Source: ACT Party
Speech
ACT Leader David Seymour
Sunday 1 June, 2025
ACT New Zealand Celebration Brunch
Intro
“It does not take a majority to prevail … but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men and woman.”
That was Sam Adams, one of the United States’ founding fathers. So many people here today, and some who sadly couldn’t be, fit Sam Adams’ description:
I know one or two here are, occasionally, irate.
To get this far, we’ve had to be tireless.
I suspect we’ll always be a minority, but we succeed by setting brushfires in people’s minds.
Human freedom, to do what you like if you don’t harm others, is the only thing truly worth fighting for. Only when that principle prevails can we turn our efforts on fighting problems in the natural world, instead of each other.
This is no swansong, just a little rest before the next climb, perhaps the next setback, we’ve had lots of both, and we’ll have lots more.
Today’s an opportunity to thank you for all your efforts setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of New Zealanders, and recommit ourselves to the mission of promoting a free society.
Challenges I’ve faced and people who’ve helped/what I’ve learned from them
Now, it hasn’t always been easy. If I had to pick a theme song for the last ten years, it could be one of Mark Knopfler. The Scaffolder’s Wife. Mark always writes with great empathy for the struggling.
“In the wicked old days, when we went it alone. Kept the company goin,’ on a wing and a prayer.”
Those words really stick with me, because sum up my first six years of leading ACT.
In fact, it hasn’t just been a bit difficult. Most of the time it seemed bloody impossible.
It’s a happy miracle our party exists. There is no party committed to human freedom anywhere in the world as successful as ACT. Most politicians find it too easy to get votes by promising other people’s money, or promising to regulate other people’s choices.
We take the hard road. We seek political power by promising voters only the freedom to make the most of their own lives. We do so because only the creative powers of a free society can generate the wealth to overcome our challenges.
Not only is our mission fundamentally hard, but sometimes we’ve made it harder than necessary. I hesitate to bring it up, but we’ve burned ourselves on one or two of our own brushfires along the way.
Our perk buster took a perk. Our tough on crime guy got convicted. Our leadership had a civil war. We were subject to an unconventional coup.
In 2011, ACT ran one of the most corageous three-pronged election campaigns in modern history. Supply side economics, one law for all, and freeing the weed. There are constituencies for all three causes, but they don’t all get along.
John Banks steadied the ship, and I want to thank him for his unconditional support. John didn’t just allow the party to survive, he allowed it to survive as a liberal party.
I imagine being turned around to vote for gay marriage wasn’t easy for him. On the other hand, saying no to Jenny isn’t easier either.
John’s sacrifices allowed Jamie Whyte and I to run a ticket in 2014, but things could still get much worse. It turned out my dear friend with a CV from heaven was brilliant at everything but politics.
I say all this because it’s the backdrop to one hell of a climb. You have to see where we started to see how far we’ve come. That is, to see the full achievement of the people in this room and some who can’t be here today. We’ve made ACT the world’s most successful classical liberal party.
For five years, nothing we did made a jot of difference. There was a Facebook group called ‘Is ACT polling 1 per cent yet,’ and it seemed like it would be forever.
People said our party was not legitimate. They said we shouldn’t even be in Parliament. They said we had no real agency, being an offshoot of another party. When they talked about us, they didn’t talk about what I was saying in the present. Instead, they judged us by others had taken while I myself had been living in another country.
After the election disaster of 2017, I said that it didn’t matter what our shop was selling. We just couldn’t get anyone in the door, let alone buying.
This kind of relentless doomism was the opposite of everything ACT stands for. We believe, as Richard Prebble says in I’ve Been Thinking, that life isn’t like bad weather, you can make a difference in your time on Earth.
Unfortunately, some things were like the weather. We couldn’t make it rain financially. Eric Clapton said nobody knows you when you’re down and out. I can tell you from experience that very few donate to your political party, either.
Lindsay Fergusson is one who can’t be here, may he rest in peace. I remember we got to $7,000 left. We’d miss rent on the office and be kicked out if something didn’t change. Lindsay put $5,000 in ACT’s account and said ‘don’t tell Lynne.’ Lynne, I hope the secret’s ok to let out now.
I used to try to call two ACT members every week day. One day I called a guy called Chris Reeve. I noticed his email address was superman. He also said he wanted to donate. Could this guy be for real?
I earnestly explained where the party was up to and what I needed to raise in a year to keep it going. He looked at me and said “I’ll do half if that Jenny Gibbs will do the other half.”
I still remember clearly the first time I met Jenny, in 2005. “I’m a social liberal, too,” she said. Her generous support of ACT is published by the Electoral Commission, but her personal support of successive ACT leaders is not. She is one of the warmest and wisest women in New Zealand and we’re lucky to have her.
Not every donor gives in the thousands, but thousands have given donations to keep our party alive, even when it might have seemed like palliative care. I thank everyone who’s given to ACT, whether you gave $5 or $5,000.
Some people give their time. In the wicked old days when we went it alone, I was never really alone. So many people helped, delivering mail, erecting signs, filing the party accounts, and opening up their homes for house meetings.
Alison and Stu Macfarlane rapidly edited my second book Own Your Future. They said the timeline was mad. I said we couldn’t move the election. I think that book helped keep the party together. Most parties couldn’t publish a book of their policies. Some probably think books are a symbol of colonisation anyway. What sets ACT apart is that we are a party of ideas.
People think a political party is an enormous enterprise with limitless resources required to Govern a country. If you were taking hope or reassurance from that, I’m sorry to disappoint.
We’re more reliant on wings and prayers than massive resources. One person who found this out the hard way was Malcolm Pollock. Chis Fletcher, Auckland’s mother, introduced him to me.
He thought he might get a minor role making the tea on the sidelines of this vast edifice. We walked out of Fraser’s café as the bewildered new Chair of the Party’s only functioning electorate committee! In similar circumstances, Ruwan Premathilaka became party President.
So many Malcolms and Margarets up and down this country have volunteered to make our party possible. ACT has ten times more members today than it did when Malcolm joined.
Perhaps the hardest role in the Party is being the President. You’re legally responsible for the organization, but to survive it needs to change strategy at a moment’s notice. It must be the Governance equivalent of riding a mechanical Bull.
We’ve been lucky to have very patient presidents, who’ve been prepared to hold the ship together. The current President, John Windsor, is perhaps New Zealand’s greatest political activist.
John has never met a problem he can’t quickly and quietly fix. Signs, mail, volunteers, no problem. They say amateurs talk strategy, professional’s talk logistics. In that sense John is a true professional, and a great ACT President.
Some roles are so difficult we need to pay people to do them. That would be our parliamentary staff. If I’ve done anything right in politics, it’s been attracting and retaining great people.
Yesterday my electorate office staff came with me to Government House for the swearing in ceremony. I wanted them to be there because they’re be best electorate team in the country. They get swamped with requests for help from other electorates. There’s three positions and we’ve had one change in ten years, if turnover rates mean anything then we have a great team.
The same thing goes for ACT’s team in Wellington. We’ve been ranked by far the best working environment on the Parliamentary Precinct, and we keep attracting great talent.
One talent stood out more than any. When Brooke van Velden came to work in Wellington, the End of Life Choice Bill was still possible, but far from inevitable.
It got stuck in Select Committee for sixteen months, and the antis refused to be constructive. We couldn’t make the changes we needed to get political buy in, let-alone make good law.
We’d have to make these changes in The Committee of the Whole House stage, where each MP can individually vote on every word of the legislation. One wrong vote and the Bill could end up a nonsense, sinking a three-year project in a heartbeat.
That’s when we came up with the Sponsor’s Report. If the eight MPs on the Select Committee, supported by the Ministry of Health, couldn’t come up with a coherent set of reforms, then a 26-year-old woman with a sharp mind would.
The Sponsor’s Report remains one of the most effective policy documents ever produced in New Zealand. It was written by Brooke but, like Helen Clark, I just signed it. In the end we got MPs to vote for every change we needed to make the law, and oppose every change that would have stuffed it up.
Besides Brooke, there have been 13 other new ACT MPs in the last decade, and they have been extraordinary. Nicole, Chris, Simon, James, Karen, Mark, Toni, Damien, Todd, Andrew, Parmjeet, Laura, and Cameron have been an exceptional team of players. However, they’ve also formed a great playing team, and we know a playing team always beats a team of players.
Today our MPs in Government are delivering that real change that you asked for and we campaigned on.
Our Parliamentarians are taking on the scourge of deepfake porn. I bet Roger Douglas never thought that would be come a cause when he founded the Party.
We’re standing up for academic freedom. We’re keeping a watchful eye on bureaucracy for farmers and tradies alike.
In Government, our Ministers are reforming, reforming, reforming. Brooke is taking on our calcified Health and Safety.laws and the hoary old Holidays Act.
Nicole is finally delivering a rational approach to firearms law even as she changes the courts to speed up the clogged system.
Karen is turning the department that failed her so deeply and personally into an effective protector of those who came after her.
Andrew is standing up for the property rights of farmers when he defends New Zealand’s biosecurity.
Simon is the unsung hero of this Government, because delivering resource management law based on property rights will do more for the people who live in this country than any other reform this term.
Of course, the Party’s also bringing back charter schools, opening up overseas investment, saving the taxpayer billions, bringing Pharmac into the 21st century, slashing red tape, and legislating the Regulatory Standards Bill so for the first time our property rights will be in law. We’ve been busy.
Some people have helped ACT in more creative, unexpected ways. When the female pro dancers first met for the 2018 season of Dancing with the Stars, they all agreed on one thing. Nobody wanted to be paired with ‘that guy’. It was a guaranteed ticket home on the first elimination.
Even my own family came to opening night. They thought it would be their only chance, and I might need consolation after the show.
If I’d had any partner except Amelia McGregor, they would have been right. But we ended up campaigning as much as dancing. We took on the bullies and fought for the downtrodden, the overlooked, and the physically uncoordinated up and down New Zealand!
The kindest thing the judges said is that I proved absolutely anyone can dance.
I think that’s what our tireless minority has proven over the years. With quiet determination we can change our future, and the future course of this country. Anyone can dance.
That’s why we stand for the farmers, the landlords, the licensed firearm owners, the free speech advocates, the small business owners, and the ethnic and religious minorities. Everyone has the right to live free in the country, because anyone can dance.
Why New Zealand needs more of a movement like ours
Now, this must all sound very nostalgic. If our opponents have listened this far, they’re probably hoping I’m building up to a retirement.
I’ve talked about how we got to today because it’s worth pausing and looking back. It’s essential to acknowledge and thank the many people who got us this far. We should, as our stalwart member Vince Ashworth says, foster a culture of appreciation.
That said, I’m not going anywhere but ahead. Sorry Labour, ACT remains your worst nightmare, and New Zealand’s best hope.
Nearly every single press release, fundraising email, talking point from Labour lately has been about how dangerous David Seymour is. I get so much free accommodation living in Willie Jackson’s head, I might need to declare it to Parliament’s register of interests.
To Labour, yes I am dangerous, but only to you and your batty outriders. What’s more your strategy of directing more attention to ACT will backfire.
To paraphrase Br’er Rabbit, we’re born and bred under political pressure. When you put the spotlight on ACT, you show people the party and the attitude this country needs.
We can be down and out, through wicked old days, and rise again.
We’ve been able to do it because we have something you can never take away, our philosophy. Our core beliefs are the beliefs that founded this country.
Wave after wave of migrants have taken huge risks to give their children a better life on these islands.
We are a nation of pioneers united in the belief that things can get better, no matter how hard they seem there is always hope.
We don’t discriminate against each other, based on things we can’t change about ourselves. We only discriminate based on the choices we do make. Human freedom, and personal responsibility under the law.
We know the world is unpredictable, and the only path to success is letting a thousand flowers bloom, looking for success that we can push up, instead of pull down.
Our opponents are a Labour Party best described as lost. There is a Green Party that barely talks about the environment. There is the extraordinary spectre of a race-based party that increasingly threatens violence against its opponents, tolerated by the media.
What unites them is a poverty of spirit. The idea that other people’s success is not an example of what’s possible, but somehow the source of their supporters’ problems.
They traffic in the idolisation of envy, and even if they manage to sell it, it still won’t work.
ACT on the other hand, and our celebration today, shows that anyone can dance. Yes our country faces problems, but ACT knows how to overcome them.
It starts with belief. When seemed easiest to give up, you may find you were really just turning the corner. Today there are too many Kiwis leaving, and not enough believing.
I believe New Zealand remains a good bet. We have no excuses for not creating a great country, but it’s the culture that matters. The real culture war today is not about which bathroom you go to, it is about whether we are here to push people up or pull them down.
Can we move past the dark underbelly of tall poppy, and celebrate the achievements of Sheppard, Rutherford, Ngata and Hillary, with many more to come?
We have to believe life is a positive sum game, that win-wins are possible if we treat each other with mutual respect and dignity.
We can become a kind of Athens of the modern world, a place where creative people are welcomed to move and invest, joining people already here who fundamentally believe the point of our country is to make success possible.
Every policy should be measured against the simple test, will this create the environment for New Zealanders to solve problems and make tomorrow better than today. It’s what we used to call, progressive. It used to be an idea owned by the left, but today they are far too busy tearing people down and putting them in boxes, virtue signaling, categorising, and otherwise discriminating.
If there’s any party that can offer the values and the grit to take this country out of the doldrums and constant ‘meh’ that befalls New Zealand today, it’s the party that’s had to overcome the great Kiwi knocking machine from palliative care to the centre of Government.
That effort would not have been possible without the people in this room and beyond who believed in us when no-one else would, because they believe in the Party’s ideas.
Thank you for getting us to this milestone, and buckle yourselves in because in Hillary terms, today is only base camp.
