Business community screams out for ACT policies

Business New Zealand’s seven election priorities, announced today, confirms that Kiwi businesses are desperate for the Government to adopt ACT’s policies.

The priority list, which was informed by a survey of businesses, practically reads like a shopping list of ACT positions:

Priority 1: Keep taxes under control
ACT opposes election bribes, instead preferring to use forecast surpluses to reduce taxes. We will cut personal tax rates at every bracket, and ensure no-one pays more than a 25% personal tax rate. ACT would also cut company tax from 28% to 25% immediately, with a long-term plan to bring it even lower.

Priority 2: Fix skills gaps
ACT would maintain access to skilled migrant workers that other parties plan to restrict. In the long term Partnership Schools (an ACT initiative) will address the specific needs of students unengaged with the mainstream school system, ensuring no-one is ‘unemployable’.

Priority 3: Support trade
ACT is Parliament’s strongest supporter of free trade. At every opportunity, ACT will work to strengthen existing relationships while leading the world in trading connections to Asia. We also support a free trade and movement area between Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK (CANZUK).

Priority 4: Help businesses innovate
ACT will replace corporate welfare with tax cuts for all businesses, big and small, fashionable or not, ensuring they all have extra funds to invest in R&D or diversification. We’ll also cut regulation to ensure technological progress isn’t held up by bureaucracy.

Priority 5: Build infrastructure
ACT would share half of the GST on building projects with the local council, for use on infrastructure. This would ensure infrastructure is built in areas of greatest need, and also have the effect of incentivising councils to approve new development (like housing).

Priority 6: Improve planning and local government
ACT will scrap the Resource Management Act – it’s the single largest source of red tape causing our housing shortage. ACT would replace it with separate legislation for natural and urban environments. The new legislation would acknowledge property rights and the value of economic development.

Priority 7: Grow the regions
ACT will keep the government off farms and oppose the political scapegoating of irrigation and dairying. We’ll improve access to migrant labour and export markets, and defend the rights of regions to tap into valuable resources below ground and sea.

There’s only one way to turn these priorities into reality, and that’s by electing more ACT MPs, with 1.2 % gaining a second MP, 2 % for a third, and so on, who will force the Government to restore its business credentials.

ENDS

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