Karen Chhour: Speech to ACT Rally 2025

Speech to ACT Rally 2025, Sunday 13 July, 2025

Thank you for the warm welcome.

It is always a privilege anytime I get to talk to you, our team of champions and supporters.

We are brought together by a shared commitment to free speech, free enterprise, and a vision of New Zealand where hard work and dedication will always matter more than the colour of your skin.

The theme of this conference, ‘free and equal’, is one that speaks to me personally.

It sums up why I entered politics in the first place and what motivates me to keep going when the Opposition gets personal and nasty.

I believe in a free and equal New Zealand. I joined this party and accepted the call to run for Parliament because I knew this party, our party, believe in it too.

I was also motivated to enter politics because I saw that government was letting us down.

We are a country that strives to be free and equal, but we have been failed by previous governments more focused on racial politics and identity wars than ensuring the safety of children and young people, than allowing individuals to succeed and lift their families out of what can be generational cycles of poverty and welfare dependence.

For too long, New Zealand has accepted that some families will be allowed to fail because they are stuck in this cycle and not encouraged to seek better.

We have accepted that some children will commit crimes, that some will hurt others, and that some children will die, because we don’t want to intervene.

I know none of you in this room accept this, and I can’t accept this.  

During my brief time as minister for Children, I have taken a safety-first approach. I stood in front of you last year to explain why I was fighting to repeal Section 7AA. Now, I can report back: job done.

This means no more requirements that put children in unsafe environments because they happened to be born a particular race.

It means, in law, that Oranga Tamariki is solely focused on their core responsibility, which is the care and protection of children.

And I have ended targets that required a certain percent of all contracts must go to Māori/Iwi organisations even when other providers might be getting better results.

This has been made possible thanks to supporters like you. Your kind words have powered my efforts, and the result is young people in difficult circumstances now have a chance for a better future.

You have also allowed myself and my colleagues to address a long-standing and, until recently, growing ill of our country – youth crime.

Crime affects us all. We’re committed to reducing the number of Kiwis being victimised, and improving the support provided to victims of crime.

It affects our economy by robbing from hardworking business owners, it affects workers by making them live in fear, and it affects our sense of community.

Chris Hipkins complains that he doesn’t see news stories on ram raids anymore, when under his watch he was seeing at least one a day.

There is a reason for that, and it’s not because the media aren’t looking – it’s because we have done something about it.

Under our watch, youth crime has reduced by twelve percent in less than a year.

ACT refused to accept a New Zealand that allowed peaceful, productive people to live in fear, and it is getting results.

And we’re helping serious and persistent young offenders turn their lives around.

We have worked closely with families to address generational cycles of incarceration – not by letting them get away with it or encouraging their bad behaviour, as the parties on the left would, but by increasing the number of tools we have to address our most serious young offenders.

There is no more KFC and encouragement for young people who commit crimes; we are no longer negotiating with them, we are setting standards and providing them a chance to want better for themselves.

We’re on the side of victims, and we’re also dedicated to ensuring we allow fewer people to be victimised.

I will leave you with a question – what kind of country do we want to live in?

I’m proud to be a New Zealander, but I’m not proud of everything I see. Young people deserve real hope for their futures.

This is why your support for ACT is so important.

Together, we’re building the fair, decent, dare I say ‘kind’ nation that others talked about and then did the opposite.

We are the one party that is committed to a free and equal future.

Thank you.