United Future Political Address

The Address opened with Peter Dunne waffling about the family and shaking his head in an odd manner while doing so. It's not as bad as Alamein Kopu's wobbling eyes but it is still strange. He then says that he made six promises at the last election and achieved them during the term. He however only listed three, which were:

1) Families Commission
2) More Money for Families
3) Prevention of Dope legalization

The first is simply an expensive embarressment that has done nothing worthwhile so far. The second appears to be the reference to Michael Cullen's minor adjustments of the tax thresholds in three years time. If that's all that Dunne can bring himself to mention, one can only wonder what the three he didn't mention must be like.

We then had short speeches of the other United Future MPs mixed in with each other so that Judy Turner would say a sentence before shifting to Gordon Copeland saying a sentence and so on. Which made it a real pain to keep track of who said what. So I would just list the policies that I was able to record:

reduction of child poverty from 20% to 4%

This was to be done through Working for Families package.

Victim Rights Act

Sounds good but what was it about?

Condemnation of Conservation department in creating Marine Reserves

United Future can't say anything about the more important Foreshore and Seabed because the Government shafted them.

More tax cuts
Increase student allowances
Reduce student debt
No Dope legalization
No Hate-speech laws
Fairer Superannuation
More Police
Criminals serve out their sentences
Common sense conservation
Anti-political correctness

Humdrum stuff that isn't going to save their caucus from oblivion at the coming election.

Finally the issue of the government. Apparently United Future deserves the vote because it would be better than the Greens or New Zealand First. They don't have a tantrum and walk away because they don't get their way. Which is true largely because they are so wet that Helen can take then for granted and shaft them from time to time.