Jacinda Ardern said many heartfelt and honest things when she was the Prime Minister of our country. Truthful things about hard challenges, and about kindness. But in her time as the leader of this land she never said anything more demonstrably true than when she said of David Seymour “He’s such an arrogant prick”.
You can but wish she’d known she was resigning at the time so when he came snivelling for an apology she could’ve responded with a more honest response, perhaps some sort of appropriate hand gesture, rather than gritting her teeth to apologise for charity.
At the start of this year I wrote all about ACT’s policies and the implications of their plan to slash $7.2b from spending on public services in order to fund massive tax cuts for the wealthiest. You can read about them here:
As I pointed out in that newsletter the spending cuts are actually worse than they appear because although ACT are full on user-pays when it comes to health and education, the libertarian party has a very expensive big state approach when it comes to crime and punishment. They bloody love locking people up.
One of their stated policies is to increase the number of prison beds in this country.
The ACT Party has announced it would combat the spike in violent crime by putting more than 2000 additional adult offenders behind bars over the next few years.
In an election year tough on crime policy announcement, ACT leader David Seymour revealed to 1News his party would spend more than $1 billion to ensure more offenders are sent to prison if in power.
On the one hand you might say what an appalling vision for this country, locking more people up. I just think they’re being realistic about what the impact of their policies will be on people that are already struggling.
Yes, ACT love sending people to prison so much that yesterday they announced they wanted to start sending seventeen year olds to adult prison. I’ll leave it to readers to form their own views on whether they are doing this to either:
Reduce youth crime.
Win votes from National.
Personally I find it staggering that a party who opposes allowing 17 year olds to vote wants to lock them up in adult jails. How can you say these kids aren’t old enough, aren’t mature enough, to vote in an election but they’re just fine to go to prison? Aside from anything else it doesn’t sound much like a party whose primary driver is liberty. Are we really going to start writing off 17 year old kids? That is appalling.
The sad reality is there’s about a 50% likelihood at this point that ACT will be a major part of the next government. Holding numerous cabinet portfolios, negotiating the inclusion of many of their policies, and Mr Seymour likely the Deputy Prime Minister.
Given all that maybe the media should be scrutinising ACT’s policies and statements rather more strongly than they are? Even with National they occasionally point out the blindingly obvious, that it’s just nonsense for that party to claim they’ll reduce borrowing, reduce taxes, and not reduce public spending. Maybe someone should start pointing out the reality of ACT’s policies?
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