ACT is an acronym for the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. The Party was founded in 1993 by Roger Douglas and Derek Quigley and its sole objective was to promote free market policies. End of story.
Standing for election under this banner, ACT won eight seats in the 1996 election, with not a Libertarian in sight. The 2002 election saw the party win 9 seats.
In the lead up to the 2011 election, the new leader Don Brash advocated legalisation of marijuana, and it was ACT’s worst election result ever.
How did a successful little party decline so rapidly and reach such a state of confusion as to elect a useless blowhard like John Banks as leader and sole parliamentary representative?
You need to ask that question of those who are meeting today in Auckland.
News report- “Political minnows the Libertarianz will today discuss merging with disgruntled Act supporters and even a cannabis reform group to form a liberal political party under a new brand to contest the next general election.”
“Cannabis reform”. “Liberal” (a euphemism for homosexual political advocacy). “Ayn Rand”. Objectivism is the way the life and the truth. Blah blah blah.
The Free Market? Must be on the agenda, but I don’t see it mentioned.
Can you bear it????
The damn navel gazing endlessly internalising progressive fools who incrementally drove a stake through ACT’s free market heart are today attempting to breath new life into its rotting corpse. How politically blind to their own foolishness can these people possibly be?
TrueblueNZ 
15 responses to “Irony Alert- ACT Killers Now Attempt To Breath Life Into Long Dead Corpse.”
My disappointment with what ACT has become is exceeded only by my disappointment with what National has become: economically bereft and morally bankrupt.
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Act was in decline after Prebble left and fell further into decline with the appoinment of Rodney ‘the dancing star’ as leader. They
lost sight of the founding priciples of Act and took their eyes off the ball. Act is now a total mess and a non player at any level.
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Well, at least it’s entertaining, watching the Libz preparing to throw their supposedly inviolable principles overboard in a desperate scrabble for votes.
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Yep, well at least they at last admitted the truth I have been telling them for some years- they’re a failure.
So suddenly, after 17 years of failure, they’re going to be a success?
Not likely. If they were truly private enterprise people the current management would have lost their jobs years ago. If they were truly private enterprise people they would have resigned for the shame of their lack of success years ago.
I just cannot believe that after such a lack lustre performance, so bad they have finally had to admit it themselves, the same people can refloat the ship.
As long as the current management remains, I reckon they will continue to fail.
For a score of reasons that are so obvious. (to me anyway).
The Libz have no idea on political strategies, no imagination, and no vision as to how to win political success. Or most important of all, how to win the money they need.
Be interested to know how many attended the function.
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I think you are too hard on Libz. Lindsay Perigo is a liabillity and he needs to be disposed of quick smart. Peter Crresswell is one of the few in LIbz who still talks to him.
Cresswell is a highly intelligent individual and I agree with his speech.
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Well Rob, good that you like the speech. To me its only OK. It dwells too much upon what the Libertarianz are when the emphasis needs to be on what they are going to do and how they are going to do it. My view has always been that the Libertarians are far too complicated.
The general public, who the Libs need to persuade to vote for them, just do not have the time (or even the interest in politics) necessary to understand such things as the Libs are constantly preaching. (Objectivism, Ayn Rand etc)
They have to frame their arguments in much more simple and populist terms.
So they don’t want to be populist, and they don’t want to be simple, and really (and I don’t hold this against them) they don’t want to be politicians even, but the bottom line is they either want liberty or they just want to sit around talking about wanting it.
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They really need to get over all of this drug bullshit. A huge worry for parents in general is that our children will succumb to the scourge of drugs, so all of that hyper individualistic rhetorical bullshit the libs offer up when it comes to drugs doesn’t go down too well.
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Off-topic, but here’s a good post from Vox Day. http://voxday.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/the-distaste-for-debate.html
Correction: this sort of thing is always on-topic!
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RB, over on Farrar’s Keywiblog you said: ‘So naturally we end up where we are today, back with the National Party only warming the seats for Labour for a few years, changing sweet fuck all, and then stepping aside again for Labour to continue on its path of destruction.’
But the problem is that it’s so much more than that. Key, by essentially advancing all traditional Labour positions (extending welfare, sucking up to Maori etc), has forced Labour even more to the left. God help up when Labour eventually regains office (probably with the Greens in tow). Clarke’s regime will have been a cakewalk in comparison.
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key is a traitor to NZ. Giving away our country to pig ugly part-horis
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A good quote from Labourdoesn’twork’s link-
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Yes, you’re right bla. National’s (John Key’s) posture is one of complete supplication to the ideas underpinning Progressivism.
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A motley collection of fag stags, drug activists and various other single-issue campaigners coddled together in to a “liberty” coalition . . . spare me.
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I used to be an ACT member but lost interest very quickly; I thought they were quite good on economic issues but were too libertarian on social issues for my taste. They used to have these informal gatherings at different candidates’ houses and Rodney used to show up and talk all night about himself; he just sat there all night long and talked about his political experiences. Then came Brash, and I thought that was more positive, but alas he didn’t come to much. Then came Banks and when he voted in favour of gay marriage, I bailed and joined the Conservatives.
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I bailed and joined the Conservatives.
Right. And anyone who claims to be on the Right but is trying to re-animate ACT, or God-forbid, the atheist Leftertarians, is completely fucking nuts.
the Conservatives are polling four times higher than ACT and Leftertarians combined. Last election Conservatives out-polled ACT and Mana and Maori and Dunny parties combined.
The reason people hate the Conservatives is that they hate Christianity – the same reason Whaleoil hates Mitt Rmoney!
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