KEY POINTS:
Sir Roger Douglas was back in Parliament today setting out his remedies to cure New Zealand by renting out hospital wards to doctors and nurses.
The Act party has taken a vow to get back to its basics. So it lined up the three 'R's - Rodney Hide, Roger and Heather Roy - to tell journalists just how it would deliver.
Leader Rodney Hide promised some policy on "what we can do to bring our kids home, rather than just political piffle".
Sir Roger Douglas delivered it, listing renting hospital wards out to doctors and nurses to do "Mrs Tamati's hip operation," greater privatisation of education, hauling back tax rates, topping up poor people's incomes through tax system and getting rid of Working for Families and slashing government spending by 10 per cent.
He launched into Michael Cullen's treasured Working for Families scheme, which he said was "the very worst type of policy."
"He wants to make people dependent. If you do it through the tax system they get it automatically. If he gives it through social welfare, he makes them dependent. He makes them line up and he believes that is how he's get votes, by making them dependent."
Sir Roger and Rodney Hide had done some calculations and estimated government policies were costing New Zealanders $100 a week in lower wages.
Sir Roger denied his were policies for the rich and predicted a few "chardonnay socialists" might resist joining them for a while after they were introduced, but would soon see the light.
"The people who benefit most from Act party policies are the disadvantaged in society - the people who miss out on health care and top quality education."
There were glimmers that the Sir Roger injection has also focussed Rodney Hide's mind somewhat, enough to prompt him to talk slightly like a politician in election year again.
Asked about Act on Campus' stunt of "selling" party pills to get Act party members signed up, he first tried a bit of fence sitting, saying he did not think party pills were much of a reason to join Act, but
"we are not the party to be going round wagging our finger and telling adults what they can and can't do with their lives. I leave that up to every other political party that wants to boss people round."
He tried to steer the focus back onto serious policy issues, then to dismiss it as "an odd thing" undertaken by the young ones. Finally he succumbed to temptation and took a thwack at Jim Anderton - the man who made the party pills illegal and then said Hide's parents in Epsom would be appalled by Act's stunt.
"What I know about the parents of Epsom is they are very concerned about this Labour government. They are very concerned about the direction this country is going. And they're not concerned about Jim Anderton at all. They'd forgotten he was in Parliament."
The standard formula of these Act meetings is becoming clear.
Sing the praises of Sir Roger Douglas, make a gentle attack on National to point out it is becoming a carbon copy of Labour.
Say that Act will be needed and list Labour's "growth-buster' policies such as spending too much, taxing too much, and staying in power far too long, thereby sending 400,000 New Zealanders over to Australian where on average they can earn $300 a week more.
Liven up with periodic jibes at Michael Cullen and/ or ridicule of Jim Anderton. Sing Sir Roger's praises.
Sir Roger took to the attacks on Mr Cullen with some relish, dismissing his nine-year reign as finance minister as "something of a disaster" and the claw back in debt levels "a relatively small point."
Asked just how many of the policies Act thought it could get through, Mr Hide said it depended on the voters delivering the party more seats in Parliament.
"But Roger Douglas, Rodney Hide and Heather Roy are quite persuasive."
Sir Roger's policies in a nutshell:
* Health: "I believe we could invite proposals from doctors and nurses to rent hospital wards on the basis of payment for service, provided they could demonstrate they would increase productivity by at least 50 per cent ... You do what I suggest and Mrs Tamati will get her hip replacement tomorrow, not some time in the never-never."
* Government spending: Slash between $3-5 billion off government spending, which has grown by 10 per cent and is up $20 billion since 1999.
"[The increase in bureaucrats] has only helped one group and that's the commercial property owners of Wellington and they're having a great time."
* Taxes: Reduce the top rate from 39 back to 33 or lower. Adjust tax brackets to equate to pre-1999 levels.
"In New Zealand, the top rate comes in at 1.4 times the average wage and in the OECD as a whole, it's 5.6 times. No wonder people are jumping up and going to Australia in their thousands."
* The poor: get rid of Working for Families and instead inject the pockets of the poor with a tax-free income threshold of $30,000 to $40,000.
* Education: the voucher system - packaged as "a scholarship for every child" - in which each child gets funding to go where they choose, whether private or public. "The education sector at the moment looks a bit like it did in the 1980s before we reformed it. The bureaucrats have obviously won."
* On carbon emissions: Rodney Hide said New Zealand should hold back on Kyoto programmes until its main trading partners had joined. He said officials had estimated it would create a deficit to New Zealand of $30.6 billion by 2051.
"It started off that signing up to Kyoto was going to make New Zealand money."
