Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Paul Henry announcement is brilliant for ACT's campaign

How good is that Paul Henry announcement, eh? How good is that?

ACT sent out a little media advisory last night about 7:30pm, saying there would be a major announcement. It would not be a policy announcement, no exclusive would be offered and there would be no embargoed material.

Peter Williams: Act's High Hopes for Henry

It's sure to be second time successful for the former TV host

One of the rapidly emerging features of the 2026 election is the announcement of candidates carrying a profile from another sphere of activity.

Kerre Woodham: ACT's immigration plan is not exactly 'ground-breaking'

It's good to see some parties releasing policies, looking at you Labour, whether you agree with them or not, given it's less than six months to the election.

ACT released its immigration policy over the weekend, a six point plan that ACT says will welcome people with shared values and who play by the rules.

Peter Hemmingson: ACT, Then and Now - Have We Seen This Movie Before?

As a long-time supporter of Richard Prebble’s original vision for ACT, I’m highly uneasy about what appears to be a familiar pattern re-emerging.

When Prebble brought Donna Awatere-Huata into the party, I questioned the decision at the time. Her background in radical Māori separatist group Ngā Tamatoa and openly expressed sympathy for Marxist economic ideas sat uneasily with ACT’s commitment to free markets, individual responsibility, and equal citizenship.

Damien Grant: ACT is in a death match with NZ First, and the stakes couldn’t be higher

“Let’s be straight up with each other. Any party that wants to ramp up spending is being economically irresponsible. Because the only way to spend more money is to borrow it or to raise taxes.”

Fighting words from the Prime Minister Christopher Luxon in his State of the Nation at the soft opening of the SkyCity convention centre.

And since we begin this week’s column at this beautiful stadium let’s take a moment to remind ourselves how it was paid for.

Colinxy: When “Respect” Means “Obey the Ideology” - A Case Study in Public‑Sector Confusion

The ACT Party has released its proposed rule book for public servants. It is not complicated, nor is it radical. It is, in fact, the kind of thing most New Zealanders assume already exists:

Mike Butler: Waitangi heckles and what’s ahead

The squabbles and heckles at Waitangi on Thursday and Friday can be rooted to fear of losing preferential treatment, according to my chosen research assistant. However, there is a qualifier.

Maori reactions were framed in terms of losing what they say is treaty guaranteed status, tino rangatiratanga (chiefly authority), and partnership obligations.

Matua Kahurangi: Tamatha Paul thinks criminals are victims and Police are the problem

Why the Greens' soft-on-crime ideology is dangerous, deluded, and downright insulting to ordinary New Zealanders

Tamatha Paul, the Green MP and self-appointed spokesperson for the “defund the police” generation, has once again gone viral for all the wrong reasons. In a rambling monologue uploaded by the ACT Party to X, she attacked efforts to clamp down on violent crime, defended shoplifters, and dismissed public safety concerns as if they were a minor inconvenience in her activist utopia

Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: I don't agree with ACT's new employment bill

I'll tell you what I'm gonna be watching with some interest in the next few weeks -  that employment bill that ACT has just introduced to Parliament that would make it a lot easier for employers to fire staff who earn more than $180,000 because those high earning staff would not be able to take personal grievance cases for justified dismissal.

Professor Robert MacCulloch: Former National Party Treaty Minister Finlayson damages NZ....

Former National Party Treaty Minister Finlayson damages NZ by describing ACT as a "populist" party in world news.

The "populist" cat-call is being used a lot these days. Its often heard in the context of the US President. Now former NZ National Party Minister for Treaty Negotiations Chris Finlayson has written an article in the UK's Guardian newspaper called, "New Zealand’s divisive Treaty Principles Bill has been Defeated - but the Fight against Populism isn’t over". He states ACT is "adopting increasingly populist policies" and "One can only hope [the National Party] starts asserting itself over its populist smaller partners". What Garbage. Shame on Finlayson for wrongly characterizing NZ politics. What's he playing at?

Dr Bryce Edwards: The Act Party’s highly influential year

The Act Party ends the year on 9.6% in an average of the last public polls, a moderate gain on its 2023 election result of 8.64% but still a strong result considering the poor track record of minor parties in MMP, and a testimony to the high profile enjoyed by its leader David Seymour and his Treaty Principles Bill.

Dr Bryce Edwards: Does the Treaty Hikoi signify the birth of a new Māori nation?

On the first day of the Coalition Government’s parliamentary term in December of 2023 Te Pāti Māori called for a National Māori Action Day, which co-leader Rawiri Waititi described as “a day of activation”. Waititi then led 300 protesters on a hikoi to Parliament where they performed a haka on the forecourt. The small activation foreshadowed something more significant for the quickly evolving Te Pāti Māori.

Mike Butler: Tribunal displays its principles

The Waitangi Tribunal’s latest report titled Nga Matapono - The Principles puts its principles on show while condemning both ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill and New Zealand First’s review of treaty principles in legislation.

The 202-page report, that draws heavily on the once-was-covert He Puapua plan for two governments in New Zealand, predictably concludes that both policies were:

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Health NZ needs to scrap time-wasting measures

Listen, I agree with the ACT Party that Health NZ needs to drop this nonsense of encouraging staff to incorporate a prayer into their daily routine.

What is this? Are we living in the 6th century with the height of Christianity? This is very unmodern.

Now, the reason we know about this is because the ACT Party's been leaked an email that was sent to staff that says: 

"We encourage everyone to incorporate Karakia daily. To help support you with this, we have created some pre-recorded videos to learn Karakia."

Penn Raine: Snitching it altogether

Remember back in primary school when the goody-goods and the cry-babies were often the same people?  Mystifyingly beloved by the teachers their MO was a cunning blend of ruthlessness and manipulation as they honed their skills to become the school snitches.

I’ve always supposed that snitches are either frantic for validation or are malicious troublemakers. Or both. Last week’s leaking of Coalition policy drafts to the media have originated almost certainly in relevant Ministries where resentment of the tribe’s October loss continues to simmer. You’d think that the shadow of the knife that must be hanging over some of those bloated bodies would give malice and pride some pause when imagining how little pleased a Minister might be to discover the owners of the exact computers whence sprang the leaks.

Mike Butler: The Voice and our choice

A current affairs report on “the vote that shocked Australia” by activist Mihingarangi Forbes shows what to expect as the New Zealand Left struggles to cope with the ACT Party’s Treaty Principles Bill.

This call-to-action piece titled “Trick or Treaty? Indigenous rights, referendums and the Treaty of Waitangi”, posted on the 1 News site, conveys dire warnings to no-vote campaigners in any New Zealand treaty referendum from Australian Yes Vote activists dismayed at the failure of the Voice referendum on October 14.

Alison Pavlovich: Yes, landlords gain from the repeal of interest deductibility rules....

......but it was a flawed law from the outset

The new coalition government has announced a suite of tax reforms, including reintroducing the ability for property investors to deduct the interest costs on their mortgages against their rental income.

Early criticism of the proposed changes has focused on its retrospective nature (it will be backdated to April 1, 2023), potential windfalls to landlords (at the expense of tenants), and the fiscal cost of the measure.

Richard Shaw: Winston Peters back in the driver’s seat for coalition negotiations

Here go again. The final results of this year’s election have delivered two more seats to te Pati Māori, thereby increasing the size of New Zealand’s 54th Parliament to 123 seats (once the Port Waikato by-election has taken place).

The double effect of this “overhang” is to erase the narrow election night majority held by National (who have lost seats via special votes for the seventh election on the trot) and ACT, and to hand the balance of power to NZ First.

The irony that te Pati Māori’s performance forces three parties who are, at best, lukewarm on the idea of Māori seats into formal negotiations won’t be lost on anyone. The larger point, however, is that the results fundamentally change the dynamics of the process required to form the next government.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: What has happened to David Seymour?

With a week and a day to go voting, you would have to say the biggest disappointment of this campaign is Act.

We have got a couple of polls out today:

The Taxpayers Union Curia poll and the Talbot Mills research poll both have Act in the single digits for the first time in their polling since April.

ACT has been sliding this entire campaign and a lot of it will be because of David Seymour’s performance.

Jeffrey McNeill: The RMA is dead, long live the RMA

Why NZ’s resource laws won’t change overnight after this election

RMA – three letters that have struck fear into a generation of farmers, developers, politicians and anyone building a house. Or so legend would have it.

Whatever its original goal of promoting sustainable management of natural and physical resources, the Resource Management Act (RMA) has long been dogged by claims of unnecessary and inefficient rules that strangle innovation and progress.