Speech: Paul Henry at ACT Mainland Campaign Launch

Thank you. Thank you very much.

Nicole has just spent the last few minutes explaining that the Mainland is full of people who actually do things. You grow things, build things, fix things, make things and export things.

Slightly awkward for me because I have spent most of my adult life just talking.

To be fair, I became quite good at it.

But tonight I want to explain why I finally decided talking was no longer enough, why I chose ACT… and then I have a pretty special policy to release.

When I announced I was standing for ACT, people quite reasonably asked whether I understood what I was getting myself into. Could I really cope with some twat making points of order at 11 o’clock on a Wednesday night in relation to Speaker’s ruling 58/4?

It sounds dreadful, I mean, completely ghastly. I had a perfectly good life. I didn’t need something to do. I didn’t wake up thinking my life lacked select committees. But I love our magnificent country too much to sit back and watch it descend into mediocrity.

I don’t want to be the one waking up on November 8th thinking I could have done more.

My wife and I have ten grandchildren between us. When I look at the country they are inheriting, I see a place with almost limitless potential behaving as though decline is simply inevitable.

The economy is too small. The bureaucracy is too big. Too many young New Zealanders think the only way they can get ahead is in Australia, while those who stay will be left paying an eye-watering debt – a debt that already costs us $25 million a day just in interest payments.

That’s not good enough. New Zealand is still paradise but we have forgotten what we are capable of.

We have abundant resources, stable institutions, extraordinary natural beauty and talented, intelligent people – with a few notable exceptions… luckily, most of them have congregated in the Labour caucus room.

The ingredients are all here. What has been missing is confidence, is aspiration, and a Government that backs success in order to Unlock New Zealand’s potential.

That’s one of the reasons I chose ACT. ACT still believes New Zealand’s best days are ahead of us.

ACT wants to invigorate New Zealand with the aspiration and ambition that New Zealand was once world famous for.

But to do that, ACT must also demonstrate that aspiration. 

Tonight I get to announce a policy which, for me, captures that idea better than almost anything else we could do.

Some of you may remember that when I announced my candidacy, a journalist asked whether I had any policies of my own. A concerned David Seymour looked on. I watched him out the corner of my eye, panic on his face.

I now understand that announcing policies on the fly is probably discouraged among candidates. But honestly, what did they think they were getting with me?

I said I wanted to build a world-class cancer hospital. A proper one...

To be honest, I expected to be pulled aside after press conference and told never to mention the hospital again. Instead I was told, we think you might be onto something.

The Christchurch Cancer Foundation has already done enormous work in this area, as have Auckland University. David Seymour and Todd Stephenson have spent years working on how New Zealand gets faster access to medicines and better cancer treatment.

People who know considerably more about this than I do took an idea that I’ve been publicly talking about for years and worked out whether it could actually be done.

Tonight I get to reveal their answer.

It can.

ACT will pursue the establishment of New Zealand’s first purpose-built comprehensive National Cancer Centre, with two major campuses.

One in Auckland. And one right here in Christchurch. That’s what we’re taking to this election. We are going to build a global centre of excellence for cancer, right here in New Zealand.

That’s unlocking potential in action.

My friend John Key has said one of his great political regrets was being talked out of building what he called at the time ‘the equivalent of Starship for cancer’. If he had his time again, he has said he would do it because generations of New Zealanders would look back and say it was a good use of taxpayer money.

He’s absolutely right.

Starship showed what New Zealand can achieve when we concentrate extraordinary people, technology, generosity and national ambition around a single mission. This will be much bigger.

Christchurch will be one of the two great centres, serving the South Island and lower North Island – that’s around 40 percent of New Zealanders.

We want to build an institution capable of standing alongside the best in Melbourne, London, Toronto and anywhere else in the world. Somewhere like the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne where my daughter works because she can save more lives there than she can here.

Cancer is New Zealand’s biggest killer. More than 30,000 New Zealanders are diagnosed every year and, by 2044, that number is expected to exceed 45,000.

Over 1000 more New Zealanders die from cancer every year than would if our cancer mortality just matched Australia’s. 

Cancer touches almost every family in this country. Cancer has touched everyone in this room. We should not simply shrug our shoulders and accept that New Zealanders are more likely to die from it because they happen to live on this side of the Tasman.

And the answer is not simply a nicer building. The building is almost the least significant part. Politicians love buildings because you can put on a hard hat, a high-vis, and point at some concrete looking as though you personally constructed it.

The real point is what happens when you bring extraordinary people together.

At the moment, New Zealand has brilliant clinicians, researchers, universities, charities and private providers doing extraordinary work, but much of it is scattered.

A comprehensive cancer centre puts the researcher and teacher next to the clinician, the surgeon next to the diagnostic team, the oncologist next to the genomics specialist, and all of them next to the patients, with major clinical trials and new therapies happening around them.

Clever people become even more useful when you put them near other clever people. Ideas travel faster. Research reaches patients faster. New technology gets adopted faster. International trials become possible. And the best people want to work there. That last point is enormously important.

The best oncologists, surgeons, researchers and scientists can work almost anywhere. If London or Australia offers the best, we should not be surprised when the best leave.

Australia already has many New Zealand nurses, builders and half of the ambitious twenty-somethings. For some reason, they’ve been less enthusiastic about our Wellington bureaucrats, and we could offer a job lot of them. What we don’t want to be doing is gift-wrapping the oncologists for the rest of the world.

A genuinely global centre of excellence gives brilliant New Zealanders a reason to stay and brilliant people overseas a reason to come here. Excellence attracts excellence.

Now, I know what many of you are thinking. This is an ACT event. “Paul, it sounds fantastic. You’re an absolute genius, always will be. But who the hell is paying for it?” Excellent question, and what I’ve been thinking about for years.

To be fair, I briefly wondered whether we could borrow a little from Winston’s hundred-billion-dollar future fund. Sadly, though as everyone in this room already knows – the fund doesn’t exist.

So how much will it cost? And remember, we are talking cutting edge, equal to the best facilities anywhere in the world.

Costings indicate we’re looking around $2 billion for both campuses. No small sum. It’s worth noting that when I mentioned this out of the blue standing next to David Seymour at the press conference, I suggested we might be looking at a figure close to $10 billion, so ACT’s involvement has already saved the country $8 billion. We’re almost there New Zealand.

But the Government is not simply writing a $2 billion cheque. ACT’s proposed model combines existing Crown health investment, public-private partnership financing, philanthropy and other private capital.

Here’s the important bit: much of the health spend is coming anyway.

New Zealand already has more than $20 billion of health infrastructure investment planned by 2035. Cancer facilities will need replacing and upgrading. Cancer treatment itself will become more expensive as the population grows, ages and new treatments and medications become available.

So the choice is not between spending money and not spending money. We are going to be spending money.

The choice is whether we keep patching together a dispersed system piece by piece, or use some of that inevitable investment to create something genuinely world class that will save more lives.

I won’t bore you with all the details but if the team have done their job correctly, and my understanding is they have, the full policy should be on ACT’s website by now. If you need a hand getting to sleep tonight…  boom.

And then there’s philanthropy. We have enormously successful New Zealanders who want to give something back to the country that helped them succeed. Well, this is something magnificent they can give back.

ACT will establish an independent philanthropic foundation from the beginning of this project to unlock extraordinary generosity, with major donors recognised through naming rights for appropriate parts of the Centre.

To the wealthy Green Party supporters who keep publicly announcing how desperately keen they are to pay more tax – this is fantastic news. They can give voluntarily. In fact, why not shut the Green Party down and just give your money to this project.

And if somebody makes a truly transformational contribution and wants their name on the hospital, put their name on the hospital. Make the letters enormous.

The recently introduced $33,333 cap on the tax benefits available for charitable donations will be removed by ACT for all charitable giving. If New Zealanders want to give $1 million, $10 million or $100 million to cancer care, the system should encourage that generosity, not impose an arbitrary ceiling on it.

Some parties would have been outraged when I surprised their leader at my first press conference. ACT saw the potential and decided to unlock it.

Tonight, here in Christchurch, I get to announce that people far more knowledgeable than me have worked out how we can actually do this thing… together.

How brilliantly magnificent. How aspirational. You know what we’re doing? We’re unlocking New Zealand’s potential. 

Thank you.