Peter Dunne - The Visionary

United Future began the year with a caucus and board retreat. According to united Future MP, Gordon Copeland, this is some of what Peter Dunne said.

“Here’s a vision.

It’s election night, 2008. A revived, re-activated, renewed United Future has campaigned hard at the general election, pointing out to the voters that

· we’ve held the Government together;
· we’ve achieved significant gains such as tax reform for business owners and charities;
· we’ve secured a commitment to income splitting;
· we’ve finally forced some commonsense into how we purchase and provide pharmaceuticals for ill New Zealanders;
· and we’ve reinforced our role as a solid, sensible, reliable centrist party that adds real value to any New Zealand government.

The public hears our message, responds positively and we gain 10% of the party vote, leading to a United Future team in Parliament of 12 MP’s.

That’s the vision; how do we get there?


Well, let's see what you did last time;

"During the election campaign Dunne and National Leader Don Brash publicly sat outside an Epsom café over a cup of tea as a demonstration to the electorate that Dunne could co-operate with the National Party. This demonstration saw the majority of National supporters in Ohariu-Belmont combine with United Future and other Dunne-supporters to return Peter Dunne with a comfortable majority. National comfortably won the party vote in his seat.

Dunne’s decision to work with Winston Peters also counterpointed Dunne's previous comments about Peters’ reliability. In one well-publicised press release Dunne reworded one of Peters’ well-publicised campaign phrases by saying "Can we trust him? No, we can’t!"

Words fail me.