ACT New Zealand
ACTLibertarian party focused on free markets, personal freedom, and reducing government size.
Policy Positions
ACT's Cost of Living Policy
ACT proposes tax cuts funded by reducing government spending, removing regulations that inflate the cost of goods and services, and allowing more competition in markets like groceries. They support repealing the Grocery Industry (Improving Competition) Act and instead enforcing existing commerce law.
Simple explanation
Cut taxes, reduce government spending, and make markets more competitive so businesses have to keep prices low.
ACT's Housing Policy
ACT proposes to dramatically liberalise planning rules to allow building anywhere, remove density restrictions, abolish the RMA, and use infrastructure levies to fund growth. ACT also supports removing First Home Grants, arguing they inflate prices.
Simple explanation
Remove planning rules that stop building, let the market build wherever it wants, and make councils fund their own infrastructure without central government subsidies.
ACT's Health Policy
ACT proposes to introduce competition into healthcare through a mixed public-private model, give patients more choice through health vouchers, publish hospital performance data, and reduce health bureaucracy to redirect funding to frontline services.
Simple explanation
Let patients choose between public and private care using government-funded vouchers, publish how well each hospital performs, and cut management to spend more on actual health services.
ACT's Education Policy
ACT's flagship education policy is charter schools (now called partnership schools), where private operators can run publicly funded schools with more flexibility. They support school choice, merit pay for teachers, publishing school performance data, and reducing the curriculum to core subjects.
Simple explanation
Allow private organisations to run publicly funded schools, let parents choose any school, pay the best teachers more, and focus on core subjects like reading, writing and maths.
ACT's Taxation Policy
ACT proposes significant income tax cuts funded by reducing government spending, a flat tax of 17.5% for income under $70,000, and abolishing inheritance tax. They oppose all new taxes including capital gains and wealth taxes, and want to simplify the tax system.
Simple explanation
Cut income taxes significantly, create a simpler flatter tax system, oppose any new taxes on savings or investments, and fund it all by cutting government spending.
ACT's Economic Policy
ACT advocates for a smaller state, lower taxes, deregulation, and free markets as the path to economic growth. They propose significant cuts to public spending, privatisation of state-owned enterprises, and removing barriers to business and investment.
Simple explanation
Shrink government, cut taxes, deregulate industry, and let businesses and markets drive economic growth.
ACT's Immigration Policy
ACT supports more open immigration for skilled workers, removing barriers to immigration that the market needs, and a merit-based system focused on economic contribution. They oppose refugee quotas and support faster processing of visas to reduce business uncertainty.
Simple explanation
Open the doors to skilled workers the economy needs, process visas faster, and base immigration decisions on what's good for the New Zealand economy.
ACT's Climate Policy
ACT accepts that climate change is occurring but argues New Zealand's contribution to global emissions is too small to justify costly domestic action. They propose scaling back climate regulations, exiting the ETS or fundamentally reforming it, and opposing binding international climate commitments.
Simple explanation
Accept the science of climate change but argue that New Zealand's actions have minimal global impact, so reduce the cost of climate regulations on businesses and households.
ACT's Environment Policy
ACT supports property rights-based approaches to environmental management, voluntary conservation, reforming the RMA to reduce compliance costs, and opposing what they call 'extreme' environmental regulations. They want environment rules based on sound science, not precaution.
Simple explanation
Use property rights and market incentives to protect the environment, simplify planning rules, and base environmental regulations on proven science.
ACT's Crime & Justice Policy
ACT supports three strikes sentencing, keeping serious criminals in prison longer, opposing early parole, enforcing gang patch bans, increasing the number of police, and focusing criminal justice on punishment and victim rights rather than offender rehabilitation.
Simple explanation
Keep serious criminals in jail longer, ban gang patches, hire more police, and prioritise victims' rights over offender rehabilitation.
ACT's Transport Policy
ACT strongly supports road investment funded by road user charges, opposes subsidised public transport, supports highway expansions and new motorways, and argues the market should determine transport choices without government favouring one mode over another.
Simple explanation
Build more roads funded by the people who use them, reduce public transport subsidies, and let people choose how they want to travel without government interference.
ACT's Infrastructure Policy
ACT supports infrastructure funded by the users who benefit through road user charges, water user charges, and public-private partnerships. They oppose government borrowing for infrastructure and support removing consenting barriers that delay private infrastructure investment.
Simple explanation
Make users pay for infrastructure through charges, bring in private investment, and cut red tape so infrastructure gets built faster.
ACT's Employment Policy
ACT strongly supports flexible labour markets, opposes minimum wage increases above market rates, supports 90-day trials for all employers, opposes Fair Pay Agreements, and advocates for reducing employment relations compliance to make it easier for businesses to hire.
Simple explanation
Keep employment flexible, allow businesses to try new workers for 90 days, oppose setting wages by law, and reduce paperwork for businesses hiring people.
ACT's Small Business Policy
ACT's small business policy centres on reducing the regulatory burden, cutting ACC levies, simplifying employment law, reducing minimum wage mandates, and allowing 90-day trials. They argue small businesses are harmed most by overregulation and compliance costs.
Simple explanation
Cut the rules and fees that burden small businesses, simplify employment law, and let businesses try workers for 90 days without risk.
ACT's Agriculture Policy
ACT strongly opposes agricultural emissions pricing, freshwater regulations it deems excessive, Three Waters reform, and what it describes as anti-farming bureaucracy. They support deregulation, voluntary environmental standards, and protecting farm property rights.
Simple explanation
Scrap farm emissions charges, remove freshwater rules that hurt farmers, oppose government control of water, and let farmers manage their land without excessive regulation.
ACT's MΔori Affairs Policy
ACT's Treaty Principles Bill proposes to redefine the Treaty of Waitangi principles to mean equal rights for all citizens regardless of ethnicity. They oppose co-governance, race-based policy, MΔori wards, and argue for a single standard of citizenship.
Simple explanation
Redefine Treaty principles to mean equal rights for all, oppose separate MΔori governance arrangements, and apply one standard of law to all New Zealanders.
ACT's Foreign Policy
ACT supports deeper integration with Five Eyes partners, stronger defence spending to meet NATO-equivalent targets, more assertive support for democratic allies against authoritarian states, and exploring AUKUS participation. They are critical of China's influence in the region.
Simple explanation
Get closer to our Five Eyes allies especially the US, spend more on defence, stand up more firmly to China, and consider joining the AUKUS security partnership.
ACT's Energy Policy
ACT supports all forms of energy generation including fossil fuels, opposes politically mandated renewable targets, wants to remove regulatory barriers to new energy investment, and supports nuclear energy exploration for New Zealand. They prioritise energy security and low prices.
Simple explanation
Allow all types of energy production including gas and nuclear, remove rules that favour renewables over other energy sources, and focus on keeping electricity affordable.
ACT's Social Welfare Policy
ACT supports stronger work obligations, reducing benefit rates over time to incentivise work, time-limiting benefits for able-bodied recipients, community and charity-based welfare over state welfare, and maintaining NZ Superannuation while considering future sustainability.
Simple explanation
Require beneficiaries to work or train, reduce welfare dependency over time, let charities and communities provide welfare, and maintain superannuation but plan for future costs.