ACT New Zealand

It won 8.64% of the party vote and 11 of 123 seats in 2023 and is a partner in the National-led coalition government, whose leader Seymour became Deputy Prime Minister in May 2025. It is named in the market on which party wins most seats in the 2026 New Zealand general election.

History

ACT began in 1993 as the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers, a pressure group built on the free-market reforms of Roger Douglas, and became a party when New Zealand adopted proportional representation. Under Richard Prebble it won 6.10% and eight seats in 1996 and about 7% and nine seats in 1999 and 2002. Rodney Hide and Don Brash followed as leaders, and the vote fell to 1.07% and one seat in 2011. David Seymour led it from 2014 through three one-seat elections, then to 10 seats in 2020 and 11 in 2023.

Positions

Wikipedia describes ACT as right-wing, classical liberal and right-libertarian, favouring lower taxes, reduced public spending and market-based solutions, and tougher sentencing and gang policy. It proposes abolishing the Māori electoral seats and sponsored the Treaty Principles Bill after 2023. In government it won restored interest deductibility for rental property, a rewrite of firearms law and a Ministry for Regulation headed by Seymour. Its coalition partners are National and New Zealand First; Te Pāti Māori opposed the Treaty Principles Bill.

Summarised automatically from the linked sources. Wikipedia