ACT leader rejects hypocrisy claims

ACT leader and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide, also known as 'Comrade Mowgli'.

ACT Party leader and Local Government Minister Rodney Hide is in hot water again as new allegations are made against the one time perk-buster. Critics and former party supporters accuse the Dancing with the Stars star of failing to live by the standards and ideals of his party, after it was revealed that when in Wellington the ACT Party MPs live in a commune in which they collectivise all property, work and income, make decisions through consensus and non-hierachical power structures and manufacture their own yogurt.

Hide and co-ACT MP Sir Roger Douglas have defended their alternative lifestyle explaining that they are still committed to ACT Party principles of liberty, independence, climate change denial and smaller government but, according to an ACT press release: ‘on a day to day basis [they] reject the sick materialist society that surrounds us and live for things like egalitarianism, love and our Mother the Earth.’

The ACT Party commune is known as ‘Ixtlan’ and can be found near the end of Holloway Road in Wellington’s Aro Valley; there is a small weatherboard house painted in ACT Party yellow surrounded by caravans, tepees and a Mongolian style yurt known as ‘the Mothership’. Although the commune rejects the ‘fascist, reactionary’ notion of private property it is understood that Rodney Hide favors the yurt, preferring it to his Parliamentary offices at Bowen House. The supercity plans for Auckland and the framework for ACT’s Climate Review Panel were all drawn up inside ‘the Mothership’ which is decorated with Tibetan prayer flags and posters of Kahlil Gibran and Ho Chi Minh and scented with sandalwood incense.

It is also where Hide conducts caucus meetings in which the ACT MPs are ‘skyclad’, they begin with a brief ritual to Gaia and then discuss plans to reduce corporate and investment taxes and close down the Commerce Commission; they end with sessions of Marxist-Leninist self-criticism and a rousing chorus of The Internationale.

Hide confirmed that the Ixtlan commune does not practise free love, although the subject was discussed. ‘Many of us feel that we should share our bodies as freely as we share our possessions,’ Hide said ‘However one MP objected to the idea and it was rejected on that basis. I will respect the privacy of that ACT MP and not reveal her name or speculate that her very unenlightened, controlling and deeply uncool reaction will impact on her place on the party list.’

The ACT MPs do collectivize their income and former supporters of the party have raised questions about the judgement of the MPs and their committment to the ideals of liberalism.

‘Between us we earn almost a million dollars a year,’ Hide said, defending the practise that defies every principle his party stands for. ‘Of course that’s obscene and we only really need a tiny fraction of that to live comfortably so we donate the rest to charities we consider worthy.’

Sources within ACT have confirmed that the two main recipients of Hide’s generosity are the ultra-left Shining Path insurgents in Peru and the Maoist Naxalite guerillas in West Bengal.

It is the policy of the ACT Party to oppose Communism and promote the free market,’ Hide told the DimPost when confronted with the charity receipts. ‘As ACT leader I support those goals, but as private individuals John, David, Heather, Sir Roger and I will do anything to help our brave comrades  in their struggle to destroy the corrupt bourgeois democracies of Peru and India and put an end to the sick, rotten free market system that enslaves men’s souls the world over. Death to capitalism and the counter-revolutionary running dog John Key!’

Hide later requested that his vow to kill Key not be quoted as he felt it would be taken out of context and did not reflect the close working relationship he enjoyed with the Prime Minister.