Act brings honesty tour to town
Party promises tax cuts, end regulation, address PM’s popularity with the young
The Act Party’s focus is to build long-term prospects and cut out bureaucracy, Dannevirke residents have been told. The party has been taking advantage of a break in Parliament to tour the country holding “honest conversations”.
About 25 people attended the meeting with leader David Seymour at Dannevirke Golf Club last Thursday, while 200 were at the Hastings meeting last Wednesday.
MP Damien Smith said Act’s vision was much different.
“We believe in the spirit of communities. Building long-term prospects, building export earnings and foreign exchange. There should be minimum tax on citizens, and one of the things we’re going to do to try and stimulate the economy is to give people back money.”
One of those strategies was to drop the 30 per cent tax rate to 17.5per cent.
Smith said they were also going to cut out a lot of inefficiency and bureaucracy.
MP and dairy farmer Mark Cameron said he had been talking to farmers about the change being slated against the farming sector.
He talked about a members’ bill on central government’s powers over fresh water.
As a farmer he was acutely aware of such things as regional activity, localised rainfall, soil aggregate and other issues that concerned farmers.
“There’s this real belief in Wellington that they can create a dictative and directive about how we operate when it comes to sedimentation and anything that deals with freshwater.
“Most of what happens at a localised level is understood by those that do it. By councils, stakeholders and by farmers. This is an ongoing concern for the rural sector which the Government simply doesn’t understand.”
“We’ve got to get the bureaucracy and dictate out of central government and have conversations with our farmers in rural communities because they’re the ones that understand their environment best.”
Seymour said Act had an agenda to give the esteemed “what was called the backbone of the New Zealand economy some respect and understanding”.
Issues such as cleaner water and climate action were important to those in the rural sector.
“It’s the dictatorial one-size-fits-all nature of policy coming out of Wellington in my view that has got people angry.”
Seymour criticised the apparent lack of a plan once it was clear that Covid was no longer an issue.
“You can’t go on locking down, locking out, printing and borrowing money. You’ve got to have a plan to get back to normal.”
When asked a question about petitions and whether the Government took notice, Seymour said petitions, which he called campaigns, didn’t really have an enormous effect.
He said that if 20,000 people signed a petition, that was basically
1 per cent of the vote.
“What does have an effect is that sometimes those campaigns can snowball and lead to something that does affect them.”
He cited the example of the July 16 Groundswell campaign, which saw a parade of vehicles in Dannevirke and around the country protesting government regulation.
“The most important thing about the protest (was that) it was so respectful
and orderly,” he said of the Auckland protest.
Seymour said the Groundswell campaign gained momentum because they were signing people up. “Does a petition make Jacinda Ardern think about changing her policies? No. Do campaigns that then call people to action to do further things to display how they feel and then get other groups such as tradies . . . to support their sentiment? You betcha.”
When asked about his strategy, Seymour said the challenge was to put up positive, practical solutions to promote prosperity.
Act would also need to combat the Prime Minister’s popularity, especially in terms of young voters.
“It’s very hard to engage with someone who doesn’t want to engage,” Seymour said. “But they will engage when things don’t look so good.”