Article on ACT

Jonathan Milne in the Herald on Sunday has an lengthy article on ACT, past, present and future. Aaron Bhatnagar and Greg Edwards (G-Man) get a mention as former ACT people.

Jonathan asked me for some comments, but I was very slack and didn’t come back to him (sorry Jono). The more I thought about what to say, the more I decided going swimming in the hotel pool was a more relaxing pursuit 🙂

The article mentions the “liberal grouping” which I co-chair with Katherine Rich. It is correct that one of the aims of it is to maintain a low tax/small government agenda, but also to push for social liberalism as well as economic liberalism. The battle within National for economic liberalism is largely won with 99% voting for remits to sell off certain state assets etc. That is tempered with the pragmatism that one needs to have public support to do so, but at its core few activists honestly think that the Government should own non monopoly companies.

The strategic voting analysis in the article pretty much mirrors what I have said for some time. If ACT are polling below 3% in the final weeks then I don’t think people will vote strategically to save them. If they are above 4% then I suspect they will make it come election day. Between 3% and 4% is the grey area in my opinion.