Alliance launches election campaign

3:00pm

Alliance leader Laila Harre opened her party's election campaign today with the message that only a vote for her party will deliver free education, free public health and four weeks annual leave.

The three are key priorities for the Alliance, which will tomorrow celebrate the implementation of a key policy from this term in Government, paid parental leave.

The party is polling just 0.5 per cent following its acrimonious split with former leader Jim Anderton in April but Ms Harre remains confident it will be returned to Parliament.

Ms Harre told party faithful at today's launch in Henderson, Auckland, that the Alliance must be returned to ensure children, education, jobs and health are priorities.

"Every person in this room has made a choice to change the world," she said.

"It is a choice we make not just once but every day that we get up to work for social and economic justice.

"We will affirm that choice every morning for the next four weeks, and it won't stop there."

Ms Harre said the Alliance was the difference between National and Labour.

"If you'd told me 20 years ago that people were about to give an absolute majority in Parliament to a party that supports user pays tertiary education and a means tested students allowance I'd have laughed you right out of town," she said.

"Especially if you added that the only party that had a real commitment to free education and a realistic budget to achieve it was polling at the margin of error.

"I know after 2-1/2 years in Government with Labour that unless the Alliance is there, Labour will not put enough into health, education and support for families."

Labour would tomorrow release its election "pledge card" but it would not pledge to address the inequalities which had plagued New Zealand and stifled development, Ms Harre said.

Instead, it would comprise promises National voters could live with while voting Labour.

"While Labour waits for economic growth to deliver social justice, the Alliance says that the children in Ranui can't wait for the wealth to trickle down from Remuera."

Ms Harre also sounded a warning on genetic engineering, saying the Alliance would keep it in the lab until it was safe.

"The Alliance insisted on the moratorium we have now and we want to be back to make sure it is extended beyond October next year," she said.

The Alliance is campaigning for the party vote in all areas and the electorate vote in Waitakere, where Ms Harre is standing, and Tainui, where her deputy and Mana Motuhake leader Willie Jackson is standing.

- NZPA