Kia ora Pauanui! I thought of stopping by here on my trip down the Coromandel Peninsula. Although campaigning always brings its own share of issues, nothing can beat meeting voters and their communities. I think that is really something that the politicians in Wellington often lack. They just see numbers, not people. Rather than working for the good of the people, they work for what keeps their numbers up and their party ideologues satisfied. Getting down here again, in the dirt and mud of campaigning always helps me recentre myself and remember the reason why I am doing what I’m doing. As many of you know, I could have stopped being in politics. For a few years, I decided I was done with politics and retired to my house up there in Whitianga. But when the country started to turn for the worst, I knew I could not help myself. I had to help.

And helping New Zealand is what ACT is all about. Rather than helping special interests, ACT wants to help the average Kiwi and put more money in your own wallet. As anyone who has spent a minute talking to a career politician or someone from Wellington knows, those people do not know how to manage their own money. And yet they waste and abuse the hard earned money we work hard for. That is really not quite right and it never sits well with me. I trust my neighbours down the street far more than many MPs I have met in Wellington. Rather than entrusting irresponsible bureaucrats with more taxing power and money, like those in Together for All or Socialist Aotearoa would want, the common sense decision is to invest in our communities and put money in your own wallet. Money that will actually go to your local community and not some tax sucking project hundreds of km away.

Here in Pauanui, I am sure you all know the many New Zealanders that decide to vacation here. After all, it is very beautiful here. It is my belief that the New Zealand that I work for is one that allows everyone the opportunity and chance to go on a vacation to beautiful parts of Aotearoa New Zealand just like Pauanui. Rather than wasting it away with dead-end virtue signalling projects, we should be reinvesting in our own communities and opportunities. Everyone should have the chance to enjoy themselves, not work away for the rest of their lives because the taxes are too high to even take any time off or retire.

New Zealand should be a country of opportunity, not regression. One that lifts people and their communities up, not condemns them to be dependent on the state and being unable to support their families. Vote for a New Zealand that gives us the opportunity to bring everyone up, not drag everyone down with their utopian ideals. Vote ACT New Zealand.