governments, because our cause transcends the narrow perspectives of the left and the right, and I intend to see us there again next year to be the flagship for good, hardworking Kiwi families.

We will make the centre hold – we will keep the left and the right honest and accountable.

So today I invite all New Zealanders with a passion for justice and freedom; a commitment to putting parents and communities first, and relying on government only where necessary; and who wish to see the government kept honest by a party of influence to give their party vote next year to UnitedFuture – to make all these things happen.

ENDS

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