KEY POINTS:
National Party leader John Key will try to back up his underclass speech with a concrete policy announcement when he goes to the Wellington City Mission today.
Mr Key, who last month highlighted what he described as New Zealand's growing underclass, said the new policy "will have a very significant part" in helping to address it.
The policy would have a "reasonably significant fiscal implication", he said.
Mr Key's trip to the Wellington mission is sandwiched between a visit last Friday to Auckland's mission and a journey to Christchurch this afternoon to 0800 Hungry - a non-profit Christian trust which finds people in need and gives them food.
It is the latest example of National trying to maintain the momentum it gathered from the Burnside speech, which appears to have struck a chord with voters.
Mr Key has enjoyed strong rises in preferred Prime Minister ratings.
The latest Herald-DigiPoll survey asked respondents if they thought there was an underclass in New Zealand, and 81 per cent said there was.
Just 14 per cent said there was not, 4.6 per cent didn't know and 0.7 per cent refused to answer.
Recognition of Mr Key's so-called underclass was particularly strong among his own voters - 89 per cent of National voters said there was such a thing.
But worryingly for Labour, the underclass claim has also been backed by its voters.
Almost 80 per cent of Labour voters who took part in the poll said they thought there was an underclass, and 15.4 per cent said there was not.
Mr Key said yesterday the poll result - which was similar to a recent TVNZ survey about the underclass claim - showed Prime Minister Helen Clark was out of touch with reality and with her own supporters.
The Prime Minister has previously responded to questions about Mr Key's claimed underclass by pointing to Labour's track record of low unemployment and its Working For Families package.
She has conceded, however, that some people still fall through the cracks.
Mr Key intends to keep up the frenetic pace he has set this year, and is conscious of the requirement to back his talk with solid policy.
National faces a balancing act with its policy releases - trying to answer the public demand about what it would do if it were in power while also trying not to give away too much so far away from an election.
