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New Zealand’s election boils down to a simple contest between the Labor-Green bloc on the left and the National-ACT bloc on the right. Although the right is lagging in the polls, if it won the majority, ACT Party leader David Seymour could become deputy prime minister.
Either way, ACT is recently assertive. Although Seymour owes his seat at Epsom to National’s grace and favor, today he seems less inclined to be their political lapdog. You want people to support ACT on their own terms.
Surprisingly, the party has risen in opinion polls from less than 1 percent to as high as 8 percent recently. That would give ACT up to ten seats in parliament. Would Seymour also negotiate to bring one or more first-time MPs to cabinet alongside him?
In the last two elections, ACT remained with only one seat in the electorate, thanks to the agreement of the National Party: Epsom National supporters agree to vote for the ACT candidate as their local representative, but give their party vote to National.
This arrangement dates back to 2005. It paid a good dividend in 2008 when ACT won Epsom and won 3.65 percent of the party’s vote. This gave the party a proportional turnout of five seats, despite falling below the party’s 5 percent vote threshold.
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With the support of ACT on the right and two other parties in the center, John Key formed a country-led government that lasted three terms. Then the ACT party’s vote fell below 1 percent in 2014 and 2017, and only Epsom’s seat kept it in parliament.
In 2020, however, after a period in opposition and no longer overshadowed by National, ACT is flourishing again.
FIONA GOODALL / GETTY IMAGES
ACT leader David Seymour may no longer be the only MP for his party after the election.
ACT rises at National’s expense
Seymour has stood his ground, defending freedom of expression and opposing the ban on semi-automatic weapons following the March 2019 mosque shootings. He introduced a bill to allow euthanasia that is likely to take effect after a decisive referendum . held in conjunction with general elections.
However, national leader Judith Collins has stated bluntly that she sees ACT’s job as winning Epsom and helping eliminate New Zealand’s first populist party, which in recent polls is likely to be ousted from parliament on October 17.
ACT’s rise in the polls comes in part from conservative First New Zealand voters who are disillusioned with Winston Peters for forming a coalition government with Labor.
But Collins must be concerned that some center-right voters have given up on winning at National and are exercising their freedom of choice by defecting to ACT, and she wants them back.
Stuff
ACT’s rise has come at National’s expense.
What ACT supporters want
The Consumers and Taxpayers Association was founded in 1993 by former national cabinet minister Derek Quigley and Sir Roger Douglas, former finance minister in David Lange’s Labor government and an engineer of economic deregulation who became known as “Rogernomics.”
The party defends less government, more private enterprise and freedom of choice. Therefore, he is a son of neoliberalism, in fact, his only legitimate son.
For example, the Seymour referendum bill to allow assisted death (euthanasia) was officially dubbed the End of Life Election Bill, affirming its ideological origins with the word “choice.” It proposes much more radical cuts in public spending and taxes than its only possible coalition partner, National.
We got an idea of how ACT supporters think from the online reader initiated Stuff / Massey opinion poll in July. Compared to the other parties in parliament, ACT supporters stand out as:
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More likely to rate the New Zealand government’s overall response to COVID-19 as “unsuccessful”: 29.5 percent compared to 9.9 percent for the entire sample
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most strongly in favor of abolishing the Maori electoral roll: 68.2% compared to 36.6% overall
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They are more likely to prefer the government to take a “cautious and skeptical” approach to climate change: 72.5% compared to 36.4% overall.
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more in favor of the country getting back to “business as usual” rather than reforming the economic system itself during post-pandemic reconstruction: 75% compared to 31% overall.
Populist or purist?
The values of ACT supporters are largely diametrically opposed to those championed by supporters of the Greens, as might be expected of a libertarian party that advocates individualism and deregulation.
In the past, however, the party has resorted to populist policies of public order and anti-welfare. In 2011, it implemented the slogan of “one law for all” to attack policies that address indigenous rights.
As the leader of ACT since 2014, Seymour has led the party toward free-market liberalism. But there is still an element of right-wing populist thinking among ACT supporters.
A sizable minority of them agree with conspiracy theories about COVID-19 (25 percent) and expect Donald Trump to be re-elected in November (32 percent), more than among national supporters who ranked at about the 20 percent on both points.
If the current polls are true, Seymour will bring into parliament a group of freedom-loving individuals, none of whom have prior representative experience.
Among them are a firearms enthusiast, a former cop and a farmer. At number seven on the list is a self-employed mother of four and, according to the party, “is better than ten ‘experts’ on ivory towers” when it comes to fighting poverty.
So far, ACT’s best election result was in 2002 when it won 7.14 percent of the party’s votes and nine seats in the 120-seat House of Representatives. If he repeats that in 2020, Seymour will go from being a lone voice for his party to leading a small but inexperienced caucus.
Managing that team of individualistic rookies may well be the first test of your libertarian instincts. 
Grant Duncan is Associate Professor at Massey University’s School of People, Environment and Planning.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
