• From the Leader
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Weíve been hitting the headlines over the past few weeks as we seek to make United Future a significant player in the development of policies and legislation that affect all New Zealanders.

A highlight for me was a visit to Christchurch where I was guest speaker at a "Press" Meet the Leaders lunch. This took the form of an informal dialogue with senior writers for the "Press" and some of its readers. The discussion was intelligent, wide-ranging and favourably reported in the newspaper the next day, followed by a reasoned editorial on United Future a few days later.

Significant publicity was generated by my call for the Green MP, Nandor Tanczos, to resign from Parliament for his persistent law-breaking through cannabis smoking. MPís are lawmakers, not lawbreakers and they should not accept taxpayer money if they insist on breaking the law.

In recent weeks, the NZ Herald (with the notable exception of columnist Colin James) has gone out of its way to write negatively about UFNZ. Letters of protest to the editor have gone unpublished. It is significant that of the three reporters involved, only Mr James took the trouble to speak to me before writing his story. Some sections of the media continue to misunderstand the nature of United Futureís agreement with the Government.

For the record, we are not a member of the Labour-Progressive Coalition Party coalition Government. We have a supply and confidence agreement, which means we, in effect, will vote to allow the Government to run its full term, but we are not bound to support any Government legislation.

Marc has also opened United Futureís electorate office in central Christchurch (2nd Floor, Highlight House, cnr Manchester & Cashel Streets, Christchurch). It features a large meeting space; all party members are welcome to visit.

Judy Turner continues to beaver away on the ground rules for setting up the Commission for the Family; Bernie Ogilvie is devoting his attention to monitoring the troubled education sector and developing sensible solutions to some of those problems; Murray Smith has been vigorously exploring ways in which we can aid the Treaty settlements process, and an impassioned speech delivered in the House on the latest settlement, Ngati Ruanui, was well reported; Paul Adams is consulting with the Government over the Construction Contracts Bill, a much needed piece of legislation to protect sub-contracting trades people and similar small businesses; Larry Baldock continues to prod the Government over using roading-related revenue on improving our roads and Gordon Copeland is pursuing the same tactic over retaining Air New Zealand in New Zealand ownership and cutting the company tax rate.

Media matters are handled by Ted Sheehan and Frank Owen, though there may be a new appointment in this area soon as the MPís workload increases and public demand on their time grows.

Frank is also the point of contact in the Parliamentary offices for party matters.

Annual conference reminder

The long awaited post-election conference is just about upon us! Here are the details;

Date: Saturday, November 16 Place: the Heritage Hotel, Albert St, Auckland Time: 9.30am - 5pm

Cost per person: Still being determined but possibly around $65 covering arrival tea and coffee, morning tea and coffee, lunch, afternoon tea and coffee.

The programme is still being worked on, but it would be wise to start looking for those cheap air fares now on the 'Net. A pre-conference dinner on the Friday night is being planned. Details will come later.