MEDIA RELEASE
New Zealand Young Nationals

7 February 2000

“YOUNG NAT’S ON THE RISE”

Nationals Youth Vice President Daniel Gordon will say to the party’s powerful Management Board this week that Young Nationals are ready to approach the New Year with vigour and enthusiasm.

"As the largest and most successful youth political organisation in New Zealand, celebrating 67 years of existence, we look forward to continuing to make a positive and impassioned contribution to the party this year,” Daniel Gordon said.

"The Young Nationals Executive have spent the summer break discussing how we can maximise our unique position within the party. We are passionate about selling our colours to the public and defending the policies that National implemented in our nine years of government, against what is clearly going to be a government keen to meddle in everyones lives unnecessarily."

"We are not prepared to sit back and allow the left to cut our policies without a fight. Nor do we intend to sit back and let them take the credit for the economic recovery which our party led, and the policies we put in place," said Daniel Gordon.

“What is encouraging is that every day more and more young people are happy to brand themselves by saying ‘I support National’, which is significant this close after the election. I am confident that this will continue further as even more New Zealanders wake up to the realism of the Labour/Alliance/Green Government, and what it will cost them - not only in terms of Labours intention to meddle in areas like tax, defence and ACC, but in their personal lives -- with clear intentions to ban smoking in restaurants and cafes and dictate what we watch on television, as just some examples already seen this month.”

“The National Party and Young Nationals will defend personal freedom and choice, against unnecessary meddling and regulation by a government that thinks it knows best.”

“National is a mainstream Party, supported by a huge number of ordinary Kiwis who are proud of their own achievements and of our achievements as a nation. We are a party of successful people, prepared to do the work, both as individuals, as families, and as a nation. This is a key differentiation with our opponents, made up largely of academics, with little or no experience in the 'real world', our opponents to the left still believe that they can run New Zealander's lives better than we can. Take Michael Cullen, who in the self proclaimed spirit of pragmatism, is determined to nationalise work place insurance, thus ending the hundreds of millions of dollars of savings by employers through out the country.”

"We are also a younger party. Indeed, our survival as a major political party depends on our preparedness to move with the times, and seek support from people not traditionally regarded as National supporters. It is groups like Young Nationals who bring this fresh element to the party. Young Nationals are very much a part of the new National,” said Daniel Gordon.

"Young Nationals intend to be a vital part of a strong and vocal opposition, and intend to enjoy every minute of it – remembering that every minute is one less minute of an interventionist, left wing Government," concluded Daniel Gordon.

ENDS

For further information contact:
Daniel Gordon (021) 229 6812

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