2023 NZ General Election Special: ACT Response to Our Policy Enquiries

The following is the official response from ACT:

Sorry about the wait, and thanks for your understanding that this is a super busy period for us.

Please see below answers:

Economic Policies: Your party’s approach to economic growth, job creation, taxation, and wealth distribution. And how to deal with inflation and high CPI?

The Government is making life more expensive in three ways, taxing too much, fuelling inflation by borrowing and wasting too much, and applying expensive red tape to every part of life. ACT can solve this because ACT understands what causes it. ACT will reduce wasteful inflationary spending by 16 billion over two years and deliver targeted tax cuts so someone earning 70k with one child will be around $2,300 better off. ACT’s Minister of Regulation will systematically, industry by industry, slash red tape across the country so Kiwis can get on and do business without being bogged down with compliance costs. That’s how we create a prosperous New Zealand.

Social Welfare: Your party’s plans for healthcare, education, housing, and support for vulnerable populations. How to fix the high housing price issues?

The state of New Zealand’s health and education services are slipping away from first world status, people are struggling with rising rents and mortgages. There needs to be Real Change. ACT believes the principles of the charter model have the answer for all education: Demand high standards, trust principals and teachers as professionals able to achieve them, reward excellence, do not tolerate failure. This is what it takes when it comes to the raising of children and this is what will inform ACT’s approach to education. The health system requires a renewed focus on staffing and modern infrastructure. ACT would fund GP clinics properly, use private surgeries where they’re more efficient, welcome overseas nurses and doctors to bolster the workforce, cut red tape preventing care, and use public private partnerships to get facilities built. ACT’s policies on housing and regulation reduction policies will make it easier and cheaper to build quality housing, which will mean healthier, more affordable homes for all.

Environmental Policies: Your party’s strategies to address climate change, conservation efforts, and sustainable development. How to balance the high living cost and the environment?

ACT has the best, simplest, and most durable climate policy. It would tie New Zealand’s emission cap to our trading partners’ emissions, allow people to make their own choices in view of the carbon price that creates, and ensure political durability by giving all New Zealanders a stake in the ETS as recipients of a carbon tax credit. New Zealand will only prosper if we match our goals with actions which actually benefit the environment.

ACT was the only party to oppose the Zero Carbon Act. The law is overly bureaucratic and costly. It gives massive power over the economy to the Climate Change Minister and imposes huge costs on taxpayers, allowing the government to micromanage every aspect of their lives in the name of emission reduction. ACT would ditch the Zero Carbon Act and the Climate Change Commission.

Foreign Relations: Your party’s vision for international cooperation, trade agreements, and diplomatic relationships.

As a small island export nation, international relations are vitally important for New Zealand. New Zealand’s DNA is that we are a trading nation, with some of the finest agricultural produce in the world. Free trade agreements drive growth, while reducing costs to consumers and increasing productivity – a key indicator for the quality of life enjoyed by all New Zealanders. ACT is fundamentally a free-trade party, we believe trade should be free of tariffs and non-tariff barriers other than those necessary for national security and biosecurity.

We need strong relationships with our allies and to be prepared to support them as well. If we’re out of step with our traditional allies we are at a disadvantage.

Cultural and Minority Policies: Your party’s commitments to the rights and interests of minority groups, including the Chinese audience.

ACT believes no one should be treated differently based on who their ancestors are. New Zealand should be a multi-ethnic liberal democracy where everyone has the same rights and opportunities no matter what their ethnicity is. This is why ACT has been so stridently opposed to co-governance and public services divided by ethnicity.

Public safety: How to make the public feel more secure?

There must be swiftly-enforced consequences to get our worst repeat offenders off the street. Once in prison, there must be an emphasis on rehabilitation to break the cycle of people leaving prison unable to read and write with no option but to re-enter the criminal economy. Getting tougher and smarter on crime is the only way we can put an end to the culture of lawlessness which Labour has allowed to creep into New Zealand. ACT’s vision is for a country where parents aren’t afraid for their kids to leave the house, and where adults aren’t afraid to walk the city streets at night.