The importance of United Future, as a support partner to National has significantly grown to date.
All confidence and supply Bills are guaranteed support but that’s it. ALL other Bills require minister and chief of staffs’ to consult with the support parties, that’s UnitedFuture!
The support parties sit together in Parliament: with our Peter Dunne, the 63 year old veteran who has been in Parliament since 1984. The dynamics of MMP create a situation where the voice of the people are UnitedFuture’s mainstay, to keep in check what the public commonly see as the government or ‘the man’.
Opposing all impediments to the success of us everyday Kiwis, UnitedFuture continues to seek our mandate not in the words of legislation, but from the mouths of the people, our people. Peter has previously said: Of the inherently flawed plan EQC made to fix things as bringing ”the last vestiges of the old provincial squattocracy and Christchurch urbanites into stark relief”. UnitedFuture hasn’t forgotten the challenges that still need to be fought, and we will continue to represent the ‘right way’, to a government whose tardiness and excuses have gone on long enough.
Because of the MMP system, worryingly, the continued mistreatment of elderly is ever increasing. Elder abuse is not something that we can just plonk in the too hard basket. We need to look to a leadership who has strong outlooks for those aged; both economically and socially. There is a saying going around ” you better be nice to your children ’cause they decide your rest home”. Let us not forget that theoretically there is enough parliamentary support to get rid of section 70 of the Social Welfare Act – which requires the elderly to forfeit overseas annuities and retirement funds by the amount of New Zealand superannuation they are getting. Together we must look for solutions to secure the rights we already have, and to progress the conversation about the security of our elderly. It is in the area of private member’s Bills that support parties, like UnitedFuture in particular, can have an impact on the balance of power in such circumstances.
Together we must continue to batter at the wall of bureaucracy and take courage knowing that whilst numbers count in politics, that does not necessarily mean that the smallest numbers count for the least.
