Wellington Central And Heather Roy - Speech
Wellington Central And Heather Roy
Speech to ACT Wellington Candidate Launch; The Museum Hotel, Cable Street, Wellington; 6:30pm, Thursday, November 22 2007
Thank you, Heather, for your invitation tonight and - more importantly - thank you for putting your hand up to undertake, what will be, a whole lot of very hard work.
Thank you Dave Moore - our regional Board member - who works so hard for the ACT party and for the Wellington Region.
And thank you every one here tonight.
I know you all have other things you could be doing - families to be with, home stuff, businesses to fret over; but you're show huge support simply by attending tonight and standing with us - and particularly standing with Heather - so thank you.
There are two people I especially want to acknowledge:
Catherine Judd - the immediate past President of the ACT Party. A truly wonderful New Zealander who had an immense, positive impact on the ACT Party.
And Richard Prebble former leader of the ACT party and one of New Zealand's towering political figures. And a man who has some history with the Wellington Central electorate.
As President of the ACT Party I always - always - love talking about, debating, arguing and having a few drinks over our ideas; those great big beautiful ideas from which our party was born and to which our party is wedded ('born from' and 'wedded to' - that's an unusual relationship).
The idea that individuals have rights - rights that are inalienable - once magnificently articulated as the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
And that a Government's primary role is the protection of those rights. And I bet that everyone in this room loves those ideas - if you don't you're probably in the wrong room.
And, like me, you love debating them, reading and learning about them. And that's a great and energising endeavour - but debating, reading and learning these great ideas doesn't have much effect - it doesn't actually change much - it doesn't make enough of a difference.
Because those beautiful words - "Life. Liberty. Pursuit of Happiness" were accompanied by other words. Words about "Governments gaining their authority only through consent of the governed."
Well that's what we're here for tonight - to launch an effort to gain the 'consent of the governed.'
And whether you like it or not - gaining the consent of the governed is not achieved via energetic debates over the last bottle of red wine at a dinner party. Gaining the consent of the governed is only achieved by bloody hard work.
And that's what we're here for tonight. We're moving from the talking about it stage - to the bloody hard work stage.
Now Heather's put her hand up and I know that Dave Moore's hand is up.
Tonight I'm asking for everyone in this room to put their hand up - because Heather Roy, Dave Moore, myself - the party President, the ACT party board - can't do this by ourselves.
We need your help, your time, your support and your money.
Heather and Dave - and I know there are many others - Duncan and the rest of clan-Roy, the local committee and many of you - are already helping - but I can tell you now - that will not be enough.
We need everyone in this room - and everyone that everyone in this room can persuade - to help us.
We've a huge job ahead of us. But we have two huge advantages we didn't have last election:
Firstly - Rodney's got Epsom. And more and more people know that Rodney will hold Epsom. So no longer can the media and our political opponents scare potential ACT voters by saying that a party for ACT will be wasted.
Secondly - National is rapidly skidding to the left leaving a large, and growing, sector of pro-liberty, pro-family, pro-work, pro-prosperity and pro-reason New Zealanders looking for a party that represents, and will promote, their aspirations.
But even those two advantages will not produce votes for ACT unless, and until, we earn them.
We need you to recruit members, encourage others to join our efforts. We need an army of mail delivers, people prepared to make phone calls, to knock on doors, to find sites for, to erect and to maintain billboards, to solicit donations, to write letters, to write cheques, to publish material - there is so much to do, very little time - and currently too few people to do it all.
So tonight I'm asking you to raise your hand - go and physically speak with Dave, Heather or members of the local committee - literally offer to help TONIGHT - NOW! Pull out your cheque book or your credit card and help us with $50, $100, $1,000, $5,000. Every bit helps.
Renew your membership. Grab a couple of membership forms and join up your family - your mates.
But don't wait till tomorrow - because you'll forget - you need to do it now. Thank you everyone for your show of support tonight - please don't let your support stop tonight.
ENDS