KEY POINTS:
3.45pm: National launched its state services policy this afternoon, pledging a group of cabinet ministers would be set the task of getting rid of waste in the public services.
John Key said: "In the period immediately ahead, families and businesses will have no option but to behave
with restraint and will be entitled to see similar restraint reflected in the operation of government agencies funded by their taxes."
2.08pm: Helen Clark has been campaigning in Waikato today. She visited a family in Ngaruawahia who, after voting National all their lives, have decided to switch to Labour. They said they made their decision after learning National planned to scrap a $1billion fund to help people insulate their houses. "Small things do make a difference," they said.
The Prime Minister then went to Waikato University where she received a good reception from a packed lecture hall after outlining her student allowance policy, first revealed in Dunedin earlier this week. She received questions on the defence force, fixing the brain drain and other issues. She has now arrived at Hamilton's mosque.
- CLAIRE TREVETT
2.00pm: NZ First has released its immigration policy, saying people should only be allowed into the country if they have a job or if they have immediate family members in NZ.
Leader Winston Peters said: "No job no immigrant."
1.59pm: The Greens say the Government should help the struggling timber industry, but purchasing their plants is not the way to do it.
"I can understand the hurt of the workers and their demand that the Government take over where industry seems to have failed them," Green Party Co-Leader Jeanette Fitzsimons says.
"But the way to do it is to provide a market for what they produce. Otherwise, we are treating just the symptoms of the economic climate, not the causes. And in the end the public will own an unsustainable business which just stockpiles unsold product."
12.33pm: John Key has arrived at cafe in central Dunedin where he was met by a small group of protestors claiming National wants to sell off state assets. They chanted "Let's sell NZ" and "NZ for sale" but Key walked straight past them with no confrontation. He is set to announce the party's state sector policy later this afternoon.
- PAULA OLIVER
12.11pm: National is trying to keep up the pressure from the showerhead issue of last week, putting out a press release claiming "hot water cylinders also on nanny state hit list".
"Regulations limiting the size of home hot water cylinders are another unnecessary and unworkable interference in people's lives," said Nick Smith, the party's building and construction spokesman, Nick Smith.
The new regulations, which come into effect on February 1, amend the building code and limit the size of an electric hot water cylinder to 180 litres for smaller homes and 315 litres for larger homes, National said.
"This is not a recipe for energy efficiency, but rather a blunt rule that will see households run out of hot water for bathing and showering. Larger families will be particularly discriminated against," Smith said.
- NZ HERALD STAFF
11.30am: John Key is touring the Cadbury chocolate factory in Dunedin while the reporters following him are sitting in reception eating chocolates.
Before going in Key and his entourage had to sign forms saying they didn't have health conditions such as Hepatitis.
The media has not been invited in leaving them wondering if they are deemed more of a health risk than the National Party leader.
- PAULA OLIVER
10.37am: Maori Party calls for the dole to be scrapped are "dangerous in the extreme", Green Party MP Sue Bradford says.
Maori Party co-leader Tariana Turia on Tuesday, asked if she wanted to see the dole scrapped, said: "Yes. Absolutely. I'm opposed to the dole. I have to be very frank with you - I don't think it is healthy for the spirit of our people, to be getting money for doing nothing."
Ms Bradford said today: "Tariana Turia's suggestion ... that the dole should be scrapped is dangerous in the extreme, and especially for Maori who tend to be disproportionately unemployed.
"If this meagre support is removed we will see family breakdown, child poverty, crime, begging and homelessness at levels way beyond anything we can conceive of at present."
- NZPA
10.10am: New Zealand Institute chief executive David Skilling has been on radio repeating his support for National's proposed changes to the Super Fund.
His support was reported in the Herald today and he said on Radio New Zealand this morning that what National was proposing was in line with many other countries' pension funds and would help New Zealand during the current freeze-up of credit markets.
"What National announced yesterday has something going for it, particularly in an environment where New Zealand firms will find it a lot tougher over the next several years to access capital to finance growth both here and offshore," he said.
- NZPA
9.00am: National Party leader John Key has welcomed changes to the bank deposit guarantee scheme which includes making finance companies pay a fee.
RBNZ Governor Alan Bollard and acting Treasury secretary Peter Bushnell said in a joint statement that a fee of 300 basis points per annum would now be charged monthly to finance companies rated below BB or unrated.
Mr Key today said the changes made sense. "The way it was originally proposed any costs of the scheme were simply going on the larger institutions and arguably some of the sounder institutions on a relative pecking order," he said on Radio New Zealand.
- NZPA
