Party leader David Seymour promises $22 billion in spending cuts, a three-year wage freeze, and a groundbreaking tax reform designed to ensure money flows directly to those who already have most of it.
The ACT Party has officially launched its 2026 election manifesto, promising to rescue the New Zealand economy through $22 billion in public spending cuts and a visionary labour policy that frees workers under the age of 20 from the corrupting influence of disposable income.
Flanked by campaign banners outside an Auckland shopping strip, ACT leader David Seymour announced that his party alone possessed the fiscal courage required to cut public services until the national debt aligns perfectly with the emotional requirements of corporate donors.
“Every other political party in this country, including our coalition partners in National, suffers from a fatal ideological flaw,” Mr Seymour said. “They believe government exists to provide things to citizens. ACT is the only party proposing to save your money by making sure you never receive any of it in the form of state support, wage growth, or public infrastructure.”
Under the party’s primary workforce initiative, the adult minimum wage will be frozen for three years, while employers will be permitted to pay workers aged under 20 a special “training wage” capped at 60 per cent of the adult rate. According to ACT, the 40 per cent pay discount is designed to combat youth unemployment by making young people so extraordinarily cheap that hiring them becomes statistically identical to acquiring office stationery.
“For too long, young New Zealanders have been burdened by the expectation that an hour of their labour should yield enough currency to buy food,” said ACT Treasury Spokesperson Dr Alistair Vance. “By reducing a 19-year-old’s hourly take-home pay to a purely symbolic token, we are teaching them the foundational lesson of the modern economy: that value is created not through work, but through owning an existing portfolio of commercial real estate.”
To complement the wage restrictions, ACT outlined a sweeping overhaul of the retirement system. The eligibility age for New Zealand Superannuation will be raised to 67, while the government’s annual contribution to KiwiSaver accounts will be completely abolished. In its place, ACT proposes removing all tax on KiwiSaver investment returns—delivering an average benefit of $3.40 a year to low-income earners, and $219,000 to individuals who already maintain multi-million-dollar managed accounts.
“This is about fairness,” Mr Seymour explained. “The previous system unfairly discriminated against high-net-worth individuals by taxing their compound interest at the same rate as a nurse’s overtime. By eliminating tax on wealth generation while simultaneously freezing the wages of the nurse, we create a perfectly balanced ecosystem where money is free to go where it feels most comfortable.”
Business groups responded enthusiastically, with the Employers Federation praising the policy as “a courageous step toward a truly flexible workforce that works entirely for the satisfaction of being employed.”
At press time, ACT officials confirmed that should the party secure enough votes to form a government, its first legislative act would be to commission an independent review into whether public parks could be converted into pay-per-minute sitting zones.