Do you want more family distress and even deeper child poverty? Vote ACT. Do you want the economy to contract drastically, foodbanks to be swamped with demand for food, hospitals unable to cope with third world diseases of cold and damp houses? Vote ACT.
Do you believe that all people need is an incentive to work and if taxes are cut jobs will magically appear? Vote ACT.
Treasure modelling shows that Child poverty is on the rise in the COVID-19 crisis. But instead of increased spending on welfare ACT would cut incomes of those with children severely. That’s right, ACT propose deeply contractionary policies at the bottom of the worse recession since the Great Depression.
Among a raft of austerity measures that surely no sane economist would endorse ACT would.
Abolish Winter Energy Payment $505 m
Abolish BestStart $477m
Abolish $25 benefit increase $ 672m
Abolish WFF changes $510m
Abolish benefits changes in Families package $220m. ACT would take $2.4 billion from families living on income already beneath the breadline. Overall cuts to government spending exceed $7 billion.
The bogey of debt one day crippling our children appears to justify the most severe cuts to families already drowning today.
While taxes will be cut, government spending will be cut far further so that the budget is balanced or in surplus and debt repaid. Ruth Richardson tried this in 1991 and the deficit doubled because the economy shrank so much.
The policies are so ill conceived it is perhaps a bad idea to give them any air-time. But voters who are disillusioned with National appear to be flocking to ACT. They need to take a hard look at their disastrously contractionary recipes for poverty that are exactly the opposite of what is needed.
I generally party vote for the Greens and vote for the Labour candidate in my electorate, but I am strongly considering voting for ACT after the way licenced firearm owners have been treated & villainised by National, Labour, NZ First & the Greens, mainly to push a specific agenda & distract from Police incompetence over handling firearms licencing. Disappointed in the rantings on this site over this issue too, as it often provides reasoned political discussion on other important issues facing NZ society.
Be interested to hear your views on “the way licenced firearm owners have been treated & villainised” Richard.
None of the firearms owners I know feel that way, so genuinely curious to hear your point of view.
To be willing to blow up the economy by voting for the ACT loons because of your perception of this single issue is disquieting, to say the least!
Is that because you know zero firearms owners or is that because the firearms owners you do know haven’t realised that the “high-powered, multi-round, death-dealing, sniper assault weapons or multi-projectile murder blaster” that they currently use to shoot the occasional deer, rabbit or duck, will also be banned or heavily restricted if the Government, Police Association and the 50 odd members of Gun Control NZ have their way.
Neither of those reasons Richard.
But good luck with your mission to assert reasoned arguments advocating for alternative gun ownership laws.
Richard the question is “What do you want a gun for”.
It is not a right to have one and has never been a right in NZ for at well over a century.
Doncha love these people who claim to be left leaning but now they might vote for the right for some personal reason. Personally I don’t believe their stories. It’s not even manipulation attempts 101.
Rest assured it is possible for people who own firearms to vote left or actually care about the welfare of our fellow New Zealanders & the environment. However having protested plenty of other injustices over the years, I feel casting a protest vote for ACT makes a statement that we aren’t prepared to stand by while our rights are trampled on with little regard to normal democratic processes. Whine or argue about that if you want, I don’t care. Voting ACT won’t make a difference to the overall election result, Labour will win, National will be crushed & there definitely won’t be an ACT majority government to create a whole new neo-liberal hell in NZ, but may be a message will get through.
Surely the Outdoors Party would be more loony left than ACT loony right and achieve your ends?
” Doncha love these people who claim to be left leaning but now they might vote for the right for some personal reason ”
Reminds me of Leighton Smiths trick on ZB when he was on a vendetta against the Clark government.
He would air people who were supposed Labour supporters phoning in to declare they were so disgusted with Labour they would never vote for them again.
And how terrible Helen was as PM and how she and Cullen were wrecking the country and how Brash and later Key would sort the country out.
This would go on when he was ripping them apart on something every other week.
It was totally bogus because all the Labour people i knew despised him and his opinions and had nothing but loyalty for Clark.
Economic policy is sort of irrelevant at the moment anyway isn’t it? since nobody knows what’s going to happen over the next 12 months, so ACT’s economic policy is doubly irrelevant because no ACT supporter considers them to be into a position to implement them. Why they are voting ACT is as a block to the dictates of labour, as a ‘get stuffed’ to national and see ACT as plain speaking and as a bastion of ‘free speech and thought’ which has usually been a cornerstone of the liberal left rather than the conservatives or liberal right. Here is the answer for Rodel, when the two main parties are so alike – and… there is no traditional ‘working class’ left wing parties anymore, the liberal left and the liberal right have started seeing their own similarities.
If the Working Class think ACT is the answer to our problems, then they’re better not voting.
ACT is all about making the 1% richer, at our expense. And they don’t hide that fact.
Very true Richard.
It’s been horrible to experience the deliberate vilification, moral panic and mob rule the government and Police Association used against gun owners to push through their self centred bad law. When we knew it was a police failing all along.
I don’t think the public understand just what has been destroyed or that they are less safe as a result.
So we need a political voice which we haven’t before, and that will be ACT.
Voting ACT so that you can have your voice heard on firearm laws and ignoring the devastation that will be wrought by giving ACT any support whatsoever when your a liberal at heart but want to send a message is selfishness in the extreme.
Shooting is a sport, a hobby, a past time, an obsession even, but to elevate it to the importance you are particularly with all the pressing issues facing us is ridiculous.
“I don’t think the public understand”
Oh so, you do,do you? So you are a self proclaimed oracle.
Labour will get my vote BECAUSE of the gun regulations.
I don’t doubt it
Well, not until your shot by a gun.
The restriction of some classes of firearms makes good sense. The illegally possessed firearms out there is very real problem and costs lives.
As soon as NZ can revert to the old system of each firearm being registered as well as its owner the better. That system worked well but broke down with Police being under resourced and records got into a mess.
Cowboys go ride your horses for fun.
Economic policy is sort of irrelevant at the moment anyway isn’t it? since nobody knows what’s going to happen over the next 12 months, so ACT’s economic policy is doubly irrelevant because no ACT supporter considers them to be into a position to implement them. Why they are voting ACT is as a block to the dictates of labour, as a ‘get stuffed’ to national and see ACT as plain speaking and as a bastion of ‘free speech and thought’ which has usually been a cornerstone of the liberal left rather than the conservatives or liberal right. Here is the answer for Rodel, when the two main parties are so alike – and… there is no traditional ‘working class’ left wing parties anymore, the liberal left and the liberal right have started seeing their own similarities.
Hear hear Richard, I am in the same boat and it is these very same Licensed Firearm owners who have given these ar**holes their increased share of the vote. It will go perhaps as high as 7 %. Our government deserves to have these goons opposite them for next 3 years to remind them of their rushed and simply bad law on the reform of firearms legislation. But if you keep turning left politically you end up on the right. ACT is such a huge rat to swallow tho’
ACT is euthansia, in more ways than one.
We have ruined the country enough as it is with the neolib economics of the main parties, without letting these nutcases loose on the economic levers of power with their Far Right lunacy.
Disaffected Nat voters should look elsewhere.
!oo% jase
Plus 1 to that.
ACT are economic lunatics.
ACT is euthanasia, in more ways than one.
ExACTly!!
Look where ? The Association of con artists and tax dodgers is all they’ve got.
New Conservatives perhaps?
I heard the New Conservatives have a direct line to god.
That should give the disaffected some hope.
I think, you have got to take into account the broader picture, the global economy its massive problem. The US economy has tanked, 30.9% in economy non growth & the EU of more than 40%. Both unheard of since the first WW.
Little ole NZ doesnt have the firepower in its coffers to fend off the pending credit crunch hitting the shore now and will playout for the rest of the decade.
Neither Labour or National have a plan! They both stick to their indoctrinated economic dogma and continue to invoke neoliberalism because thats all they know. That will lead NZ to a economic depression which isnt too far away as we are already in a recession.
Where as for Acts plan! Lets play musical chairs and see who wins!
What’s a shattered economy and a Ruth Richardson attack on the most vulnerable?
When the gun lovers are snuggled up in bed with their weapons of choice all will be well with the world.
People scoffed at Trump harnessing the ignorance of yokels with his various hate and division mantras. In essence that’s Seymour and the gun brigade.
Exactly.
To them all that matters is their multi-round holdings guns nothing else matters.
Something always flows into a vacuum. Into the expanding vacuum the National party has created, something like ACT, or the Tamaki party, or the mutant party of JLRoss and Billy TK – or something even more bizarre concocted from them all, could be slouching towards us to be born again.
See those little feet sticking out of seymour’s arse?
That’s roger douglas’s little trotters and he’s knows all about shattered economies.
He shattered ours after all and he took our communities down with it.
The twerker should be arrested for aiding and abetting a criminal in committing a crime.
I’m on the fence of voting for ACT or Labour. Both have a lot of recommend them (there is a lot of cherry picking here, which is of course fair enough for a left-wing blog site). I wasn’t going to vote at all, but the two referendum questions are getting me out there anyway so might as well.
I think you’re singing to the choir in this forum Susan.
However, none of the points you raised were in fact ‘economic’ in nature – they’re all just handouts.
Andrew Incomes for people are ‘economic’ in nature. Cut spending of the poor as ACT propose and you will intensify the downturn as well as create abject poverty
And lets not forget.
The debts he’s mouthing on about that he thinks he must cut in order to pay for only exist if we play his game.
If he says there’s a monster under the bed, then there will be until we look and behold! One sock, there’s always only one sock, a few dust balls and a crusty condom.
There’s no debt crisis in AO/NZ ! None ! We’re an absurdly and embarrassingly wealthy country. There never has been a debt crisis. There’s never been a real and actual need to concern ourselves with financial difficulties. Ever. The faux-crisis we’ve been sold is a bizarre scam and a reflection of greed and exploitation by a few now extremely wealthy crooks living in the likes of Auckland and Australia who work their magic by creating a false narrative to have us believe that at any moment the financial shit’s about to hit the logical fallacy fan.
Surely !? I can’t be the only one who understands that? I mean c’mon?
He’s simply using logical fallacies to scare up votes.
We’re an agrarian primary industry economy. Therefore, people, so long as they’re alive, must eat. I know! Who knew, right? Clearly, hardly fucking anyone.
Farmers ? What the fuck are you doing? You’re being fucked over. I mean, really fucked over.
You don’t believe me? Ok then. Go and check out the massive wool stores in Invercargill? Go on?
They’re packed to the rafters with wool that YOU only got less than $2 a kg for? I mean? Doesn’t that make you wonder why the fuck that is…??? Use your imagination, never mind what bullshit, monster under the bed high wankery they tell you ! What does your common sense tell you? Does it tell you that you’re being fucked without the kissing? If it does, then you should stop listening to scunthorpes like the rogernome twerker puppet tells you and start listening to your commonsense.
You know that one sock we found under the bed by that dust and the condom? If it’s wool at all, it’ll weight about 10 grams, at a guess. Two of those socks will retail for around $30.00.
Again? How much do you get for a kilogram of wool again? $1.00?
There’s about 3 kg per sheep which is about $3.00 per animal, am I correct? And how much does it cost to shear a sheep? About $3.00?
You see where I’m going with this, right?
Now you know why the natzo’s and their pals are fat and rich while you farmers are deeply and dangerously financially disadvantaged. It’s to make [their] exploitation of you as easy as falling off a hooker in a fancy Auckland hotel with a nose full of Colombian marching powder and stabbing yourself in the arse with the keys to the Bentley.
Anyone of you thought to chase up the Youtube rumour about jonky, his accountant mate living across the street in Remuera and South Canterbury Finance? I thought it was a ripping yarn, actually.
I don’t care if it was true or not because most of the things he told us weren’t either.
( And no disrespect to actual working girls.)
Its been the same throughout history. The rich take all the wealth for themselves which means that the poor (Who are pretty much the people who produce everything that the society needs) can’t afford to reproduce and thus we end up with not enough people as there aren’t enough births and people are leaving and/or simply dying from malnutrition and other diseases of poverty.
The end result is the total collapse of society.
Nasa-funded study: industrial civilisation headed for ‘irreversible collapse’?
We need to challenge the myth that the rich are specially-talented wealth creators
Are those puppets in that image? They don’t look real, but very cleverly made.
ACT is looking at a ‘shitted’ economy now and was before Covid-19, surely they don’t want to shatter it and leave a very untidy stinking pile?
But hey that’s ACT – the meaning behind the acronym is not well-based, and when it comes to wells they always poison them.
The only liberal-type thing they have done that I concur with is enabling people who are already dying to go earlier before the unconscious finally gives up the ghost, and save themselves and their loved ones the experience of much physical and mental pain.
Holograms, Greywarbler. Pretty sure they’re all holograms.
And whoever leads the National Party on the day controls the on/off switch.
359,000 people on welfare now is soon to become 450,000+ 1st September when the wage subsidy ends and well before Christmas it will be worse. 550,000 is my best guess.
When they go onto welfare – they will hardly be voting for a party which advocates cuts in welfare spending will they? – be careful what you wish for
Voting ACT so that you can have your voice heard on firearm laws and ignoring the devastation that will be wrought by giving ACT any support whatsoever when your a liberal at heart but want to send a message is selfishness in the extreme.
Shooting is a sport, a hobby, a past time, an obsession even, but to elevate it to the importance you are particularly with all the pressing issues facing us is ridiculous.
Jack agree- this is not about gun law or referenda on end of life choice it is about asking people to look carefully at the impact of the economic policies they espouse before entrusting them with a vote.
We never thought we would get the bad policies we got thirty years ago under Ruth
It’s about whatever people feel important not what the battery thinkers of the left decide.
And Labour run the same economic system as ACT, they brought it in of course. The Greens signed off water bottling to China in Chch. But ACT baaad.
And ACT are not likely to make government, why is the left so scared of what they have created here? At least they don’t lie about what they stand for.
“At least they don’t lie about what they stand for.”
The battery thinking right wing think ACT and National don’t lie, try again, actually, try thinking full stop!
Here’s a question for you, why is there such a focus on increasingly restricting or removing access to firearms for properly vetted people across much of the world (despite lawful owners of firearms committing very few gun crimes), all while massively increasing Police access to military styled weapons & equipment? I don’t know the reason & I certainly don’t subscribe to conspiracy type theories (I know how hard it is for most people to organise a piss up in a brewery, let alone global domination, especially if you want to keep it secret), but there definitely is a reason and I’m pretty certain it isn’t just public safety. It is worth noting that unarmed populations are easier to rule, but I’m sure that has nothing to do with it, what do you think?
If you think armed individuals or clubs would EVER stand ANY chance against a well armed, well trained, drone equipped state force such as the army with access to air support and firepower you simply can’t roll up and buy at Gun City, then you’re kidding yourself.
If gun nuts secretly harbour plans of insurrection, or see their rifles as their defence of their “freedom” (whatever the hell that is in the West these days), then they’ve got some serious issues.
That’s certainly not what I think, most “militia” types tend to be a little misguided to say the least and most of the firearms owners I know are very law abiding as they have more to lose than most. But since we are on the topic, how is that “well armed, well trained, drone equipped state force such as the army with access to air support and firepower you simply can’t roll up and buy at Gun City” doing in Afghanistan?
Still there killing innocents s’far as I know.
… and covering it up. But after almost 20 years and over 3500 coalition casualties, they’ve got those nasty Taliban fighters on the run. Just like the Soviets before them. And the British before them.
If the election was held today there is a high chance I’d vote Labour – may the baby Jesus help me!
Seymour was in Queenstown the other day and made a comment that as far as he is concerned the home owners there should be able to sell their properties to whomever they want to – including the Chinese – it was reported in the Otago Daily Times facebook page and hasn’t gone down well with the readers and has cost him votes
Lets face it-ACT has no real support in Aotearoa except for a few alt-right tories and those David Seymour panders to, to curry votes. If National stood up for their beliefs and values in Epsom and behaved honestly instead of Johnnymandering, ACT would be euthanized on November 19.
Exactly Rodel, where is Nationals “personal responsibility ” in all of this. Trying to gerrymander an election is akin to corruption . Normal practice National party?
The real issue with fascist organisations such as act isn’t their inane economic ideas, it is that if such a gang of unfeeling humans ever does attain power here in Aotearoa, their innate belief in the validity of illogical, driven by some superstition ( animism, xtian, islam – makes zero difference) imaginings, soon to become beliefs then ultimately fact, causes small brains to believe that because they imagine right is on their side, man-made laws can never apply to them.
Next thing you know these fascists see control of a state as being achievable, So then they chuck away the rule book.
Next begins cheating directed at getting some of our least loyal/selfish citizens to assist them to corrupt the justice institutions – esp the already compromised police, plus ensure media lies are published and incite easily condemned kayfabe which have occurred so often, people begin to accept that is situation normal.
Do not believe? Pick up a copy of “The Rise & Fall of the Third Reich” by William Shirer, or, “Mussolini ’s Italy”, authored by R.J.B. Bosworth to get a handle on what right, right, wing political movements get up to once a tiny cadre of elites has given them the imprimatur . . . and the money of course, to enable elite rule. Always corrupt, inevitably illegal and unflinchingly cruel.
“Mr Seymour is an mp, our mp’s don’t do things like that.”
“yeah right whatever”.
ACT is rising on the gun legislation paranoia and people are willing to cut off their noses in spite of their faces by voting ACT to protect their gun rights. The fact is that their rights to own guns are not being taken away, but the spin would have you believe that it is heading in that direction. It is a play straight out of the NRA handbook.
Lost your right to silence or presumption of innocence lately?
Ability for police to criminalize without legal process and confiscate with no compensation?
Sounds like you have no idea what is being done to kiwi gun owners, or worse you know and are lying.
Which is it?
“Sounds like you have no idea what is being done to kiwi gun owners, or worse you know and are lying.”
Well you clearly have no idea, or if you pretend you do, you are lying.
How old are you bert?
Read tranche 2 and the court finding against COLFO that ammunition confiscation is now lawful and come back to us.
It’s not necessarily a simple dichotomous question. Maybe there is a third answer to ‘You don’t know what’s being done or you’re lying’.. Maybe it’s ‘you know what’s being done and you’re telling the truth’.
Every time I see David Seymour albeit on telly or in the tabloid NZ herald I think to myself as to what next will this Village Idiot that is Seymour come up with?
He just doesn’t do it i.e merit a vote; from me. He is a nothing. He is just an opportunistic and self serving person who would rather prance around on a stage than actually do anything effective for New Zealanders.
I look upon him as being the Village Idiot that just so happens to side with National no matter how stupid both National and him look to the world.. Not exactly a great combination when that is all considered.
Let me say a lot older in both age and maturity. May I suggest you head to Christchurch and interview any one of the mosque shooting victims whanau for a whole different perspective. Have you ever been personally affected by gun murder?
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