If you’re frustrated by wasteful spending, skyrocketing rates, and councils that ignore the basics, now is your chance to back common-sense candidates who work for you, not the council.
ACT Local is standing 46 candidates across New Zealand. They believe in personal responsibility, fiscal discipline, and plain common sense. They’ll fight to keep rates low, focus councils on core services, and stop ideological agendas like co-governance and the war on cars.
Our candidates aren’t career politicians. They’re business owners, tradies, healthcare workers, farmers, and professionals who are sick of councils treating ratepayers like ATMs. What unites them is a back-to-basics approach: sensible spending, equal rights, and delivering for their communities.
They’ve built careers, raised families, battled council bureaucracy, and know what it means to be a ratepayer. They’re ready to bring real-world experience and common sense to the council table.
If you want real change and lower rates, back ACT Local.
Ratepayers have been repeatedly let down by councils that promise one thing to get elected, then waste money, hike rates, and neglect the basics.
As a ratepayer, how frustrating is it to be in a cost-of-living crisis – making your weekly budget stretch, only to hear your council has blown millions on a bathroom or thousands on a piece of art, or coffee machine? You deserve councillors who work for you, not against you.
It’s time to put ratepayers back in charge, restoring accountability and delivering real value for money. Only ACT can be trusted to deliver real change and lower rates.
With an ACT Local councillor, you’ll know where you stand. In central government, ACT is cutting waste, defending equal rights, and easing the cost of living. Our councillors will do the same: stop wasteful projects, stand up for democracy, and focus on core services without driving up rates.
If you want common sense back around the council table, back ACT Local in your community.
Councils have become woefully distracted from their basic responsibilities.
Ratepayers expect their rates to be used for roads, pipes, and rubbish. But many councils are instead prioritising climate activism, divisive co-governance, and dubious business ventures.
Meanwhile, roads are congested, pipes are bursting, and regular rubbish collection is threatened with the chopping block.
ACT councillors will take a back-to-basics approach to local government, stopping the nice-to-haves and focusing on the infrastructure and services that allow ratepayers to live their lives.
Councils have been reckless with ratepayer money.
Kiwis households and businesses have had to make tough but necessary sacrifices to their budgets.
ACT in Government is doing the same, cutting wasteful spending projects and slimming down the Wellington bureaucracy.
But local councils continue to spend like there’s no tomorrow.
ACT councillors will restore efficiency and common sense to local government spending.
Councils have started an ideological war on cars.
We depend on our cars to get to work, pick up our kids, and live our lives.
But councils are on a mission to make driving harder with cycleways, speed bumps, narrower roads, and fewer car parks.
Commute times are blowing out, and small businesses are suffering as customers can't access their shops.
ACT councillors will reject anti-car ideology, prioritise fixing potholes, and let local residents decide how they want to travel.
Councils have embedded divisive race-based policies that undermine democratic principles.
New Zealanders want a society where everyone has the ability to flourish on their own terms regardless of ancestry.
But many councils are pushing undemocratic co-governance arrangements, establishing Māori wards, and handing power and voting rights to unelected iwi representatives on committees.
ACT councillors will champion equal rights, opposing race-based representation and woke procurement so that council decisions benefit all ratepayers, regardless of ethnicity.
Councils have locked ratepayers out of important conversations, making too many decisions behind closed doors.
Without proper public scrutiny, ratepayers don’t know who is making decisions about how their hard-earned ratepayer dollars are spent.
Often it isn’t even councillors making these decisions, but unelected, faceless bureaucrats who are really calling the shots. And some councils have even given kids voting rights.
ACT councillors will restore accountability to our town halls and ensure decisions are made in an open and transparent manner.
When Labour’s spending blowouts pushed up inflation and interest rates, households suffered, businesses lost customers, and workers were laid off.
Voters kicked out Labour and, in Government, ACT led the charge to tackle the cost-of-living crisis. But local councils didn’t get the memo.
While inflation is down significantly, council rates continue to skyrocket.
ACT councillors will bring solutions to keep rates down and vote against rate hikes that fail to respect the pressures faced by households.
Yes. ACT will release a full manifesto ahead of the elections outlining our approach to local government policy and our common-sense solutions to addressing the concerns local residents have about their councils.
ACT candidates will be signed up to the Party’s values and key principles and will apply them around the council table. Where there is more than one ACT councillor elected to a council, they will work together as a group.
Party politics is already around the council table – it’s just often hidden when active party members stand as so-called independents. We think it’s important that when people go to vote, they know where candidates stand. With ACT candidates, they will.
We are currently inviting expressions of interest. ACT will stand candidates in areas where we identify people who share our values and want to make a difference in their local communities as part of an ACT Team.
Not this time. Our focus is getting more councillors who share our values elected and helping to build a majority around the council table for delivering the basics well, reducing waste, and keeping rates down. This may be something ACT considers at a future local election.
We are inviting common-sense Kiwis to file an expression of interest. Potential candidates who are invited to apply will be required to complete an application form, agree to be subject to vetting, and pass an interview with a Selection Panel before being approved as an ACT candidate.
We are open to hearing from current independent councillors or candidates who share ACT’s values and would like to be part of our team pushing for real change on our councils. Current councillors or candidates would be required to undertake the same selection process to become an approved ACT candidate.
We are looking for volunteers to support our campaign and contributions towards our campaign fighting fund. You can register as a volunteer or make a donation further down this page.
We need your help to spread our message to voters and support our campaign. Whether you’re someone who can deliver leaflets, put up hoardings, knock on doors, organise events, or just want to help – we want to hear from you.
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