Act Party

John Banks has been confirmed as Act’s leader:

Act’s sole MP, John Banks, has become its new leader.

The decision was made by the Act board and the announcement was made this afternoon at Parliament.

Announcing the decision a short time ago, Act president Chris Simmons said the board’s decision had been unanimous.

Mr Banks told a press conference said he was focused on taking a repositioned Act Party into the next election.

“Every day is campaign day.”

He said the party was returning to its heritage – the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers.

Good, if you can’t follow the rules you deserve to be prosecuted:

The Electoral Commission has referred the following matter to the Police:

• ACT on Campus ‘Not your typical party’ flyer, baseball cap and t-shirt.

It is the Electoral Commission’s view that the publication of the ACT on Campus flyer, baseball cap and t-shirts constitutes a breach of sections 204F and 204H of the Electoral Act 1993 because the items are election advertisements that did not contain a valid promoter statement and were not authorised in writing by the ACT party secretary.

As this matter is now with the Police, the Electoral Commission will not be commenting further.

Now if the Police could progress the log jam of complaints referred to them I might have just a bit more confidence in our Electoral System, that repeat offenders and law breakers actually get prosecuted.

Perhaps the 1595 Libertarianz and the 50 odd “classical liberals” of the Act party could all emigrate…to Honduras:

Now, for the first time, libertarians have a real chance to implement their ideas. In addition to a big special development region, the Honduran government intends to approve two smaller zones. And two libertarian-leaning start-ups have already signed a preliminary memorandum of understanding with the Honduran government to develop them.

One firm goes by the name of Future Cities Development Corporation. It was co-founded by Patri Friedman, a grandson of Milton Friedman, a Nobel laureate in economics, and until recently executive director of the Seasteading Institute, a group producing research on how to build ocean-based communes. The other is called Grupo Ciudades Libres(Free Cities Group) and is the brainchild of Michael Strong and Kevin Lyons, two entrepreneurs and libertarian activists.

Both share a purpose: to build “free cities”. Last April all three spoke at a conference organised by Universidad Francisco Marroquín, a libertarian outfit in Guatemala. In September they and Giancarlo Ibárgüen, the university’s president, launched the Free Cities Institute, a think-tank, to foster the cause.

As so often with enthusiasts, divisions within the cause run deep. The two firms hail from different parts of the libertarian spectrum. Mr Friedman is an outspoken critic of democracy. It is “ill-suited for a libertarian state”, he wrote in an essay in 2009—because it is “rigged against libertarians” (they would always lose) and inefficient. Rather than giving its citizens a voice, he argues, they should be free to exit; cities should compete for them by offering the best services.

The second firm’s backers appear to be less radical. A founder of several charter schools, Mr Strong is now the force behind FLOW, a movement that claims to combine libertarian thinking “with love, compassion, social and environmental consciousness”, says its website. He too prefers exit over voice (meaning that he thinks that leaving and joining are better constraints on executive power than the ballot box). But he also believes that democratic consent is needed in certain areas, such as criminal justice. His goal in Honduras is less to implement libertarian ideals than to reduce poverty and to speed up economic development.

I read the herald online this morning and saw that yet again Mrs Colin Carruthers QC is spewing bile at the ACT party.

Does this sour old woman not understand the concept of letting her hatred of ACT go?

That Sir Roger Douglas is apparently scribbling his evil and self-centred thoughts on the back of an airplane sick bag, is somehow prophetic.

The last comment is funny though – Goldsmith an ACT libertarian at heart. I doubt he’ll find that helpful.

The leftwing is doing their nut over Charter Schools. They are mad as hell and they are prepared to lie about it.

They seem to have only a couple of plays right now. The first is the totally lame “No Mandate” argument. They can’t seriously claim that they believe that for one minute. If Phil Goff had made it to PM with just 27% of the vote then using their logic there would have been no CGT, no removing of GST off fruit and veges and arguably they would have had a mandate to stop the asset sales.

The other argument is that the ACT party didn’t campaign on this policy. This is an out right lie, their policy precisely outlines the details, the only thing missing is the words “Charter Schools”:

• Increase the autonomy that local principals and staff have in running their school.  Boards and principals should be able, for example, to set teacher remuneration at their discretion like any other employer, rather than having a rigid, seniority based pay scale;
• Further increase the subsidy for independent schools so that parents who choose independent schools for their children do not lose so much of their child’s share of education funding;
• Encourage choice in assessment systems, whether they be NCEA, Cambridge International Examination, International Baccalaureate, or other qualifications.

The last line of attack they keep using is that ACT sneaked back into parliament by rorting MMP. Well excuse me, this is the system they spent many, many hours campaigning to keep, this is the system that nine unions, including all the teacher unions all campaigned to retain. They really need to suck it up. John Banks won Epsom, end of story.

The government needed ACT and so we have a new policy to trial. This is how MMP is supposed to work.

John Banks has scored a good deal for the ACT party in his negotiations with John Key:

National has reached agreements with United Future’s Peter Dunne and ACT’s John Banks, as it moves toward forming a government.

Banks has won two ministerial roles and two associate ministerial posts as part of a confidence and supply agreement with National. He will be Minister of Regulatory Reform and Minister of Small Business. He is also Associate Minister of Education and Associate Minister of Commerce.

Banks will be a minister outside of Cabinet but gets a spot on three Cabinet committees – expenditure control, economic growth and infrastructure and appointments and honours.

ACT will be very happy that they will be able to exert some influence on expenditure control and growth plans.

Stephen Whittington, the Wellington Central ACT party candidate, has gone all mouthy in the media and on Facebook. Slagging of john banks probably isn’t a good way to enhance your prospects in what is left of the ACT party.

Farrar of course is a friend to all and is suggesting that the very tiny group of economic and social liberals go form a party. There is already a small, highly marginalised party that fits the bill, it is called the Libertarianz. The economic and social liberal refugees from the ACT party can go double their numbers.

Cactus Kate, meanwhile, tears Whittington a new one and sends a message to whinging pull throughs:

Touted as a massive vote winner among young, liberal and hipster in Wellington, Whittington managed to poll just 360 Party Votes for ACT in Wellington Central and 317 votes for himself. Heather Roy pulled 1,628 for ACT and 922 for herself in 2008. Roy therefore outpolled Whittington on party votes 4.5 times. When ACT in 2008 scored 3.65% of the vote to 2011 when they got 1.07%. Whittington therefore proportionally underachieved on Roy and ACT’s 2008 effort.

It is pretty clear for ACT members and supporters.

If you don’t like where ACT is headed, stay around and be constructive and work with John Banks and support the Board in doing so.

Or just piss off.

My guest column at NBR is live.

I discuss the cult of personality of small parties.

Cactus Kate has written an article for NBR on her view of the demise of ACT and where to now:

You could reach several times around the world with nonsensical column inches written over the years about the impending demise of ACT.

Many supposed political “experts” had numerous self-absorbed reasons for planting the spin.

Dr Brash went one step further than just talking about it and led ACT to a record thumping. A 1% list vote and barely scraping through in Epsom in a tactically contrived win where Don and John managed to almost grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

Her comments about what is an ACToid are fascinating in their simplicity:

ACT has ground itself down with obsessive branding labels such as libertarian, classical liberal and conservatives.

The over-indulgence has caused me confusion such that right now even I have no idea what faction I belong to.

I think she misses out the key feature of ACT supporters. To a person they have always been part of a cult of personality. Firstly it was to Roger Douglas, then to Richard Prebble and finally to Rodney Hide. Their fascination with labels like classic liberal etc shows a deep misunderstanding that the New Zealand electorate hasn’t a clue what that even means.

It is the same mistake that Labour makes when they label National as Tories. It is from the politics of elsewhere that these label come from. ACT was spawned from Labour, they even call National supporters Tories like their parent party does. The people who originally came to ACT were the right of Labour spurned by a resurgent union wing. Along the way they picked up the young who had never known compulsory unionism and the liberal economic believers. But they all still have an inherited an abiding loathing for the National party and so never comfortably could work with them.

I asked a long term ACT supporter what they would do if the party ceased to exist and they told me that they would get an interest in something else. They had no interest in joining any other party than the ACT party. That told me right there that ACT supporters didn’t really understand or grasp that politics is a long game. Their ideas are still valid but because of a tribal adherence to some amorphous “core values” they can’t and won’t engage in any other party. Cactus KAte explains the despondence:

I realised I wasn’t really quite that interested in politics. I perhaps had grown up to see just how horrible it is and politics was sitting in priority in my life by Sunday evening with watching lawn bowls.

The ironic thing is the ones who show their loyalty the loudest and proudest to the ACT party have all shown their belief in the market and liberalism by fucking off overseas and them telling everyone else what the party should be and act like.

They are remembering a party that no longer exists, the party they left behind when they went overseas failed to change with the times and the electorate voted accordingly. ACT supporters talk of core values but I doubt any of them could even tell me what they are.

Just as pinkos like David Farrar can exist inside the National party then so too can classic liberals and libertarians. Better in a tent than outside wondering where to pitch their pup tent.

Epsom is following the pattern of the last two elections. We have the media and their left wing hangers on all predicting the demise of the ACT party. Yet the pattern is the same with the polls in Epsom closing.

3 News and NBR have released a poll that shows that John Banks has closed the gap to just 6 points.

A poll of 500 voters in tomorrow’s National Business Review shows:

• National’s Paul Goldsmith still in the lead with 46 percent
• Banks is trailing on 37 percent
• Labour’s David Parker is well back on 12 percent
• While David Hay of the Greens is on 3.3 percent

It is clear that Labour and the Greens have done a dirty deal to encourafge their voters to vote for Paul Goldsmith. This is cunning long term thinking, something which National has shown a distinct lack of. If the Greens and Labour planners get their way and maniupulate voters of Epsom into electing Paul Goldsmith and National voters follow along with Trevor Mallard’s strategy then National’s only coalition partner truly of the right will be killed off.

This make the situation in this election very parlous indeed where National, the most popular party by a long way at more than double Labour could effectively be shut out of government. Worse still, even if National does scrape over the line then 2014 becomes almost impossible as Nationals support partners will have disappeared courtesy of Trevor Mallard’s dirty little plan.

National voters in Epsom would forever be remembered as the ones who fell for Labour’s trap. They need to go into the polling booth on Saturday and with a quick stroke of the pen vote for John Banks and National for their party vote. It only takes 4% to change over and national gets a proper coalition partner.

Do Epsom voters really want Russel Norman and the Greens propping up National?

This will allow National to have some comfort and a couple fo extra MPs. It will also allow John Banks and the “Killer Bees” to rebuild the party for the future.