National's recipe for success served with wine

By IRENE CHAPPLE

Don Brash delivered the National Party's discussion paper on economic growth yesterday into a room seduced by glimmering candles and midday wine.

The two-hour date attracted a sea of attendees wearing white shirts, and blue shirts, and white and blue striped shirts.

Two tables of Act supporters and MPs, including leader Richard Prebble, were quiet beyond one brief joke and the finance spokesman enjoyed a sympathetic question-and-answer session.

Never stretched, he answered the questions with ease, managed to crack a few jokes then at one point suggested he'd be happy to stop taking questions.

The lunch, put on by the Auckland Chamber of Commerce and the Employers and Manufacturers Association (Northern), was to flesh out the paper released a day earlier. It had detailed National's 10 steps to growth, which included limiting the size of government, reducing tax, and reforming the benefit system.

Brash did manage to take an easy hit at Prime Minister Helen Clark, thanking the Herald for its story detailing how she mentioned a target of 2011 as when New Zealand could reach the top half of the OECD ratings.

That, he said, could certainly not happen with current policies, but he waffled around a question of how achievable it could be with National policies.

New Zealand may reach its target by 2011, he suggested, if the OECD collapsed completely "and that was not beyond possibility". Brash continued leader Bill English's stance on the Treaty of Waitangi, suggesting once all claims were complete New Zealanders could be one people again.

The demolition of bulk funding, tax rates and a work-for-the-dole scheme were briefly raised, with Brash offering opinions already well canvassed.

He took another crack at Clark over how it "harried" Telecom's raising of rural connection charges.

Brash didn't expect to subsidise rural phone lines, just as he didn't expect those living in rural areas to subsidise a house in the eastern suburbs.

Maybe the most pertinent question was asked by an engineer in the audience: "How many of the 400,000 beneficiaries would you expect to vote for National on the policies now offered?"

Brash laughed. He hadn't expected many of them to vote National anyway.

By the session's end, a man in a blue shirt was rocking silently on his chair. Another was suppressing a yawn while a woman checked her nails.