\u201cToday, reality is calling and wants its money back.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is likely to set out how Act expects to address that with the release of the party\u2019s fiscal plan this weekend.<\/p>\n
Seymour spoke of how a weakening New Zealand dollar presented an \u201cimmediate problem for the cost of living\u201d as well as reflecting \u201ca message from the world to New Zealand\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been no earthquake, commodity prices are high. We are as far as you can get from the various conflicts around the world. If anything, the New Zealand dollar should be strong right now, but it\u2019s falling against everything. Why?\u201d<\/p>\n
He theorised that \u201cthe currency markets are watching our election and they\u2019re seeing two ugly things\u201d.<\/p>\n
One of those, Seymour said, was polling trends suggesting a decline in the likelihood of the coalition Government being re-elected, while the second was \u201cthe dumpster fire of a policy debate New Zealand has descended into over the past weeks\u201d.<\/p>\n
David Seymour says Act helped find billions in savings in Government. Photo \/ Alyse Wright<\/p>\n
Among the policies he picked out was the Green Party\u2019s idea to nationalise a number of New Zealand supermarkets, New Zealand First\u2019s proposal to buy back the BNZ and Labour\u2019s desire to split the wholesale and retail arms of the main supermarket duopoly.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s another party in Parliament that is all over the show. Their policies aren\u2019t serious but when they get upset, they do war dances on the floor of Parliament,\u201d Seymour said.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps most damagingly, the largest party has adopted a version of the others\u2019 supermarket policy. The party that wants to nationalise them is literally saluting the traditional party of big business and calling them \u2018comrade!\u2019 Perhaps they really are communists?\u201d<\/p>\n
Addressing the country\u2019s fiscal position, Seymour said the Government\u2019s expenditure as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) \u201cafter three Nicola Willis Budgets\u201d is \u201ccloser to peak Covid spending than pre-Covid spending\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said interest costs on built-up debt contribute to this, as well as increased spending on healthcare and superannuation, \u201cbut those don\u2019t explain the whole gap\u201d.<\/p>\n
Taking into account the likes of inflation and population growth since 2017, and putting aside \u201cpolitically sensitive\u201d areas like health and education, Seymour said spending was \u201chigher than it should be\u201d.<\/p>\n
According to the pre-election economic and fiscal update (Prefu) released last week, core Crown expenditure was about 32.1% of GDP in the past year, compared with 27.7% in the year to June 2017.<\/p>\n
Seymour previewed his party\u2019s fiscal plan, expected on Sunday, saying it will include the impacts of reducing the number of ministers and departments, taking steps to address the superannuation bill and increasing the medicine budget.<\/p>\n
On superannuation, Seymour said raising the age of entitlement is \u201cinevitable\u201d but it should be done \u201ccarefully and slowly\u201d. Act has previously advocated for raising the age to 67 over eight years.<\/p>\n
He said there were three conditions that should come with this move: ensuring KiwiSaver remained available at 65, having an early compassionate access scheme for those who have worked more than 20 years in a physical job and removing the tax off KiwiSaver investment returns.<\/p>\n
Seymour said adjusting the superannuation eligibility age upwards by three months would save about $400 million. Adjusting it by two years would save over $3 billion a year, which was equivalent to nearly 0.75% of GDP.<\/p>\n
David Seymour wants a larger portion of health spending to go to medicines. Photo \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n
He put a focus on primary healthcare, adding that emergency departments are \u201cfilled with people who should have seen their doctor four weeks ago\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cGP funding should be protected as a proportion of the health budget. Pharmacies should be paid a fee for service if they take minor ailments off GPs. People once said pharmacies couldn\u2019t do immunisation. Today, I say they could do bloods, check skin lesions, among many other ailments.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe medicines share of health spending should be progressively raised to match Australia\u2019s. Currently, they spend 12.2% of health funding on medicines to our 4.9. Medicines can go a long way to saving money down the track.<\/p>\n
\u201cCurrently, only 10% of the health budget is spent on GPs and pharmaceuticals. That doesn\u2019t sound like a productive system focused on prevention.\u201d<\/p>\n
Seymour said he was proud Act \u201chas kept its head when others around us have lost theirs\u201d but he regretted that the coalition hasn\u2019t saved more than $14b.<\/p>\n
\u201dThe fact Labour find it so easy to cosy up to our Government\u2019s fiscal track is a telling sign. Labour and National fight like two bald men fighting over a comb, but they\u2019re not so different.<\/p>\n
\u201cI regret that the political environment has become so panicked that threatening businesses who\u2019ve done nothing wrong has become a legitimate political strategy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do, however, have great hope. I hope more voters find courage and wisdom to come out in support of sound principles.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jamie Ensor is the NZ Herald\u2019s chief political reporter, based in the press gallery at Parliament. He was previously a TV reporter and digital producer in the Newshub press gallery office. He was a finalist in 2025 for Political Journalist of the Year at the Voyager Media Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cToday, reality is calling and wants its money back.\u201d He is likely to set out how Act expects…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,23503,6284,4101,29059,306635,5903,2079,296,13489,117,111,43,139,69,7254,312,16797,65508,377,80,2963],"class_list":["post-623663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-acts","tag-david","tag-debate","tag-descended","tag-dumpster","tag-election","tag-fire","tag-into","tag-leader","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-policy","tag-says","tag-seymour","tag-watching","tag-world","tag-zealand","tag-zealands"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}