Jason Walls: Newstalk ZB Political Editor on Act taking on local body elections

A new chapter for the Act Party, as it takes on local body elections for the first time.  

Leader David Seymour is calling for expressions of interest of anyone keen to stand -- saying it's time for a clean out of local councillors. 

Act isn't considering challenging the mayoralty in any parts of the country.  

Political Editor, Jason Walls says told Andrew Dickens the party is unhappy with widespread rate increases and wants a change. 

He says Act wants to take its war on wasteful spending from the Beehive, around the country. 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now it is seventeen minutes after five. ACT has announced
that we'll have candidates in this year's local elections. David
Seymour says, with the way rates are going up and everything,
it's time to try something new. So News Talks, he'll
be politically editor. Jason Walls is with me now, Good
morning to.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
You, Jason, Good morning Andrew.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
What do they want to do in local government?

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Well, essentially, they want candidates. They have looked across the
board and said they don't like the way that rates
have been increasing in a lot of the main centers
across the country and they want to do something about it.
So David Seymour is essentially doing an expression of interest
to say, hey, if you're keen on becoming a counselor
for and you have the sort of same values as
the ACT party, get on board and get in contact

(00:41):
with us. And that's what ACTOR is looking to do.
They're looking to bring their sort of war on wasteful
spending from the beehive around council tables across the country.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Well, here's the thing. Should there be some separation between
local and national government? I mean, ask Wayne Brown. He
believes the two are quite quite separate when you've got
a party competing in both, does it need to be
some sort of Chinese war or one Well, I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Depends how you look at it. The Labor Party have
had local candidates for years and same with the Greens.
National traditionally hasn't done it. But I think for a
lot of the people, you know, people know what Acts
stand for, they know what Labor stand for, but they
don't really know what a local councilor stands for. Sometimes,
so having that demarcation and saying well, I know the
Act party is doing this in government, so therefore they

(01:27):
will do it in the local council will be helpful
for a lot of people. But then again, there is
a reason why they're separate, because government is different to local.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
Council absolutely, And many of these people you say that Greens,
you know, they're affiliated with Greens and not actually the
Greens actually standing for instance, or Labor at any of
that in that situation. So you know, this is a
little bit could be seen as an overstep. For instance,
you know, the C and I always used to have
national affiliation, but it was not national.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, But I mean when it comes to the Labor
and the Greens. It was a little bit more explicit
than it was ever with those sort of a national
party aligned local government movements.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Yeah, okay, and do you think that local government needs
a shakeup? Oh?

Speaker 2 (02:12):
I don't think anybody who's listening would disagree with that.
I mean, I'm down here in Wellington. My rate increases
like four hundred five hundred percent. Obviously I'm being facetious,
but it's still a large amount. I mean up in Auckland,
we look at well I think it was six point
eight percent for you guys with a bit of envy.
And I think anybody looking at some of the things
you drive down the road and you see some of
the projects that the councils are or in fact I'm

(02:34):
not working on, and they'll be thinking, well, actually, somebody
does need to step in there and do something about
some of the spending. So I don't think they're necessarily
not going to be successful. However, they've said that they're
not running for any of the mayoralty seats, so that
sort of is you know. I spoke to David Sillmol
yesterday about this and he said, this is very much
a preliminary to see how it goes. So maybe next

(02:59):
election they can get a few more few.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Well, if you're interested, go to the website and follow
the development's Jason Wolves. I thank you so much. For
more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
Listen live to news Talks it be from five am weekdays,
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