David Seymour goes full Musk DOGE to maim NZ Public Services with an Argentinian Chainsaw

ACT Leader David Seymour’s call to slash public services echoes the hard-right austerity experiments of Elon Musk and Argentina’s Javier Milei. But New Zealand isn’t Texas or Buenos Aires — it’s a small, sparsely populated island nation built on a strong public sector foundation. With Election 2026 looming, voters face a stark choice about the future of the State.

We told you Seymour visiting Javier Milei, the far right Argentinian free market fascist who believes he can telepathically talk to his dead dogs would bite us in the arse, and low and behold David goes full Musk DOGE to maim NZ Public Services with that bloody Argentinian Chainsaw…

ACT’s Small Government Agenda Under Fire

Seymour’s Calls For Small Government Lazy Politics Straight From Hard-Right Playbook – Ignores NZ’s Growing Challenges – PSA

ACT Leader David Seymour’s latest attack on the public sector is straight out of the hard-right playbook – slash and burn now, worry about the consequences later.

“We’ve seen this movie before in the 1980s and 90s and we know how it ends – with worse services for New Zealanders and the country less able to deal with the challenges we face,” said Fleur Fitzsimons, National Secretary for the Public Service Association Te Pūkenga Here Tikanga Mahi.

“The last thing New Zealand needs is more ideologically driven re-structuring designed to meet some arbitrary numerical target and bugger the impact on what really matters – the future of our country and the health and well-being of New Zealanders.

“This is lazy politics from David Seymour and an attempt to distract from the failure of the Government to address the high cost of living facing New Zealanders.

“Seymour wants to cut agencies at exactly the wrong time. New Zealand’s population is growing rapidly and aging. We face a massive infrastructure deficit. Climate change is here right now, as recent severe storms even this week show.

“On top of that, we have our unique bicultural obligations under Te Tiriti o Waitangi, severe homelessness and high unemployment, and being an isolated island nation dependent on biosecurity – these challenges are complex and require more capability, not less, they need specialist agencies.

“Now is the time to be investing in the public services here to support New Zealand, not make more damaging cuts.

Royal Commissions Have Always Called for More Capacity, Not Less

“The sad irony is that every time there’s a crisis – whether it’s Pike River, the Christchurch earthquakes, or the 15 March mosque attacks – the Royal Commissions consistently recommend more resources and clearer accountability, not fewer agencies.

“What Seymour dismisses as ‘vanity portfolios’ are often responses to specific community needs and advocacy. The Cancer Control Agency exists because cancer advocates fought for years for independent national leadership. Agencies serving women, Pacific peoples, and ethnic communities exist because these groups were historically underserved by government.

“Seymour claims reducing agencies will magically boost productivity and wages. That’s fantasy economics. Countries with strong public services – like Norway, which he name checks – invest heavily in their public sector and pay their workers well.

“ACT’s ideological belief in a minimal state will leave ordinary Kiwis to fend for themselves while the wealthy like Seymour’s landlord mates get tax cuts.

“The truth is New Zealand needs a capable, well-resourced public service to tackle the challenges ahead. Seymour’s slash-and-burn approach would leave us weaker, less prepared, and less able to protect New Zealanders when they need it most.

“Voters will have a clear choice this election – and the PSA will be saying loud and clear that ACT wants to sacrifice our future all for a deeply flawed ideology.”

PSA

The political hypocrisy of demanding small Government with a microscopic G slash and burn while he sets up the most expensive Red Tape Ministry…

Small Government — Except for Seymour’s Own Ministry

New ministry spending more than $400,000 on contractors

RNZ

…would be laughable if it weren’t so septic.

When it’s Seymour’s Vanity project, he can’t stop spending money, when it’s everyone else, they can go screw themselves.

How on brand for Libertarians?

Why New Zealand Has Always Needed a Strong State

NZ has always been three enormous, sparsely populated Islands that have been built  on the 40% foundation stone of the Government, David want’s to privatise that foundation stone and allow the brutality of the Free Market to determine society.

The free market dynamics of competition work well when there is heavy population density, which we’ve never had, we have always required the state to step in and build the egalitarian framework of this country.

Why was subsiding people from the cradle to the grave ok for boomers but not good for the rest of us?

Amputating the State’s capacity to do things creates a cynicism that extinguishes hope, this is the tactic of the Right. Slash the public services and any democratic responses to our community and we become a free market utopia where the rich become Feudal Lords and we their peasant servants?

That’s the best for NZ is it? A system rigged by the rich for the benefits of the rich in the perpetual interests of the rich.

That’s the Brave New World that David Seymour is offering us.

Drenched in culture war rhetoric, this is David desperately trying to take back the political oxygen from Winston’s whero neck barnstorming that has been eroding ACTs support for two years.

Borrowing from Musk and Milei: Imported Ideology

Musk’s DOGE program was a massive self inflicted failure and Javier Milei may well be insane.

David Seymour borrowing ideas from Free Market lunatics is going to help NZ how exactly?

A vote for ACT is a vote for undeserved smugness.

Election 2026: A Choice About the State Itself

Friends don’t let friends vote ACT.