David Seymour #1 - Are things getting better?

Deputy PM David Seymour stopped by for a chat with Luke. It's been a challenging few years. The first question Luke had was to ask if David felt things were improving? Are we seeing change from this Government?

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Is it getting better if I could just get across
one thing. It's about time lags. So if you look
at something like the Resource Management Act, I mean, I
would say probably the biggest drag on raising productivity, making
more money and being good environmental custodians in this part
of the world, and I've just sat down with two
dozen farmers is the Resource Management Act. So what are

(00:23):
we doing about that? Well, we are just about, after
nearly two years of really intense work to basically wrap
up the whole thing, start from a blank page and
make a new law based on property rights. We're just
about to introduce that to Parliament and before the next
selection it will have gone through the six month process

(00:44):
and it will be in law. So people will say, well,
you know, what are you doing? But the reality is that,
you know, I was the old Mainland ad used to
say good things take time, but actually to go from
go to woe two and a half year's whole new RMA,
it's not too bad.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Do we maybe not manage expectations as well as we
could have, in the sense that there was a lot
of buzz like, ay, you know this is going to
be the government to turn things around a lot of
big promises, but here we are sort of, you know,
two years into things and a lot of people are thinking,
you know what, it still feels pretty tough out there, man.

Speaker 1 (01:17):
Yeah, but again, time lags, right, So we started the
work to get the spending under control in November December
twenty twenty three, brought down our first budget in May
twenty twenty four our second budget this may. All of
that work is now paying off, but it's just starting
because a lot of people, you know, they're getting their

(01:37):
first mortgage rate cut now after two years work. Then
they start spending some of that money, maybe they save
and invest it. Then you get the economics to it.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
So I know it must be frustrating for the likes
of yourself.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
It is. But all I'm trying to say to people
is that there is actually I understand how they feel,
but I also believe that we are doing the right thing.
How do you square that circle? Well, you know, I've
just sort of gone through pretty painfully the time lag
that's involved.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What you read on mid Canterbury in
particular the other parts of the country.

Speaker 1 (02:11):
Well, it's pretty hard not to be upbeat driving in here.
I mean, I came landed in christ Church and started
driving down early this morning. And you know, you've got
a big blue sky, You've got a downtown that looks
busy and bustling, and everything looks occupied. Now. I may
not have seen everything yet, but it looks like that.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
To each other. A couple of days ago we had
our market day on that would have impressed.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
I would love a good farmer's market, do you yeah, yeah,
go to one most weekends. Actually. Then you know, I
talked to a bunch of people, like I said, a
few dozen farmers I just sat down with, and overwhelmingly
the story from them is, look, these are real problems,
but we can isolate those, look for solutions and focus

(02:57):
on the positive stuff as well. And that just in
terms of a stance or a mindset, man, that's pretty
uplifting and New Zealand can deal with a bit of
that thinking right now