ACT moots private MIQ, ending ‘bad regulation’
The ACT Party has released the final discussion document of its ‘‘honest conversation’’ policy proposals, which proposes allowing private MIQ facilities, ditching the Government’s currently vague ‘‘immigration reset’’, and tackling what it calls ‘‘the four horsemen of bad regulation’’.
It is the third discussion document released by ACT this year, in an attempt to grow its vote and set itself up as an alternative opposition to the National Party.
ACT’s plan for managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ) – were it to be in Government – would be to allow private hotels to provide MIQ services under contract to the government as a way to relieve the shortage of MIQ beds. Governed under strict rules, both workers and guests in these facilities would have to be vaccinated.
‘‘ACT has a plan to expand MIQ places and make it safer than what the Government is doing now. Under ACT’s plan, owners of currently mothballed hotels could seek a licence to operate MIQ according to strict criteria,’’ ACT leader David Seymour said in a statement accompanying the release.
‘‘New Zealand is losing business to countries that have a plan to reconnect, while our Government frets
and marks time. Businesses are in despair as they often can’t find people with critical skills in a New Zealand labour market that is red-hot.’’ Also, in response to labour market shortages, ACT says it would cancel the Labour Government’s ‘‘immigration reset’’, which has been flagged by Cabinet ministers though few specific details have been provided. Instead, ACT said it would return to pre-Covid immigration rules.
‘‘ACT would dump Labour’s ‘once in a generation’ immigration reset. Immigration reform may be needed in the future, but right now we need certainty,’’ ACT spokesmen James McDowall and Mark Cameron said.
‘‘ACT would signal a return to the pre-Covid immigration settings as soon as public health concerns allow,’’ McDowall said.
In addition to those two policies, ACT proposed to ‘‘cut through red tape’’ by scrapping or reversing Government policies on climate change and resource planning, and labour and health-andsafety requirements – the ‘‘four horsemen’’ of regulation, a biblical reference to the harbingers of an apocalypse.
Such laws would be ‘‘rebalanced’’ in favour or employers and property owners.