Speech: David Seymour at ACT Mainland Campaign Launch

Wow, how lucky are we to have such talented people with the shared mission of Unlocking New Zealand’s Potential!

I’m very lucky to have Nicole McKee as a Deputy Leader. She is calm, she is warm, she is strong, and she is smart. I read in Farmers’ Weekly this week “Minister Nicole McKee deserves a medal for her perseverance in getting the [new Arms Act] passed. It can’t have been easy.”

It wasn’t easy, but she was up to the task.

And how good is Paul Henry? He’s been packing out venues right across New Zealand and he’s pierced the gloom of New Zealand politics, saying what we’re all thinking and making freedom fun.

I also want to acknowledge our MCs and South Island MPs, Todd Stephenson the Pocket Rocket and our Christchurch local Laura McClure.

Todd is the Parliamentary Private Secretary for Health. He deserves the credit for the revolutions in Pharmac and Medsafe, making more medicines available for 360,000 New Zealanders since we’ve been in Government. This election he is proudly standing where he grew up in the electorate of Southland.

Laura has run a successful campaign to get the whole parliament voting for her deepfake porn bill. She’s shown how school uniforms could be affordable under the next government. 

She’s stood for democratic freedom and been banned from visiting China for her troubles. While she can’t go there, she’s proudly standing for ACT in the electorate of Wigram.

Let’s hear it for our Southern MPs!

ACT’s Mainland Candidates

There’s more where they came from. The length of the South Island we have great candidates. 

Janelle Hocking is a small business owner from Murchison, proudly standing for ACT in West Coast Tasman.

Our former MP Chris Baillie runs his own pub and hotel, proudly standing for ACT in sunny Nelson.

Tom Spooner is an engineer and, you guessed it, small business owner proudly standing for ACT in Kaikoura.

Ash Bettridge is a business owner working in agriculture and land management, proudly standing for ACT in Waimakariri.

Toni Severin, another experienced former MP, is proudly standing for ACT in Christchurch East. She and her husband built a business employing fellow New Zealanders.

Ken Harpur is proudly standing for ACT in Ilam, I can’t tell you the company, but he leads a team who make some of New Zealand’s most iconic confectionary.

Zac Wellman is a tradie. A qualified electrician. A practical man. Proudly standing for ACT in Banks Peninsula.

Iain Murray served our country in the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Today he’s the Principal of Hornby High School, proudly standing for ACT in Selwyn.

Aaron Aldred is an accountant who runs his own practice, advising those in the rural engine room of Rangitata where he is proudly standing for ACT.

Sean Beamish is an engineer who’s worked in mining all over the world, now proudly standing for ACT in Waitaki.

Robbie Byers is a Dairy Farmer who currently serves on the Otago Regional Council, and is proudly standing for ACT in the electorate of Taieri.

These are our Mainland candidates. Business owners, engineers, tradies, farmers, New Zealanders proud to make a difference in their own lives, supporting their families and their communities.

They bring together the values of the ACT party, and the South Island.

They are practical people, who solve real problems and produce real wealth to make tomorrow better than today, every day.

They represent the Mainland economy. They don’t work in corporate offices. They definitely don’t work in Government departments. Those are the things that Mainland productivity pays for.

The Mainland Economy

It’s an economy driven by energy, mining, farming, and the great names of Christchurch technology, Kea, Tait, Dawn, Jade, Eztec and Fabrum. It is about making useful things, the same as the jobs of our Mainland candidates.

The Southland economy now has the highest GDP per capita of any region in the country. Higher than Wellington, higher than Auckland, regions whose Government departments and corporate offices help prop up.

GDP per capita has grown faster, and the population has grown faster, too.

For over a century the population drifted north. The South Island has 16 Electorates by law, and every census the North Island had electorates added to accommodate it’s faster population growth.

Every census, that is, until the last. This election, there will be one less electorate in the North Island because the south has grown faster. The Northern drift has reversed.

People are drifting south for opportunity, everyone I know in Auckland knows someone whose made the move lately.

People who produce don’t want to be taxed and regulated. 

They want to make useful things for other people. They don’t want to force their views on others. They definitely don’t want to sponge off others, they want to trade value for value and get stronger together.

The mainland is filled with producers, and ACT is here to represent you.

Unlocking New Zealand’s Potential

You might have noticed a theme in Nicole and Paul’s speech, it’s something that should resonate in a resurgent Mainland.

Unlocking New Zealand’s Potential.

As Paul aptly put it, we live in a ‘bloody paradise’. He’s dead right, and ACT exists to tap the wellspring of creativity that has built our paradise.

It’s really fitting that I’m saying this here in Christchurch. This city’s story is embodies potential unlocked.

We all know about the enormous upheaval that happened just over fifteen years ago. The years following the earthquakes were years of rebuilding with numerous challenges. I hope you won’t mind me saying, but Christchurch has come out the other side even greater for the challenge. 

Every year visitors are increasing and that trend shows no signs of slowing down, the greatest stadium in the country is now here. Hospitality is thriving and houses are being built faster than anywhere else.

The hard truth is the city has had little choice but to be practical. That’s the thing about a challenge like an earthquake, you can’t tax it, regulate it, cancel it on social media, or accuse it of price gouging. Once it has happened, the only useful question is, what are we going to build now?

Christchurch’s revival contains a lesson for the whole country.

New Zealand as a country has had its own challenges, I describe the last seven years as the long trouble. I was here on March 15, 2019, locked down at the University. 

That dark day started a period of endless upheaval that we are still processing as a country. Before then, political issues were things like ‘can John Key make us vote for a tea towel as a flag?’ They were happier and simpler times.

Since the terror attack, we’ve faced one upheaval after another. Ten months later we heard about a virus in Wuhan and all hell broke loose.

Labour locked us in our houses, borrowed a hundred billion with nothing to show for it, and divided the country in ways unseen for a generation.

Add in a trade war last year and a real war this year, and that light at the end of the tunnel keeps blinking. We are still paying through the cascade of inflation, interest rates, and recession.

The question is: How will we deal with it? 

Natural resources help. We should definitely dig up more, but the ultimate resource is creativity.

Finger pointing

Christchurch has been unlocking potential because people have been able to work together by a common question: How do we put this place back together?

This isn’t the case in much of the country. The seven years of long trouble left us more divided and open to blaming others than usual.

The toxic idea that our differences are greater than our similarities has gained currency. It’s toxic because you’re busy finding reasons to resent your fellow New Zealander, you’re not problem solving for a better tomorrow.

It’s been tangata whenua against tangata tiriti, thanks to the social engineering project of treatism.

It’s been boomer versus zoomer. With battles over homes and zoning.

It’s been wealthy against poor. 

It’s been urban against farmer. 

It’s been employer against employee. 

It’s been tenant against landlord. 

It’s been South Island against North Island – I’m hoping to build some bridges on that one today.

All of these fights have been set up by politicians. They all have one belief in common. Zero-sum thinking.

There’s only so much to go ‘round, so for you to do better, someone else has to do worse. 

Blame the colonisers. Villainise the boomers. Regulate the farmers. Complicate the employment laws. Tax the landlords. We’ve seen it all in the last seven years.

All these political reflexes come from two instincts. More tax on the productive. More rules stopping production. 

The two easiest ways to win votes in a modern democracy are to promise voters someone else’s money

Now this has happened because it is a deeply human response to divide the world into heroes and villains, people who do good and people who do bad.

Politics makes that temptation even stronger. Find someone who appears to be doing well, tell everyone else that person is the reason they’re doing badly, then announce that only you are brave enough to punish them.

Just look at the Green Party bumble their way through interviews on their new policy to attack supermarkets for price gouging. Time and again they were asked how they would define ‘price gouging’, and the closest Chloë got to cheaper grocers was a massive word salad.

Holding out false hope to desperate people is cruel and cynical. It became clear that their policy wasn’t really to prevent price gouging, they don’t even know what that is, their policy was to make someone a villain and themselves a hero by contrast.

If your policy starts with deciding who the villain is, rather than working out why groceries cost so much and what would actually make them cheaper, there’s a good chance you’ll make the problem worse.

The problem with making everyone an enemy is you run out of people to blame. What goes around comes around.

If you think they’ll stop at supermarkets or banks, you’re dreaming. Yesterday it was landlords, and farmers, and petrol stations. Before long it will be tradies, farmers, small-business owners, or somebody else who looks like they might have something.

ACT will release a fiscal plan that differs from every other party. It will reveal a path to real, sustained surplus with no new taxes. That’s right, there won’t be any groups who are singled out and targeted. 

We will return to surplus faster by continuing to find savings, year after year, and building a government that is smaller, more efficient, and capable of balancing the books.

That will do more to supermarket prices than any Green policy, because the true villain at the checkout is inflation. 

And that is being driven by the 180-billion-dollar elephant in the room, New Zealand’s public debt. We pay $24.8m a day servicing the interest on our debt. In 2018/19 it was $10.1m a day. The challenge of paying this down is THE CHALLENGE any future Government needs to be serious about, or else future generations of New Zealanders will be left paying the price in a much worse position.

The reality is that there’s only five million of us. We all have far more in common than what separates us and segmenting ourselves to find new groups to tax will get us nowhere. Our success is interdependent. The problems we face are shared.

ACT’s Mission

If you’re looking for finger pointing, don’t look here. We are interested in problem solving.

There is no reason why New Zealand shouldn’t be the happiest, healthiest, wealthiest country on the planet, but our potential is being locked by three key ‘locks’.

Lock number one: Government is too big and too complicated for a country of our size. It costs too much and delivers too little, leaving people angry.

Lock number two: Governments have made too many stupid rules, as if the people themselves are stupid. We are not stupid, but we’re tired of spending our time navigating red tape.

Lock number three: the left’s obsession with identity politics makes who you are and when your family got here more important than what you actually do in life.

ACT’s campaign has the keys to unlock New Zealand’s potential.

A smaller, more efficient Government with only 18 Ministers and 19 Departments. That’s what most similar countries have, but we have 28 Ministers and 39 departments, about twice as many as countries of the same size. Saving money needs to start at the top.

Deleting stupid rules, so there can be more productive businesses, paying higher wages, with fulfilling jobs.

Making welfare a time-limited hand up for people going through tough times, not a way of life for those who can work.

Giving every child the knowledge, discipline, and practical skills they need to succeed, in schools that bring out the best in them.

Closing the medicines gap and ensuring patients can get timely care from skilled health professionals.

Restoring consequences for crime, so victims come first and offenders understand that crime does not pay.

Making decisions according to need, not race, and building a united country with one law for all and one future together.

Rewarding people who work hard, take responsibility, and contribute, including by allowing them to keep more of the money they earn.

There is a thread running through all of these policies.

Trust people to make a difference in their own lives, reward them for their effort, and treat people equally.

We will not tell New Zealanders which other New Zealanders they should blame for their problems but instead remove the barriers that stop them solving those problems for themselves.

We will not pretend the challenges are simple or that change will be easy. But New Zealand is worth fighting for, and its problems are not beyond us.

Christchurch has been through harder times than most cities ever will. It could not change what had happened to it. It could only decide what came next.

New Zealand has the same choice.

ACT is asking voters to keep the Government but make it stronger: with a smaller and more efficient government, less red tape, lower costs, equal rights, and a relentless focus on fixing what matters.

A stronger ACT presence means faster and bolder change, an economy that is sustainable and not consumed by government, and a country where effort is rewarded, success is celebrated, and every New Zealander has the opportunity to build a better future.

How we win

The question many people will be left with is this. How do we win? 

Yes, you say, I believe in the vision. Yes, I’m sick of division. I’m sick of zero sum thinking. I’m sick of blaming this sector or that, there’s only five million of us and we need to stick together.

I know this country has more potential than it’s reaching right now. I want that potential unlocked. I know that potential is in each and every New Zealander.

But we won’t unlock it with more taxes. We won’t unlock it with more stupid rules. We won’t unlock our potential by constantly arguing about whose ancestors got here first.

You want to know how we in.

The answer is in these Mainland candidates I unveiled.

None of them need a job. They are all productive people. None of them were forced to stand for Parliament this election. They all applied.

They are taking a stand to make this country better. They are putting aside their privacy, and their weekends for the next three months to spread a message of hope. There is a better way.

They like you, are Mainlanders who work to produce every day.

The good news is you don’t have to go through the ACT Party’s candidate selection process and search your wardrobe for magenta outfits. 

There are many other ways you can answer the call and answer the question, how do we win?

The most important thing you can do is give your Party Vote to ACT. 

Some people will be feeling sorry for the National Party. I can understand that, but they’ll be just fine.

More importantly, it’s the number of MPs on the right that matters. National can lose to Labour, but the coalition can still win.

It’s not just the quantity that matters, it’s the quality. ACT’s MPs have proven themselves by being consistent and effective. 

Let me tell you a secret about some of my friends in the National party. Some of them, not all of them, should be in Labour but they’re too much of a snob to join.

The number of Party Votes ACT gets won’t just determine whether we lock Labour out. It will determine whether we have the strength to lock their socialist ideas out, wherever they may appear.

You may only have one vote, but you can influence many. Word of mouth is the most powerful means of political persuasion known to democracy. 

If you like to produce, to make a difference, don’t mind where someone came from yesterday, but care what they’re doing to make tomorrow better than today, then ACT is your home.

You will be amazed at the influence you have, in your family, your workplace, your sports club, your WhatsApp group, or your habit of calling Marcus Lush late at night.

You are a trusted person in your community who can influence others to do the same.

You can help our candidates knock on doors, put a sign on your fence. Go to our website and donate. We need to buy advertising, just in case the media don’t report our message completely accurately.

When I asked, how do we win, the clue was in the ‘we.’

WE can win if all of us here are prepared to take arms against the sea of troubles and unlock this great country’s potential.

My great candidates and I are giving our all for New Zealand over the next 78 days. 

Your choice is whether to join us. I hope you’ll do it. The power and the future of this country is in your hands.

Thank you.