ACT has unveiled its pitch to lure a new supermarket player into New Zealand through a new fast-track approval process.
It’s part of the party’s bid to focus on “problem solving” rather than “finger-pointing” as it looks toward the next election, to “keep the government” and make it “better”.
Leader David Seymour made the announcement at the party’s annual rally on Sunday, in Auckland, where it considered its half-time “report card” of its performance in government.
Seymour outlined the party’s wins through the past year and a half — including in efforts on law and order and reducing co-governance — while signalling to the campaign ahead and the voters he wanted to claim.
A key focus of Seymour’s speech were the voters who he said had been treated as a “scapegoat” by the previous government. He suggested Labour chose landlords as a scapegoat for the issue of high rents.
He said Labour did this because of “politics”.
“There are three million voters and only 120,000 are landlords so there’s 23 other voters per landlord. They say the most important skill in politics is the ability to count.”
Along with landlords, Seymour said firearm owners, farmers and employers were affected by policies Labour put in place, as well as groups of people he said Labour had left out in the cold.
“Blaming someone might feel good. We think that building something feels better,” he said.
“Whether you rent or own, farm or teach, build or tend, your future depends on solving the same problems, not blaming different people.”
His coalition partners weren’t left unscathed tough, as he pointed to efforts to target big corporations as a way of making things easier for New Zealand, and targeting the cost of living.
“You can understand people wanting to go after the banks or the supermarkets or the power companies.
“It would be the easiest thing in the world for me to give a speech saying they’re crooked and need to be punished somehow.
“They should be taxed somehow, have their businesses broken up, or be watched over by even toothier watchdogs. It’s the curse of zero sum thinking.”
His solution to the “biggest challenge we face” — the cost of living — was to loosen up what Seymour called “outdated planning and consenting rules”, which were the biggest barriers to international supermarket players setting up shop in the country.
“With the cost of living, the solution is not regulation but competition. Business should fear competition, not their own government.”
A new ACT party proposal — rather than government policy — would introduce a fast-track approval process that would streamline rezoning, consenting and investment approvals to build new supermarkets at scale.
Seymour said this would allow new entrants or smaller grocers to get approval within months, not years.
There was no mention in the speech of a specific player who had shown interest in setting up in New Zealand, but Seymour said he hoped it would bring a “serious extra chain to retail in New Zealand.’
“Even if it doesn’t, just the possibility of a new competitor can help keep competitive pressure on the incumbents,” he said.
“If it doesn’t work, we’ll know that either our market is more competitive than we thought, or we have some other problem.”
Ultimately, he told the audience, “if you’re looking for finger pointing, don’t look here. We are interested in problem solving.”
“If you want to find a scapegoat, you can, but it still won’t work. We tried it with landlords, we tried it with oil and gas, we tried it with farmers, employers, and licensed firearm owners.
“Every time government goes after a group in society, the problem gets worse.”
As part of his speech he also acknowledged the failure of the Treaty Principles Bill to pass into law.
“Our partners abandoned us defining the Treaty Principles, so we lost the vote.
“That’s a shame, but there’s something more important than winning the vote. We won the argument.”
It’s a key policy that differentiates ACT from its coalition partners, and the party has indicated it will continue to try and pass it in some form.
“It is now a matter of time before the Treaty Principles Bill or something like it passes,” Seymour told the gathering.
At the half-way mark of this term in government, Seymour said the party’s focus from here would be “campaigning to keep the government and keep making it better.”
rnz.co.nz
