Category: ACT Party

Source: ACT Party

The Haps

The country turned 185 on Thursday, but not everyone wanted to celebrate and debate. David Seymour’s address is here. They turned their backs and took his microphone, but nobody actually tried to argue that division based on ancestry is better than liberal democracy.

Spaghetti Government

Just over a year ago the New Zealand Initiative, a think tank, released a short and brilliant report on Government in New Zealand. Cabinet Congestion: The Growth of a ministerial maze.

The gist of the report is that our Government has far more Ministers, and far more portfolios, than similar-sized countries. For example the Government of Ireland has fifteen ministers with eighteen portfolios and eighteen departments.

Once upon a time New Zealand was roughly like that. Cabinet had sixteen ministers who all attended the main Cabinet meeting. Each Minister had one or two departments they were responsible for, and that was also their portfolio. For example, if you were the Minister of Police, you were responsible for Police, Police was your portfolio, and you were the only Minister of Police.

Then came the MMP and the Government required multiple parties. It meant the Bolger Government needed to share power, but wouldn’t. Instead, Ministerial power was diluted with a little water in the wine.

National negotiated the position of ‘Treasurer’ for Winston Peters, because they couldn’t imagine giving up Finance. The idea of a Minister outside Cabinet was also born, meaning Ministers who don’t attend the main Cabinet meeting. Four of these new Ministers meant 20 in total.

Not to be outdone, Helen Clark formed an even bigger Government three years later. Cabinet expanded to 20 Ministers, and Ministers outside cabinet doubled to eight. Then there were 28.

Not much has changed since then, except for an eruption of portfolios and departments. We now have a Ministry for Pacific Peoples, and a Ministry for Ethnic Affairs. Then there are portfolios without a specific department, including Racing, Mental Health, Auckland, the South Island, to name a few of the 78 Portfolios that now exist.

There are other complications. For example needing to pick nearly 30 Ministers from a Government majority of just over 60 MPs affects quality. It means nearly half of MPs are Ministers when their ‘side’ is in Government. There’s been more than a few in recent years who wouldn’t have got a job like being a Minister otherwise.

Most Ministers have multiple portfolios, around three to four on average. They’ll be less effective at, say, improving foreign relations if they’re also responsible for local government (Nanaia Mahuta was terrible at both). They’ll be less effective because they can’t specialise, but also because a specialist is less likely to be appointed in the first place.

On the other hand, many departments have multiple ministers. There are three in Education, but that’s nothing compared with the 18 that MBIE is responsible to. Who is in charge?

As the Initiative report argues, confusion empowers the bureaucracy. They can face multiple Ministers who themselves have many other jobs, often in totally unrelated areas. This makes it extremely difficult to shrink Government, or get much done at all.

Some will criticise ACT for creating the Minister for Regulation. The Party would respond that restricting how other people can use their property is the most important government power to restrain besides taxing and spending. The latter has the Minister of Finance and Treasury, but who restrains regulation?

ACT is now at the centre of government for the first time, and sits at the table that’s been set over the last thirty years of MMP. If the Party was charged with setting the table, there would be fewer placemats.

How would we do it again? Any future Government should stick to three rules when it’s being set up.

1. Every Minister sits in Cabinet so they’re part of every discussion.
2. Every Minister has a department, so there are no portfolios that don’t involve managing a department.
3. No Department has more than one Minister, so every public servant knows who they’re accountable to.

This would mean getting rid of about half the portfolios and eight Ministers. It would go a long way to improving government efficiency and allow the government to get a lot more done much faster with much less ‘resource.’

Source: ACT Party

Government Powhiri Address
David Seymour, Leader ACT New Zealand
Wednesday 5th February, 2025

E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e rau Rangatira

Two years ago here, I set out my party’s three goals for the Treaty.

Tuatahi, ki a maimoatia te reo me te ahurea Māori

(one, to cherish the Māori language and culture).

Tuarua, ki a whakatika ngā hapa o mua.

(two, to put right the wrongs of the past)

Tuatouru, ki a ōrite ai te āhei atu o ngā Tamariki katoa ki a puāwaitia.

(three, to give every child an equal chance to flourish)

Since then I’ve held to these goals and promises. Some who heard my words here and understood them have tried to pretend they didn’t.

Instead they’ve poured poison in the ears of young people. They’ve said that I want to take away their mana, their reo, and their culture.

Some of the poison goes so far it’s actually funny. Rawiri Waititi even wrote in the newspaper that I want to take away people’s outdoor hobbies.

What is the point of these claims. It cannot be seeking the truth, because the things they say are not true.

Perhaps blaming me is a convenient distraction from other failures.

The numbers don’t lie.

Māori home ownership. Māori school attendance. Māori crime victimization. Māori unemployment. Māori incomes. Māori life expectancy.

None of it is good news, and none of it’s getting better because people think the Treaty is a partnership.

If this is what a Treaty partnership looks like, how is it working out for Māori?

What is good news is we now have a Government with practical solutions to these problems, and the ACT Party is proud to play its part.

New resource management laws and building laws will make it easier for the next generation to build a place of their own in this country.

Charter schools, and curriculums and assessments with rich content will provide young New Zealanders with useful maps for navigating the twenty first century.

We’ve got the values right on crime. Now the Government stands beside the victims, who are disproportionately Māori.

We know there’s no mana in dependency, it’s a trap, and traps Māori the most. That’s why the Government is bringing back mutual obligation in welfare.

Getting off welfare means jobs in a growing economy. I’m proud to lead the charge against the red tape that crushes the wairua of our economy.

The Government is funding more medicine than ever, by a lot. It’s setting ambitious targets to get health wait times down. The biggest health benefits will go to those with the biggest needs.

That is the mahi. Kia ōrite ai te āhei atu o ngā tamariki katoa ki a puāwaitia.

My critics need to explain why these problems can’t be solved under a treaty that granted equal rights.

They need to explain why divisive identity politics is necessary to solve these problems, especially when it’s going out of fashion around the world.

That’s my wero to you,

Ngā mihi.

Source: ACT Party

The Haps

David Seymour’s speech at the Treaty Grounds today is widely anticipated. This week’s Free Press covers other matters, but for a preview of ACT’s Treaty approach, you can read Seymour’s column in the Herald.

The COVID Royal Commission, Mark II, designed by Brooke van Velden, is open to public submissions, and now there’s an online portal to make it easy. After Labour’s attempted whitewash, ACT campaigned for people to be able to say what they think about the lockdowns, mandates, and other public health measures. There will be another pandemic, probably not this decade but almost certainly this century, and lessons learned from this one could be worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

If you don’t normally listen to Radio New Zealand, we understand. However Kathryn Ryan interviewed David Seymour for half an hour on the Regulatory Standards Bill, and we think it’s worth an exception.

Owning the Wrong Stuff

Last Monday we shared David Seymour’s State of the Nation speech. This week it is still in the headlines. How is this possible? The speech said two things people know deep down are true, but politicians are afraid to say.

The Government owns the wrong stuff. Its books show $570 billion worth of assets, enough to build a four-lane highway from Whangarei to Invercargill six times, but you wouldn’t know it. The Government is having to downsize hospitals while the rest of the world is buying military hardware, and our roads and pipes need attention.

Meanwhile, in New Zealand, the Government is invested in houses (60,000), a property valuation firm, farms, electricity generators, and sunset industries such as mail and television, among many other weird and wonderful things.

Could it be an idea to, just maybe, just ask the question, without anyone getting their knickers in a knot: Does the Government own the right stuff. And if not, should it try selling some shares in power companies to invest in some roads and water treatment plants?

Perhaps all Governments should think of ownership like this. Every year we ask what we own, what benefits the public get from it, and could the Government own something with greater public benefits for the same money? If the answer is yes, and it doesn’t look like it’s going to change, then sell the thing that doesn’t pay and buy something that does.

As for healthcare and education, the Government shells out a fortune, nearly $6,000 in healthcare for every single person each year. That’s up from $4,000 five years ago, but nobody’s happy. Perhaps it is time to say, if you want to take your $6,000 to a private insurer like Southern Cross, you can.

There would have to be rules. The company would need to accept any patient who applied, without discrimination. The company could never cancel anyone’s policy. They would become responsible for all of the person’s care. Hospitals still owned by the Government would need to accept patients from any insurer at the same price.

If this all sounds out there, fear not. It’s roughly how most healthcare systems in Europe work. It means that there would be people with an incentive to sort out the endless waste and dysfunction in what’s been described as our third world system run by first world medics.

The Left say in a private system the poor miss out. Europeans would be surprised to hear this. What the Left don’t seem to get is this: You can have equal public funding, but allow competition to provide the service. Some would say the best of all worlds.

Of course there is a reason why few politicians dare to raise these questions. The media have demanded to know from David Seymour exactly what he will sell tomorrow. They want a list. The hard Left say this is another Seymourian conspiracy, but they can’t say what. The Opposition have called on the Chris Luxon to rule out ever selling anything. Luxon says he won’t now but might in the future.

There’s another reason why there are still articles in today’s papers, ten days after the speech was given. People know that, while New Zealand is a success story, as countries go, we’re not holding our ground at the moment. What we’re doing isn’t working.

If we want to remain a first world nation and an island paradise—most countries can only do one—we need to work differently. That’s the other thing about Seymour’s speech, it told the truth we avoided all through the Clark-Key-Ardern era.

As goes the Treaty Principles Bill, so goes this speech. This country needs a party that’s brave, articulate, and patriotic, and we’re glad we have ACT.

Source: ACT Party

Responding to Te Pāti Māori’s call for an unelected Te Tiriti Commissioner to veto legislation from Parliament, ACT Leader David Seymour says:

“ACT would like to thank Te Pāti Māori for being so honest about the fact they don’t support rule by elected Parliament. Ironically, they’ve shown voters electing the next Parliament what’s at stake if they vote Labour, the Greens, or Te Pāti Māori.

“If we take Te Pāti Māori seriously, it would be one vote, for one party, once. A person who ‘needs to be Māori’ would have a veto on all laws.

“If breaking democracy is a bottom line for Te Pāti Māori, Labour and the Greens need to rule out ever being in Government with them, or they’ll never be in Government with anyone. New Zealand voters will see to it, and Labour and the Greens will be collateral damage.

“Labour and the Greens need to decide if they’re still serious parties. Labour and the Greens faced a test when the Speaker asked for their votes to censure Te Pati Māori’s haka last year. They voted against the Speaker and with Te Pati Māori. If they can do that to Parliamentary debate, what else are they up for?

“Te Pāti Māori’s latest crazy demand also shows why they oppose the Treaty Principles Bill. It is about all New Zealanders having an equal say through democratic processes. Te Pāti Māori want the opposite.

“The Treaty Principles Bill would prevent our founding document from being twisted to justify these kinds of constitutional travesties. Te Tiriti promised the same rights for all New Zealanders. That should include the right to cast a vote and have your values put into action by Parliament, without an unelected Commissioner vetoing your democratic choices on behalf of one group of New Zealanders.”

Source: ACT Party

The Government has been getting it in both ears over new climate commitments it’s made under the Paris Agreement.

James Shaw and Jacinda Ardern signed us up to impossible targets. Climate Change Minister Simon Watts is trying to make them workable.

As ACT’s Agriculture and Rural Communities spokesman, I’m writing to say: We’ve heard you.

As a signatory to the Paris Agreement, New Zealand is required to sign up to increasingly ambitious emissions targets. That’s what has led to the Climate Change Minister’s latest commitment.

However, ACT has heard serious concern over the economic impact of the Government’s commitment, including costs likely to be lumped on farmers.

Yesterday, the Herald interviewed David Seymour about the Paris Agreement:

We know New Zealand farmers are the most efficient in the world, and it does not make sense to reduce New Zealand food production only to see other less efficient farmers overseas picking up the slack.

In short, ACT is listening, and we encourage you to pass on your concerns to the Climate Change Minister and your local MP.

Meanwhile, ACT’s Ministers in the Government are delivering common sense, affordable policy in key areas that affect farmers such as replacing the handbrake that is the RMA, simplifying freshwater farm plans, and stopping the implementation of last Government’s attack on property rights with their directive on Significant Natural Areas. I’ve also lodged a member’s bill in Parliament’s ballot to stop councils from considering local emissions when granting resource consents.

ACT is determined not to sacrifice farmers and growers at the altar of the climate gods. There is more work to be done to return to common sense, and I hope we’ll have your support.

Source: ACT Party

“So far, the inquiry into rural banking has not changed my suspicion that a cabal of woke banks is neglecting rural communities in the name of climate action,” says ACT Rural Communities spokesman Mark Cameron.

“Banks are starving rural New Zealand of capital. Farmers have long complained they’re getting a raw deal on loans compared to their urban cousins. BNZ won’t even lend for people to set up or expand rural petrol stations.

“Banks should be supporting Kiwi farmers. If they are concerned about emissions globally, they should be falling over themselves to lend to the most efficient dairy producers in the world, lest production shift offshore where farming activity creates more emissions.

“The problem is that here we have banks acting in concert to virtue signal with anti-rural lending practices. This is in part thanks to their association with overseas umbrella organisations and the way banks are regulated.

“Through the banks’ parent companies they are part of the UN’s Net Zero Banking Alliance, which was set up to change lending practices for the sake of climate goals. The six largest banks in the United States have all left the Net Zero alliance in the last few months. It’s time for banks in New Zealand to do the same. There’s been a political sea-change and there’s no longer an appetite for corporate virtue-signalling.

“Meanwhile, the Financial Markets Authority imposes emissions reduction reporting on banks. In 2021, ACT was the only party to vote against the legislation that introduced these reporting requirements, warning that they could affect loans to farmers. We continue to support the repeal of these requirements.”

Source: ACT Party

ACT Leader David Seymour is welcoming a new Horizon Research poll showing strong support for a four-year Parliamentary term. ACT’s coalition commitment includes introducing Seymour’s four-year term Bill in the first half of this term.

“Better law making is the number one thing that New Zealand can change about itself to get more economic growth, better social services, better regulation, and ultimately give the next generation more reason to stay here,” says Seymour.

“The poll shows more Kiwis support the four-year term than oppose it, by 40-30 per cent. Another 30 per cent remain unsure, and the debate has not been opened yet.

“A four-year term gives Kiwis more time to see whether political promises translate into results, so they can vote accordingly. This will lead to more accountability and better law making.

“Crucially, ACT’s proposal to extend the term comes with a balancing step to turn control of Select Committees over to the Opposition. This gives the Opposition more power to scrutinise legislation and grill Ministers and officials.

“ACT’s proposal is a constitutional change, so we won’t do it without the consent of the voters. The legislation we’ve proposed culminates in a public referendum at the end of a full Parliamentary process.

“ACT will continue to make the case for a four-year term. If New Zealanders agree at a referendum, it will vindicate the risk we took in starting a tough conversation. More importantly, we’ll have better laws and a more mature democracy.”

Source: ACT Party

Welcoming the delivery from tonight of increased speed limits – an ACT coalition commitment – ACT Leader David Seymour says:

“Sensible speed limits are a triumph for common sense and democracy. Instead of being dictated to by a faceless bureaucratic minority, the people are in charge again.

“People often asked me where blanket speed limit reductions came from. Who asked for this, whose idea was it, why don’t my views count? The previous Government’s traffic engineering was thinly disguised social engineering that just made people mad.

“The government’s job is to make life easier, if a road is safe to drive 100, 110, or 120 km/h, people should be allowed to drive that fast. It sounds simple, and it is, but the last Government’s ideological anti-car project made life harder than it needed to be.

“The last government had an anti-car, anti-speed ideology. They didn’t care if they made life less convenient for the vast majority who drive to get around, in fact they seemed to relish slowing people down.

“Driving is important for New Zealanders. It liberates us from our homes and opens up the country for ordinary people to explore and do business. If we want productivity, we should be able to use roads we’ve paid for to their maximum safe capacity.”

Source: ACT Party

Responding to the Palestinian Solidarity Network’s ‘hotline’ for reporting Israeli soldiers holidaying in New Zealand, ACT MP Simon Court says:

“John Minto and his followers, in their pursuit of Israeli tourists, would create a real-life version of the Hunger Games movies. Their undisguised antisemitic behaviour is not acceptable in a liberal democracy like New Zealand.

“Military service is compulsory for Israeli citizens. This means any Israeli holidaying, visiting family, or doing business in New Zealand could be targeted by John Minto’s hateful campaign.

“This is not normal political activism, it is intimidation targeted toward Jewish visitors. It mirrors the worst instincts of humanity and should be condemned by parties across Parliament.”

Source: ACT Party

The Haps

Public hearings for the Treaty Principles Bill have begun. David Seymour kicked off proceedings, throwing down the gauntlet on equal rights and fielding questions from hostile MPs. His submission to the Justice Committee is a must-watch.

Even people who say there should be no bill seem to want the debate. The hearings are a major milestone for New Zealand, it is now possible for ordinary people to go to Parliament and say they are equal.

The State of the Nation

David Seymour’s 2025 State of the Nation speech has been overwhelmed with praise from those who attended and watched it online. If you missed it, the video is here and we have reproduced the text below.

Thank you, Brooke, for your kind introduction. I’m biased, but I think you’re the Government’s most quietly effective Minister. Your labour law reforms are making it easier to employ workers and to be employed. Your minimum wage increases are announced early to give business certainty, and relief. You are taking on two of the hardest chestnuts in the workplace – holiday pay and health and safety – by listening to the people affected. You’ve put together an honest Royal Commission on COVID-19, and got wait times down for new passports and Citizenships. All the while you attract growing respect as a hard-working local MP here in Tamaki.

It’s easy to forget Brooke’s 32. She has the biggest future in New Zealand politics.

The only problem with mentioning one ACT MP is they’re all kicking goals with both feet, so you have to mention the lot. Nicole McKee is speeding up the court system, rewriting the entire Arms Act to make New Zealand safer, and reforming anti-money laundering laws so people can business done.

Andrew Hoggard handles the country’s biosecurity, managing would-be outbreaks with steady hands. He is also dealing to Significant Natural Areas that erode farmers’ property rights and correcting the naïve treatment of methane that punishes the whole country.

He’s able to do that in large part because of the work Mark Cameron did, and continues to do. From 2020 onwards he scared the bejesus out of every other party in rural New Zealand. He shifted the whole political spectrum right on the split gas approach, SNAs, and freshwater laws. Now the Government is changing those policies. As Chair of the Primary Production Committee, Mark stays in the headlines championing rural New Zealand every week. He is the definition of an effective MP.

Karen Chhour is the embodiment of ACT values. Her life gives her more excuses than anyone in Parliament, but she makes none, and she accepts none. She is reforming the government department that let her down when she was small. If every New Zealander had Karen’s attitude and values, we’d be a country with no problems.

Perhaps the biggest single policy problem we face is the Resource Management Act. Somone once said you can fill a town hall to stop anything in this country, but you can’t fill a telephone box to get something started. In steps Simon Court who, with Chris Bishop, is designing new resource management laws based on property rights. That’s an ACT policy designed to unleash the latent wealth our country has by letting people develop and use the property they own.

Our new MPs that you helped elect last year are also making their marks. Todd Stephenson has picked up the End of Life Choice baton, with a bill to extend compassion and choice to those who suffer the most: those with long-term, degenerative illnesses. Parmjeet Parmar is one of the hardest working MPs I have seen, and a great chair of the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee. Cam Luxton and Laura McClure speak to a new generation of young parents who want their children to grow up in a free society.

If you gave your Party Vote to ACT last year, you can be proud of the New Zealanders you put in Parliament to represent you. I am proud to lead this team of free thinkers in our House of Representatives, and I think we can all be proud of their efforts.

New Zealand’s origin story: a nation of immigrants

The summer is a good time to think about the state of our nation, and I got to thinking about who we are and how we got here. Whatever troubles we may face today, I couldn’t help coming back to something that unites New Zealand.

Our country at its best is a place that welcomes hopeful people from all over the earth. People with different languages, religions and cultures united by one thing. When you look at the map it jumps out at you. We are the most remote country on Earth. If you’ve never stood at Cape Reinga and looked out to see wide open spaces for 10,000 kilometres, you owe it to yourself just once.

It shows that one thing makes us all different from the rest of the world. No matter when or where you came from, you or your ancestors once travelled farther than anyone to give your children and theirs a better tomorrow.

That is the true Kiwi spirit. Taking a leap into the unknown for a chance at better. Compared with what divides us, our spirit as a nation of pioneers unites us ten times over. Migrating from oppression and poverty for freedom and prosperity is what it means to be Kiwi.

If that bright and optimistic side of our psyche, got half as much time as the whinging, we would all be better off. We would see ourselves as people unafraid of challenges, freed from conformity, with the power to decide our best days are always ahead of us.

New Zealand’s inherent tension: two tribes

I got to wondering why that isn’t a more popular story. Why do we cut down tall poppies? Why do we value conformity over truth? Why do people who came here for a better life grow up disappointed and move away again?

I believe our nation is dominated by two invisible tribes. One, I call ‘Change Makers’. People who act out the pioneering spirit that built our country every day. We don’t just believe it is possible to make a difference in our own lives; we believe it’s an obligation.

Change makers load up their mortgage to start a business and give other people jobs. They work the land to feed the world. They save up and buy a home that they maintain for someone else to live in. They study hard to extend themselves. They volunteer and help out where they can. They take each person as they find them. They don’t need to know your ancestry before they know how to treat you.

Too often, they get vilified for all of the above. I know there’s many people like that in this room today. ACT people are Change Makers; we carry the pioneering spirit in our hearts.

Then there’s the other tribe – people building a Majority for Mediocrity. They would love nothing more than to go into lockdown again, make some more sourdough, and worry about the billions in debt another day.

They blame one of the most successful societies in history for every problem they have. They believe that ancestry is destiny. They believe people are responsible for things that happened before they were born, but criminals aren’t responsible for what they did last week.

Far from believing people can make a difference in their own lives, they believe that their troubles are caused by other people’s success. They look for politicians who’ll cut tall poppies down – politicians who say to young New Zealanders ‘if you study hard, get good grades, get a good job, save money, and invest wisely, we’ll tax you harder’.

I wasn’t kidding about the lockdowns; they were a litmus test. In early 2022, after this city had been locked down for months, and the borders had been closed for two years, a pollster asked New Zealanders if they’d like to be locked down again for Omicron.

Now, I know it’s painful to think back, but bear with me. Omicron spread more easily than any earlier variant. It was also less harmful if you caught it. That was especially so because we were then among the most vaccinated nations on earth. The damage to business, education, non-COVID healthcare, and the government’s books was already massive and painful.

And yet, 48 per cent of New Zealanders wanted another lockdown for Omicron. 46 per cent didn’t. That for me put the tribes into sharp relief. If you were a business owner who needed to open, a parent worried about missed education, a migrant missing their family, or just someone who wanted their life back, you wanted to open.

When the Government finally lifted restrictions, many of those people left. Real estate agents report people selling because they’re moving to Australia every day. This is where the balance between these two invisible tribes comes into focus.

Remember the gap in that poll was two per cent. Since the borders opened a net 116,000 citizens have left New Zealand. That’s a touch over two per cent.

A tipping point

The more people with get up and go choose to get up and leave, the less attractive it is for motivated people to stay here.

Muldoon once quipped, ‘New Zealanders who leave for Australia raise the IQ of both countries.’ Actually, New Zealanders who leave for Australia  are tipping us towards a Majority for Mediocrity. Motivated New Zealanders leaving is good news for the shoplifters, conspiracy theorists, and hollow men who make up the political opposition.

A few more good people leaving is all they need for their Majority of Mediocrity. The more that aspirational, hardworking people get up and leave New Zealand, the more likely it is we’ll get left-wing governments in the future.

That’s why I say we’re at a tipping point.

There’s another reason why the mediocrity majority is growing, young people feel betrayed and disillusioned.

A new generation looks at the housing market and sees little hope. Imagine you’re someone who’s done it all right, you listened to your teacher and did your homework. You studied for a tertiary education like everyone told you. Now you have $34,000 in debt, you start on $60,000, and you see the average house is 900,000 or fifteen times your (before tax) income.

Nobody can blame a young person for wondering if they aren’t better off overseas. Many decide they are. Those who stay are infected  by universities  with the woke mind viruses of identity politics, Marxism, and post-modernism.

Feeling like you’ll never own your own capital asset at the same time as some professor left over from the Cold War tells you about Marx is a dangerous combination.

This is the other political tipping point that risks manufacturing a majority for mediocrity. A bad housing market and a woke education system combined are a production line for left-wing voters.

The hard left prey on young New Zealanders. They tell them that their problems are caused by others’ success. That they are held back by their identity, but if they embrace identity politics, they can take back what’s theirs. Their mechanism is a new tax on wealth.

These are the opposite of the spirit brings New Zealanders to our shores in the first place. The state of our nation is that we’re at a tipping point , and what we do in the next few years will decide which way we go.

The short-term outlook is sunny, but only because Labour was so bad.

We can afford to hope that this year will be better than 2024. By that standard, 2025 will be a success. Interest rates will be lower. The Government will have stopped wasting borrowed money, banning things, punishing employers, landlords, farmers, and anyone else trying to make a difference, with another layer of red tape.

In fact, we have a Government that’s saving money, cutting red tape, and paring back identity politics. With those changes we will see more hope than we’ve seen in years, and hopefully a slowdown in citizens leaving. That is good, it’s welcome, and ACT is proud to be part of the coalition Government that’s doing it.

ACT is needed to be brave, articulate, and patriotic

The truth is, though, it’s easy to do a better job of Labour over 12 months. It’s much harder to muster the courage to keep making difficult decisions over several years, even if they’re not immediately popular. Our nation is in a century of decline. Just stopping one Government’s stupid stuff and waiting for a cyclical recovery won’t change the long-term trend. We need to be honest about the challenges we face and the changes needed to overcome them.

We need to act like a country at risk of reaching a tipping point and losing its first world status. We are facing some tough times, and tough times require tough choices to be made.

ACT’s goal is to keep the Government, and make it better. We may have gone into Government, but we never went into groupthink. It’s the role of ACT to be the squeaky wheel, pointing out where the Government needs to do better.

The Government cannot measure itself by just being better than Labour. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, is this policy good enough to make New Zealand a first world country that people want to stay in?

It’s easy to have big plans, we are the world, but charity begins at home. We need to focus only on what the government does, and ensure it does it well.

We need to think carefully about three areas of government activity: spending, owning, and regulating. There is nothing the government does that doesn’t come down to one of those three things.

Why government spends a dollar it has taxed or borrowed, and whether the benefits of that outweigh the costs.

Why government owns an asset, and whether the benefits to citizens outweigh the costs to taxpayers of owning it.

Why a restriction is placed on the use and exchange of private property, and whether the benefits of that regulation outweigh the costs on the property owner.

When it comes to spending, we have a burning platform.

Last year the economy shrunk by one per cent, even as the population grew slightly thanks to births and inbound migration. This year the Government is planning to borrow $17 billion, about $10 billion is for interest on debt, and we’ll have to pay interest on that debt the following year. Next year, government debt will exceed $200 billion.

There lots of reasons why this situation will get harder.

We’ve claimed an exclusive economic zone of four million square kilometres by drawing a circle around every offshore island we could name. We spend less than one per cent of GDP defending it, while our only ally, across the ditch, spends twice that.

Put another way, we’re a country whose government gives out $45 billion in payments each year but spends only $3.2 billion defending the place. Does that sound prudent to you? Doubling defense would cost another $3.2 billion per year, effectively paying more for what we already have. We may face pressure to do just that thanks to US foreign policy.

There’s a tail wind on balancing the books, and it’s affecting every developed country, our population is ageing faster than it’s growing.

Every year around 60,000 people turn sixty-five and become eligible for a pension. To the taxpayer, superannuation expenses increase by $1.4 billion each year.

Healthcare spending has gone from $20 billion to $30 billion in five years, but people are so dissatisfied that healthcare is now the third biggest political issue. Put it another way, we are now spending nearly $6,000 per citizen on healthcare.

How many people here would give up their right to the public healthcare system if they got $6,000 for their own private insurance? Should we allow people to opt out of the public healthcare system, and take their portion of funding with them so they can go private?

Education is similar. We spend $20 billion of taxpayer money every year, and every year 60,000 children are born. By my count that’s $333,000 of lifetime education spending for each citizen.

How many people would take their $333,000 and pay for their own education? How many young New Zealanders would be better off if they did it that way?

Instead of spending next year because we did it this year, we need to ask ourselves, if we want to remain a first world country, then do New Zealanders get a return on this spending that justifies taking the money off taxpayers in the first place? If spending doesn’t stack up, it should stop so we can repay debt or spend the money on something that does.

Then there’s the $570 billion, over half a trillion dollars of assets, the government owns. The one thing we know from state houses, hospital projects, and farms with high levels of animal death, is that the government is hopeless at owning things.

But did you know you own Quotable Value, a property valuation company chaired by a former race relations conciliator that contracts to the government of New South Wales?

What about 60,000 homes? The government doesn’t need to own a home to house someone. We know this because it also spends billions subsidising people to live in homes it doesn’t own. On the other hand, the taxpayer is paying $10 billion a year servicing debt, and the KiwiBuild and Kainga Ora debacles show the government should do as little in housing as possible.

There are greater needs for government capital. We haven’t built a harbour crossing for nearly seven decades. Four hundred people die every year on a substandard road network. Beaches around here get closed thanks to sewerage overflow, but we need more core infrastructure. Sections of this city are being red zoned from having more homes built because the council cannot afford the pipes and pumping stations.

We need to get past squeamishness about privatisation and ask a simple question: if we want to be a first world country, then are we making the best use of the government’s half a trillion dollars’ plus worth of assets? If something isn’t getting a return, the government should sell it so we can afford to buy something that does.

Finally, there’s regulation. That is placing restrictions on the use and exchange of property that the government doesn’t own or hasn’t taxed off the people who earned it already. That is, your property. Bad regulation is killing our prosperity in three ways.

It adds costs to the things we do. It’s the delays, the paperwork, and the fees that make too many activities cost more than they ought to. It’s the builder saying it takes longer to get the consent than it took to build the thing. It’s the anti-money laundering palaver that ties people in knots doing basic things but somehow doesn’t stop criminals bringing in half a billion dollars of P each year. It’s the daycare centre that took four years to open because different departments couldn’t agree about the road noise outside. I could go on all afternoon.

Then there’s the things that just don’t happen because people decide the costs don’t add up once the red tape is factored in.

Then there’s the big one that goes to the heart of our identity and culture. It’s all the kids who grow up in a country where people gave up or weren’t allowed to try. It’s the climbing wall at Sir Edmund Hillary’s old school with signs saying don’t climb. It’s the lack of nightlife because it’s too hard to get a license. It’s the fear that comes from worrying WorkSafe or some other regulator will come and shut you down. You can’t measure it, but we all know it’s there.

The Kiwi spirit we are so proud of is being chipped away and killing our vibe. Nobody migrated here to be compliant, but compliance is infantilising our culture, and I haven’t even mentioned orange cones yet.

If we want to remain first world, we need to change how we regulate. No law should be passed without showing what problem is being solved, whether the benefits outweigh the costs, and who pays the costs and gets the benefits. These are the basic principles of the Regulatory Standards Bill that the Government will pass this year.

Conclusion

Of course, the Government IS doing many things that will change how it operates. There is a drive to reduce waste. There is a drive to get more money from overseas investment. The Regulatory Standards Bill will change how we regulate. The Resource Management Act is being replaced. Anti-money laundering laws are being simplified. Charter schools are opening, more roads are being built. These are all good things.

But make no mistake, our country has always been the site of a battle between two tribes. The effect of emigration, and the world faced by young New Zealanders risks creating a permanent majority for mediocrity. Our country is at a tipping point.

We need honest conversations about why government spends, owns, and regulates, and whether those policies are good enough to secure our future as a first world nation.

You may have seen the ACT Party has been involved in a battle to define the principles of the Treaty democratically. It’s caused quite a stir. If you missed it, please check out treaty.nz where we outline what it’s about. It may still succeed this time, or it may be one of those bills that simply breaks the ground so something like it can proceed in the future.

Either way, the tribe of change makers has a voice. People who want equal rights for all New Zealanders to be treated with respect and dignity because they’re citizens have a position that others need to refute. Good luck to them arguing against equal rights.

It also shows something else, that ACT is the party prepared to stand up when it’s not easy and it’s not popular. That’s exactly the type of party our country needs in our Government.

To all the Change Makers who proudly put us there, thank you, and no matter how daunting this tipping point may feel, together we can ensure our best days are still ahead of us.