Politics / Election 2017

VIDEO: 'We live again' - ACT leader

10:42 am on 25 September 2017

ACT leader David Seymour is grateful to the Epsom electorate but "obviously very disappointed" with ACT's party vote, he says.

Watch David Seymour's interview on Morning Report:

Mr Seymour won the Epsom but secured just 0.5 percent of the party vote - about 10,000 ballots.

"But we live again, which is more than can be said for Kim Dotcom, Colin Craig, Gareth Morgan, the Māori Party, United Future - all tried and failed.

"ACT is now one of five parties in Parliament."

National Party leader Bill English said yesterday it would prefer a two-party coalition with New Zealand First, and ACT would complicate that.

Mr Seymour had a warning for National, saying any government with Winston Peters in it would be a disaster.

"And the ACT party will be there, I suspect looking pretty good, in three years time."

Mr Seymour complained about the amount of coverage he got from RNZ in the leadup to the election.

"I think that's part of what happened at this election, we had a rush to larger parties and I think that's a shame."

"We have a pretty bright future" - David Seymour

Asked if he believed that if he was on Morning Report more he would have got a larger share of the party vote, he said that was "definitely true".

"In the future it would be nice if our public broadcaster was prepared to give a range of different opinions rather than what we saw which was largely an FPP [first past the post] election."