Roger Douglas. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Roger Douglas. Photo / Glenn Jeffrey

Finance Minister Michael Cullen says a National-ACT government with Roger Douglas in its cabinet would take a tack to the hard right.

Sir Roger today said cutting taxes, slashing government spending by $5 billion and privatising parts of the health and education sectors could put $100 a week back into the pocket of average wage earners.

The former finance minister, whose policies became known as "Rogernomics" during the fourth Labour government, has said he will stand at the election for ACT and hopes to be elected through the party's list.

ACT has been keen to maximise publicity around the return of its founder and today Sir Roger presented several of the policies he would push for if he returned to the Cabinet table as part of a National-ACT government.

They included:

* Immediately cutting the top tax rate to 33c and adjusting tax thresholds for inflation since 1999;

* eventually introducing a tax-free threshold of up to $40,000;

* axing the Working for Families scheme.

* slashing government spending by between $3 billion and $5 billion;

* introducing education vouchers for all children;

* renting out hospital wards to doctors to practise privately.

Sir Roger also criticised Dr Cullen, who he said was "something of a disaster" and "one of the poorer ministers of finance in the last 50 years".

Dr Cullen today said that coming from Sir Roger, the comments were flattering.

"Just when everybody thought it might be safe to vote National out of the box, like something out of an old horror film, comes Roger Douglas," he told reporters.

"We all know what that means - flogging off the schools, flogging off the hospitals and cutting benefits and everything else that Roger wanted to do and Ruth Richardson did and he did in part."

He said Sir Roger would not be satisfied with a low Cabinet post and he was happy to compare their respective records anytime.

"Here we have a record-long period of growth since the second World War, one of the strongest set of government accounts in the developed world, one of the lowest rates of unemployment in the developed world.

"Roger gifted to us the longest period of downturn in New Zealand's economy since the second World War and rising unemployment."