National leader Todd Muller has rejected a question suggesting the party haven’t announced any policies under his leadership while at an event in Christchurch launching the party's plan to get New Zealanders working.
At a speech to the Christchurch Employers’ Chamber of Commerce today, the National Party released their ‘five elements’ plan to grow the economy and create more jobs.
Mr Muller outlined the plan in a statement released this afternoon.
“The framework comprises five components: responsible economic management; delivering infrastructure; reskilling and retraining our workforce; a greener, smarter future; and building stronger communities.
“National will be releasing each of these components in a series of major speeches through this month and into early August to give New Zealanders time to scrutinise each element.”
After the event in Christchurch a reporter asked Mr Muller: "You’ve been leader for seven weeks now and instead of policy you’ve come up with five bullet points?"
"Look I completely reject that, firstly we have announced policy from JobStart to tourism accelerators, are just two recent examples and actually the framework’s important," Mr Muller replied.
"To be able to articulate for New Zealand what the nature of the recovery plan is that will get New Zealand working is absolutely critical because then from those elements we can build a clear coherent suite of policies and people can see the National Party has a real alternative to this Government’s approach to spending money, lifting debt to $140 billion and no real plan to drive the recovery."
The statement also said the full plan will not be finalised until after the Government releases the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Update (PREFU) in August.
National says it will be available by September 2 when overseas voting begins, to be followed by early voting, which starts on September 5.
When asked if this gives the New Zealand voting public enough time to scrutinise details of the plan, Mr Muller said National needs to wait until the PREFU is released to make sure the final figures are correct and his party will be releasing additional details before then throughout July and August.
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