KEY POINTS:
United Future leader Peter Dunne is expected to continue his brazen courtship of National and John Key at his annual conference in Auckland today, predicting that New Zealand is on the cusp of "great change" and that his party wants to be part of it.
He has indicated he will float the idea of a national health insurance plan that, as developed policy, would be discussed in post-election talks.
Mr Dunne is Revenue Minister in the Labour-led Government and his party has a confidence and supply agreement with Labour. But he has never been shy about courting National, despite his close relationship with Labour in Government.
He did it at the 2005 election and in May last year he slammed Labour for effectively taking his party for granted.
Mr Dunne also criticised Labour's "wandering eye" for the Greens.
Today he is expected to outline several policies that would be more compatible with a National-led government, including backing its plans for a referendum on MMP, and abolishing the Maori seats. He is also expected to float a proposal for a national health insurance plan to fund elective surgery and high-cost medicines.
He said last night that the Budget last month increased elective surgery by a mere 1.6 per cent _ 5000 procedures more than the present 300,000.
"The problem we have got is limited resources, infinite demand and how you match the two together."
He had not worked through the details and wanted to get debate going.
The party would work on it over the rest of the year and would raise it in any post-election talks.
"Whether it works by being a tax-payer-funded scheme where we take a block of current health funding that is going into funding electives and put it into funding the insurance scheme or whether it is something that is done as a possible addition to KiwiSaver, these are details that still need to be worked out."