Fog leads to ACT road trip
A 600-kilometre impromptu road trip couldn’t stop ACT party leader David Seymour from addressing a crowd in Timaru last night as part of the party’s Real Change tour.
Seymour spent the day traversing the South Island from Nelson – where he addressed a crowd of around 250 people on Tuesday night – to Timaru, after his flight south was cancelled due to fog.
Speaking yesterday afternoon, he said timing would be tight to get to Timaru but fish and chips in
Kaikō ura had been a ‘‘silver lining’’ of the unexpected road trip. Around 150 people had indicated they would attend Seymour’s talk at the Landing Services building in Timaru.
Seymour said while candidate selection would not take place until next year, he would be ‘‘very surprised’’ if the party did not have a Rangitata candidate. ‘‘We’re getting great attendance at our meetings and great growth in membership and donations from the area.’’
In 2017, ACT party candidate, Tom Corbett, took 0.7% of the electorate vote, with 262 votes. In 2020, 1394 votes were cast for candidate Hamish Hutton, a 3.3 % share, and the party won just under 10% of the electorate’s party vote (4,101 votes) in 2020.
At this point, just over halfway through his tour, Seymour said he had found community morale low.
‘‘People are very frustrated about rising prices, which is probably not new.’’
He said the proposed water reforms have been raised at every meeting so far.
He said if ACT forms part of the next government, it would repeal the Water Services Entities Act in the first 100 days, and share GST revenue from construction with local councils to allow them ‘‘to fix some of the real problems that do exist with three waters infrastructure’’.
Reversing the Zero Carbon Act and overturning the ban on oil and gas exploration were among other first-100-days commitments. He said that’s part of a pragmatic approach to New Zealand’s role in climate change.
‘‘We can’t change the world climate, we can only change the policies in New Zealand. And we need to be careful that we don’t overshoot or undershoot.
‘‘If we overshoot, we could very easily end up pushing a whole lot of activity overseas.’’