2020 Elections: Record Election Result of ‘Bittersweet’ Act, Says Leader David Seymour

For the first time in almost a decade, Act New Zealand will have a caucus.

At 10:15 p.m., the party was around 8.1 percent, giving it 10 deputies. But leader David Seymour said the result was “bittersweet” and “not good for New Zealand.”

He arrived at the headquarters bar on the Auckland Viaduct in a speedboat with a drink in hand and then told a crowd of 400 that the result was a pitch for the next election.

“For Act, this is just a stepping stone to build a platform and a real reform agenda to make New Zealand a better place. This is not our 2020 campaign election night party. This is the launch of our election campaign 2023 “.

The party’s largest number of MPs has had in Parliament is nine, which it won under its first leader, Richard Prebble, in 1999. But it has been a one-MP party since 2011.

Some of the MPs Seymour will bring to Parliament include Deputy Leader Brooke Van Velden, a former Law Enforcement staff member who worked behind the scenes on the End of Life Choice Act, and firearms activist Nicole McKee. .

McKee met with Seymour last year as a spokesperson for the Council of Licensed Firearms Owners as he became the public face of the opposition to gun law reforms after the Christchurch mosque massacre.

Number four on the party’s list is Chris Baillie, who is a teacher and former Nelson Police officer, followed by West Auckland civil engineer Simon Court who served on the Auckland Council before starting his own company.

None of the newly elected Act members have MP experience, but Seymour said he is not concerned about that.

“Nobody was actually born in Parliament. Every Member of Parliament has to be a new MP at some point, so I think the ones we have are pretty good.”

After polling around 1 percent for most of the period, Act’s popularity began to slowly rise towards the end of last year, but it really began to gather steam during the Covid-19 response and National’s leadership changes.

Throughout the national shutdown, Seymour was seen as an effective member of the Epidemic Response Committee that highlighted issues that arose during the response.

Seymour said the committee paid much more attention to him and his opposition.

“Usually I am one in 60 members of the opposition, whereas there it was one in six, so I increased my exposure by a factor of 10. That certainly made a big difference.

“And it helped that most of the population was basically under house arrest watching it. It’s quite difficult to get people to watch Parliament TV normally.”

But while Seymour was widely praised for his work, it didn’t translate into an immediate big increase in polls. In May, a 1 News Colmar Brunton poll put the party at 2.2 percent.

But when the National Party leadership problems began in May, Act support really began to pick up.

In late June, after a National Party coup saw Simon Bridges ousted in favor of Todd Muller, a 1 News Colmar Brunton poll put Act at 3 percent.

That support then more than doubled to 7 percent in mid-September after the Covid-19 resurgence forced Auckland back into lockdown and National instilled its third leader, Judith Collins, in three months.

Since late September, polls have held the Act at a steady 8 percent.

Seymour said that while the Covid-19 response had played an important role in its reputation for holding the government to account, there were also a number of problems during the last period when the Act was “prepared to call things by name. “.

Among the laws he opposed were the safe zones around abortion clinics, the Zero Carbon Act, and Seymour was the only MP who opposed the first tranche of gun law reforms after the terrorist attacks on 15 December. March in Christchurch.

One of the things Seymour campaigned on was having more MPs in law, which meant there were more people to “hold them all accountable.”

“There have been a lot of reports on our list lately and everyone who has taken a look is gone and probably looking to write some kind of ax work on how terrible they all are and they just can’t because they are actually all really good people. . “