Last Thursday, Paul Henry brought his “Paul Henry Unlocked” tour to Dunedin’s Town Hall, pitching an aspirational and equal New Zealand with a strong ACT vote. Paul, a former broadcaster turned ACT candidate, opened his speech straight to the point. “Party vote ACT.”
As expected, the event was not without opposition, with protesters lined up outside holding signs with messages such as: “Seymour is a Twat! That’s a fact,” and “Education Cuts Don’t Heal.” Those were tastefully paired with a few interruptions from audience members, despite Paul’s warning that heckling would incur removal by security. Whatevs.
Paul started his speech by promising to prove just how “bloody annoying [he] can be” with an honest conversation about New Zealand’s current “aspiration[s] of mediocrity.” His belief that “This country, and us, we deserve more” is what has led him to Duendin today to ask you to vote ACT, “to lock Labour out, and to unlock New Zealand's potential.” He expanded further, explaining that New Zealand is not as aspirational a country as he grew up in, we used to be a country of “pioneers, people who built things, took risks, got on with the job,” and ACT is the “only party capable of restoring that spirit.” Sure, Jan.
He moved on to explain what ACT believes, such as every New Zealander having equal rights under the law. “We believe taxpayers' money should be respected. Success should be encouraged rather than treated with suspicion. People should be free to build, invent, work, invest, raise families without needless, time-consuming expenses and interference,” he continued. “We believe New Zealanders should be safe in their homes, workplaces and communities, [and] we should have world-class services here, [where people are] paid world-class wages.” He called it “unacceptable [and] unsustainable” that our service workers can get paid the same wage for half the work in Australia.
One of his main talking points was ACT’s distinctive “one law for all” policy which proposes a “need rather than race” attitude towards welfare checks, further stating that “ACT believes those that truly can't look after themselves should be cared for with confidence and compassion, and we believe that those that can look after themselves should be strongly encouraged to do so.” He quoted the statistic that in the last twelve months New Zealand has spent “just under $850 million encouraging people into work”, again stating that this is both “unacceptable and unsustainable.”
Looking towards the future, Paul urged for a National-ACT coalition with a “strong ACT vote,” because “ACT supplies direction, urgency, and spine.” He urged a move away from Labour and Greens, who "believe [that] almost every problem can be solved with more tax. More spending, more boring, [and] more red tape.” In contrast, ACT understands that “before politicians can redistribute the pie, someone has to bake it.” Paul also mentioned ACT’s promise to “build a world-class national cancer centre,” stating that “cancer is the biggest killer in New Zealand.”
Reflecting on what ACT has accomplished over the past two years, Paul recalled their move to scrap the Māori Health Authority and Three Waters. “We restored referendums on Māori wards and put child safety, rather than race, at the center. We started a national conversation about our nation's founding document [which] we spectacularly lost the vote, but we won the debate,” he said. “We were let down by coalition partners when only [ACT] voted in favour of equal rights,” he aired. On the economy, ACT reportedly saved the budget “not once, but twice” by restoring sense to pay equity laws and reducing the amount of public service workers down to 2017 levels because “we don’t need what they do.” ACT has also put a spotlight on children's education, bringing school attendance levels up to 62%. Finally ACT has restored three strikes within the Sentencing Act, and scrapped Labour's prisoner reduction target.
On a less positive note, Paul admitted that “Debt is rising. Too many productive New Zealanders are leaving the country, [and] the Government spends way too much, and delivers too little.” He further stated the inconvenient truth that just today the Government has “borrowed another $24.5 million just to pay today's interest on the money we already owe” and then “another $38 million just to keep this [ship] going.” Paul stated that this is completely “unsustainable” and that “we are descending into mediocrity.”
He emphasised the importance of this coming election, stating that this “election is probably the most crucial election in my living memory” and that “this election could reverse all of the progress that has been made in the last three years.” In relation to the left’s proposed policies, Paul told the audience that “ACT says no to all of those taxes,” saying that we need to look into corporate tax especially.
Paul finished his speech with the comment that “New Zealand is paradise [and we] have the capacity right here to build one of the wealthiest and safest countries on earth. But [the] potential has to be unlocked.”
Moving onto the Q&A section, Paul was asked about his statement that New Zealand used to be much more aspirational. He responded with an anecdote about his time in a muffler store in Palmerston North where an engineer asked him why his neighbour makes more money than he does despite the fact that the engineer works six days a week and his neighbor does not work at all. It was at this moment that Mike Bennet, a co-host for the Big Hairy Network, interrupted and said “I’m sorry, there is no way that that is true.” Mike was subsequently “frogwalked” out by security, and soon after arrested by police before being let free with a formal warning later that night. Emily, a student here at the University of Otago, commented to Critic Te Ārohi after watching the event that the story was “so fucking fake.” Fellow student Henry Paul (he was actually called that) also posed skepticism at the aspirational-ness of the 1960’s. “It was [aspirational], but only if you were white.”
Paul finished off his tour in Dunedin by saying that he wants New Zealand to be “a country that stands united by vision, not divided by race.” He urged his audiences to “Please party vote ACT, and please talk to your friends about it, and try to encourage them to do the same thing.”
