If you’re frustrated by wasteful spending, skyrocketing rates, and councils that ignore the basics, now is your chance to do something about it.
ACT is looking for candidates who believe in personal responsibility, fiscal discipline, and common sense. As an ACT councillor, you’d fight to keep rates low, focus councils on core services, and push back against ideological agendas like co-governance and the war on cars.
We’re not looking for career politicians, but people who care about their communities and want to make a difference.
If you’re ready to deliver real change for your community, stand with ACT.
Ratepayers have been repeatedly let down by their councils.
Councillors promise one thing to get elected only to then push wasteful spending projects, whack up rates, and neglect core services.
It’s time to give councils a wake-up call.
ACT is looking to stand candidates in this year’s council elections, because only ACT can be trusted to deliver real change and lower rates.
With an ACT councillor, you’d know where you stand. We’d take the same approach as we do in Government, delivering the basics well, scrapping wasteful spending, ending the war on cars, and taking race out of local politics.
If you want to see common sense back around the council table, support our campaign.
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.
Become a volunteer