January 24, 2026 • 16 mins
Associate Education Minister David Seymour has welcomed provisional Term 4 attendance data, which shows attendance rates were higher than any Term 4 since 2022.
Data shows that in Term 4 of 2025, 57.3% of students attended school regularly, which is an increase from 56.4% in Term 4 of 2024.
He told Tim Beveridge that although the numbers are promising, there is still more work to be done.
He said that it's not just about getting students back to the school gates, but also reintegrating them into the education system so students don't feel behind on their education.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks, I'd.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Be other things. He's Deputy Prime Minister and also Associate
Education Minister. And his name is of course David Sima
and he joins me now David good at a good.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Afternoon, exter, good afternoon, Happy New Year.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
By the way, did you have something of a break
or are you're working right through your workhoorse?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'd love to but that I worked right through. But
it's not always that sensible. Sometimes you got to sharpen
the saw and you can cut more in the long term.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah right, I'm just thinking, yes, nice nice? Is it
a cliche or a proverb?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Anyway, let's get it's a bit of a I think
it might have been found in a self help book.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Somewhere your next career who I got it from? Hey, look,
actually I saw the headline about attendance improving, and you know,
with headlines that desired to get you engaged, and I
got a bit excited. But then I looked at the
numbers and I thought, God, we've still got a way
to go, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, we do. I mean these numbers are better than
last year, and last year was better than the year before.
We've been able to say that every term bar one
that we've been in an office as a government. The
exception was a term when we had a lot of
teacher strikes and if the teachers aren't showing up, it's
(01:26):
difficult to persuade the students and it's important. I'll leave
that there. But we have made progress, enormous progress since
the lows of the sort of post COVID blues. We've
done better advertising, we've started investigating prosecutions. We haven't landed one.
We have said that we've put another thirty eight million
(01:48):
dollars of funding, and we've totally retooled the attendance service
to have more robust contracts after we did a big
inquiry and found that some were very good and others weren't.
And I've traveled up and down the country and sat
down at a table with groups of principals, deans, police,
all of the people that are engaged in attendance and
(02:12):
said what works. So from the start of this year,
every school will be participating in the Star the Steps
Attendance Response scheme. And that is sort of an answer
to your question. And the lead up to this interview
you said, well, is it the parents, is it the students,
is at the schools? Is it the government? It's actually
all of them. And what the Star does is it says,
(02:34):
look for every stage of a student's attendance or non attendance,
there are different responsibilities. So if they are attending more
than ninety percent of the time, that's cool enough, they
do just keep going. If they drop below ninety then
there are some responses from the school, and if they
drop below eighty then the Ministry of Education gets involved.
So we've been working, I think, really hard on this
(02:57):
and we've got results so far, but we know that
to keep the results coming and get to eighty percent
of students attending regular is still a long way to go. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Actually, just on the definitions, and I don't you know,
no one likes to legislate by definition, but well, you know,
we are more conscious of not spreading bugs and things
like that. The definition of being president in terms of
these statistics that's been then more than ninety percent of
the time, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That's right. So if you attend more than ninety seven
of the time, then we say that you are attending regularly.
Our goal is for eighty percent of students to fit
that category.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, well, that answers one of my other questions. But
is that a pretty tough target to meet when you
know you have a cold and a bit of a
I would imagine it's quite easy. That's one week of
term five days. Is that part of the thing is
that is that we tend to be a bit more
cautious about sending our kids to school if they're a
bit sick and all that sort of thing. What's your
(03:57):
take on that's the standard problematic at all?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Look, I think frankly, during COVID we were told by
the government of the day that health was the only
thing that mattered, and education and many other things be damned.
That is a terrible direction for a country because in
the long term, when current students are out in the workforce,
bringing up their families, paying off their mortgage, trying to
(04:24):
make a go of life, it won't matter what happened
in COVID. It will matter if they were at school.
So the whole time we've been in government, we've been
trying to build back from that emphasis on health overwhelming
any emphasis on education and therefore the future. One of
the things we did is we actually issued new health
(04:44):
guidance that says, look, you know, sometimes it's okay to
go to school with a bit of a sniffle. Lots
of people have to go to work under those circumstances,
and it's okay if you are not contagious to go
to school if you're not feeling great, because otherwise you
get this attitude that, oh, if you're not feeling one
hundred and ten percent, you just don't go. Well, we
(05:05):
take that out of shurd.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
We'll get nowhere eighty percent. Compared to where we're at
at the moment with fifty seven point three, we've we've
got a massive way to go. How realistic is that
goal we do?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I mean, you've got to remember that we bottomed out
May twenty two only forty percent of students were regularly attending.
That was a pathway to being a third world country.
We've now got it up in the fifties and a
good term, we get it in the low sixties. So
where you could argue we're just over halfway after a
(05:39):
couple of years of effort, and our goal is to
get there by the end of the decade. I hope
will smash that goal. But all I'd say is that
you know, whether you're a parent or grandparent, especially if
you're a student. The most important determinant of where our
country will be in twenty thirty years time is how
many kids go to school this term, because you know,
(06:02):
an educated population can overcome any challenge. An uneducated population
can squander any amount of prosperity.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
What do you see as the main causes of our
attendance problem currently? What are the things we really need
to come overcome? Is about sickness? Is it resource constraints?
Is it simply a cultural New Zealand cultural attitude towards
the importance of education.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Look, there's no one answer to that, and I don't
want to seem like I'm dodging it. But at one
end of the spectrum, you'll have students who are unable
to attend because their parents say, I've got to do
shift work at a factory and you've got to look
after your younger siblings. That's your duty to this family.
That is a shame because it's limiting that child's long
(06:51):
term future. At the other end of the spectrum, you've
got students who are taken out in order to get
the cheap flights to Fiji in the last few days
of term, and every term we see you drop off
in the last week and a lot of principles and
teachers come to me and so that this is our
biggest problem is actually and they even ask me, can
(07:13):
you ital you in New Zealand not to put the
prices up at school holiday time, which I'm afraid I
can't do. But yeah, well yeah, it's the market, isn't it.
But so that there's those things. The other thing is
when students get disengaged. One of the things we're really
working on with the new rejigged Attendance service is making
(07:35):
sure that you don't just get them back to the
school gate, but you reintegrate and get them there because
if they fall behind, often they'll feel, oh, well, you know,
I'll never catch up and I'm dumb. And so getting
them to reintegrate after a period of not attending for
whatever reason also absolutely critical.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Actually, just on that now, I mean the holiday thing,
that's not really the issue, is it. I mean, kids
who are coming from families who are going to afford
to take a holiday to Fiji, they're probably there one
hundred percent of the time that they're in the country,
isn't it really just as the attitude towards being engaged
in education, isn't that the big one?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Well, the thing is, as you mentioned earlier, you have
a couple of days off because you're a second and
then maybe you have some sort of family events a
wedding or a funeral, and then you take five days
off in the last week a turn to go to Fiji,
and all of a sudden you're one of those ones
that are down below eighty percent attendance. So yeah, I mean, look,
as often people, I just make the point that the
(08:35):
school's actually only open about one hundred and eighty days
a year. That leaves another one hundred and eighty five
days to do whatever you want. I mean, you know
you actually only have to be at school for six
or seven hours a day, and this is your ticket
a free education in what is still one of the
best education systems in the world. Is your ticket to
(08:56):
a first world future, and you know it's less than
half your time.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So come on, okay, hey, looks, let's move on to
other issues because you know it's our first chat of
the year and with your party leader hat on and
what are you looking to as what are you looking
to see you achieved this year or does it sort
of look we're hoping that the policy, the policies we're
put in place are going to start to bite and
job done.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It's neither of those. I'm very proud of what we've done.
I think the Party can point to driving savings of
taxpayer money. It's critical to take pressure off inflation and
interest rates, and as you've seen with the threes inflation figure,
that will continue because we won't have an economic recovery
while people are paying high interest rates and their mortgages
(09:45):
through their rental and in their business borrowing, so all
of those things, it's essential that the government keeps a
careful watch on its own spending site. We're proud of
what we've done there. We will continue to keep that
pressure on. It's essential. The same thing with red tape.
You know, we can point to significant cutting red tape
across a whole lot of sectors, everything from being able
(10:08):
to bake a cake at home or put a garden
shed wherever you like, to big big stuff like changing
the entire resource Management Acts of property right, so you
know that's cutting waste, cutting red tape, and I think
also being a bit proud of who we are as
a country, because we have to decide are we this
sort of unusual experiment in biculturalism, or are we a
(10:31):
setler society of people who have come in many ways
to become New Zealanders, but ultimately are all settlers or
descendants of settlers. There's not one that's more important than
the other. So on those issues we will continue, I believe,
to lead the debate.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Will there be any new legislative announcements outside of announcing
new policies for the election?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Okay, I don't think there'll be a lot of new
legislation because it's kind of a process where you get
and you get your feet under the desk, You talk
to the bureaucracy, say look, here's the things we'd like
to say, yes minister, and then you sort of play
those yes minister games for a while, and then eventually
you get the legislation drafted, then you get it before Parliament,
(11:15):
and all of a sudden you're sort of into six
months of public consultation get the law passed. So we'll
see the resource management law I mentioned, we see Rockbone
Valden with a Holidays Act. We'll see Nicole McKee with
the Arms Act. You'll see the earthquake laws going through,
which I think are absolutely a miracle of common sense.
(11:37):
It's rights from Parliament. So what you'll see is the
implementation of a lot of the stuff that the government's
been preparing, introducing to Parliament and getting ready to tie
a bow on it before we go back and ask
the people would you like us to continue?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Would you, by the way, are you happy with the
election date? And actually did you get consulted by the
on that?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
I know the Prime Minister the sort of one of
the very few things that one person gets to decide.
Basically everything else the government does is by a kind
of consensus. But at the end of the day, it's
got to be a Saturday, and there's fifty two of
them every year, and we're up for it whichever one
it is. I think that having this will mean quite
(12:24):
a long campaign. I hope that people will see the
benefits of a lot of the sacrifices that the whole
country has been making for the last couple of years
as we've dug out of the hole. You know, not
just when we talked about school attendance, but it's also
in terms of and spending and inflation and interest rates.
You know, there's a lot of sentiment out there that
(12:45):
this is actually going to be a cracky year. So
I hope that that will will show through crossed and
let people be able to make a choice. I mean,
you know, you can. You can put in the other
guys that bug it up or the guys that actually
made sure that we could get out of the ditch.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Do you actually I've just got to I don't know
how to frame this question because I'm making as go
along this one. But it seems to me that, for instance,
I don't expect you to comment on Winston, but my
observation is that there's Winston the Foreign Minister. Then there's
Winston and politicking mode. Is there a David Seymour that's
you know, the Deputy Prime Minister and you're getting about
your job and your responsibilities and David Seymour in politiccking
(13:23):
mode And when do we see one versus the other?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, I mean other people might have a view about that,
and I don't want to go on about myself, but look,
all I know is that we've got a huge privilege
to improve the policies of New Zealand. You know, we've
got some real challenges. How do we pay our way?
Why does government frustrate people whoever's in? How we who
are we as a culture? How we balance the budget?
(13:49):
How do we make sure that the next generation feels
like they'll get a fair shot at this place and
not either leave the country or vote for politicians who
basically want to take it out on older New Zealanders.
Those are big challenges, and one thing that even our
worst enemies admit is that the ACT Party is quite
(14:10):
fearless about asking those questions and saying, look, we need
to talk about this. And I'm looking forward to going
to christ Church on February fifteen, the day after Valentine's Day,
to do my annual State of the Nation there. We've
not done it in christ Church before, but you know,
if you loved up on Valentine's Day, come down for
the politics on the fifteenth.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Okay, lucky, last question. I can't remember who it was
who said it's the economy stupid, but how much of
it is just going to hinge on whether people feel
they've got more money in their pockets.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There were some people who vote on how they feel.
But you know, I've always tried to make a connection
with the thinking voter and say, look, at the end
of the day, we've got all these challenges. There are
some things that we can change and there are other
things we can't. Probably the easiest and quickest thing we
can change as a country as to make the government smaller,
(15:05):
more efficient. The government that Texas less and regulates left
widens the possibilities for creativity and innovation by the rest
of the society. And if your basic view is that
we need to think and innovate our way out of
our problems, then you know, the act Party I think
can make a claim to advance those values when they're
(15:26):
popular and other times as well.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Okay, hey, David, thanks for joining us this afternoon. I
appreciate your time. I go well, best wishous chairs. That
is David Seymour, the Deputy Prime Miister and Minister Associate
Education Minister. We're going to be taking some calls. There's
quite a few questions that come out of that. You
can give your feedback in general, but I mean, what
do you think is the election issue going to what
are the important election issues and what did you make
(15:50):
of that education stat of the attendants it's heading in
the right direction. But Blue, I mean, he said he've
got a goal of eighty percent regular attendance. Not immediately,
of course, but it does seem like a hell of
a hell of a way to go from fifty seven
point three percent. I'll be taking your cause. But next
we'll be talking with Steve Cullen, he's a criminal lawyer,
about that disturbing a case in rodua and what difference
(16:13):
the new sentence and guidelines make to some of those
older cases we're still hearing about. We're taking your cause
on that as well, But Steve Cullen is next to
his News Talk Seb twenty six past three.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
For more from the weekend collective, listen live to News
Talk ZEDB weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks, I'd.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
Be other things. He's Deputy Prime Minister and also Associate
Education Minister. And his name is of course David Sima
and he joins me now David good at a good.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Afternoon, exter, good afternoon, Happy New Year.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
By the way, did you have something of a break
or are you're working right through your workhoorse?
Speaker 3 (00:27):
I'd love to but that I worked right through. But
it's not always that sensible. Sometimes you got to sharpen
the saw and you can cut more in the long term.
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Yeah right, I'm just thinking, yes, nice nice? Is it
a cliche or a proverb?
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Anyway, let's get it's a bit of a I think
it might have been found in a self help book.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Somewhere your next career who I got it from? Hey, look,
actually I saw the headline about attendance improving, and you know,
with headlines that desired to get you engaged, and I
got a bit excited. But then I looked at the
numbers and I thought, God, we've still got a way
to go, haven't we.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah, we do. I mean these numbers are better than
last year, and last year was better than the year before.
We've been able to say that every term bar one
that we've been in an office as a government. The
exception was a term when we had a lot of
teacher strikes and if the teachers aren't showing up, it's
(01:26):
difficult to persuade the students and it's important. I'll leave
that there. But we have made progress, enormous progress since
the lows of the sort of post COVID blues. We've
done better advertising, we've started investigating prosecutions. We haven't landed one.
We have said that we've put another thirty eight million
(01:48):
dollars of funding, and we've totally retooled the attendance service
to have more robust contracts after we did a big
inquiry and found that some were very good and others weren't.
And I've traveled up and down the country and sat
down at a table with groups of principals, deans, police,
all of the people that are engaged in attendance and
(02:12):
said what works. So from the start of this year,
every school will be participating in the Star the Steps
Attendance Response scheme. And that is sort of an answer
to your question. And the lead up to this interview
you said, well, is it the parents, is it the students,
is at the schools? Is it the government? It's actually
all of them. And what the Star does is it says,
(02:34):
look for every stage of a student's attendance or non attendance,
there are different responsibilities. So if they are attending more
than ninety percent of the time, that's cool enough, they
do just keep going. If they drop below ninety then
there are some responses from the school, and if they
drop below eighty then the Ministry of Education gets involved.
So we've been working, I think, really hard on this
(02:57):
and we've got results so far, but we know that
to keep the results coming and get to eighty percent
of students attending regular is still a long way to go. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Actually, just on the definitions, and I don't you know,
no one likes to legislate by definition, but well, you know,
we are more conscious of not spreading bugs and things
like that. The definition of being president in terms of
these statistics that's been then more than ninety percent of
the time, is that correct?
Speaker 3 (03:25):
That's right. So if you attend more than ninety seven
of the time, then we say that you are attending regularly.
Our goal is for eighty percent of students to fit
that category.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Okay, well, that answers one of my other questions. But
is that a pretty tough target to meet when you
know you have a cold and a bit of a
I would imagine it's quite easy. That's one week of
term five days. Is that part of the thing is
that is that we tend to be a bit more
cautious about sending our kids to school if they're a
bit sick and all that sort of thing. What's your
(03:57):
take on that's the standard problematic at all?
Speaker 3 (04:02):
Look, I think frankly, during COVID we were told by
the government of the day that health was the only
thing that mattered, and education and many other things be damned.
That is a terrible direction for a country because in
the long term, when current students are out in the workforce,
bringing up their families, paying off their mortgage, trying to
(04:24):
make a go of life, it won't matter what happened
in COVID. It will matter if they were at school.
So the whole time we've been in government, we've been
trying to build back from that emphasis on health overwhelming
any emphasis on education and therefore the future. One of
the things we did is we actually issued new health
(04:44):
guidance that says, look, you know, sometimes it's okay to
go to school with a bit of a sniffle. Lots
of people have to go to work under those circumstances,
and it's okay if you are not contagious to go
to school if you're not feeling great, because otherwise you
get this attitude that, oh, if you're not feeling one
hundred and ten percent, you just don't go. Well, we
(05:05):
take that out of shurd.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
We'll get nowhere eighty percent. Compared to where we're at
at the moment with fifty seven point three, we've we've
got a massive way to go. How realistic is that
goal we do?
Speaker 3 (05:19):
I mean, you've got to remember that we bottomed out
May twenty two only forty percent of students were regularly attending.
That was a pathway to being a third world country.
We've now got it up in the fifties and a
good term, we get it in the low sixties. So
where you could argue we're just over halfway after a
(05:39):
couple of years of effort, and our goal is to
get there by the end of the decade. I hope
will smash that goal. But all I'd say is that
you know, whether you're a parent or grandparent, especially if
you're a student. The most important determinant of where our
country will be in twenty thirty years time is how
many kids go to school this term, because you know,
(06:02):
an educated population can overcome any challenge. An uneducated population
can squander any amount of prosperity.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
What do you see as the main causes of our
attendance problem currently? What are the things we really need
to come overcome? Is about sickness? Is it resource constraints?
Is it simply a cultural New Zealand cultural attitude towards
the importance of education.
Speaker 3 (06:28):
Look, there's no one answer to that, and I don't
want to seem like I'm dodging it. But at one
end of the spectrum, you'll have students who are unable
to attend because their parents say, I've got to do
shift work at a factory and you've got to look
after your younger siblings. That's your duty to this family.
That is a shame because it's limiting that child's long
(06:51):
term future. At the other end of the spectrum, you've
got students who are taken out in order to get
the cheap flights to Fiji in the last few days
of term, and every term we see you drop off
in the last week and a lot of principles and
teachers come to me and so that this is our
biggest problem is actually and they even ask me, can
(07:13):
you ital you in New Zealand not to put the
prices up at school holiday time, which I'm afraid I
can't do. But yeah, well yeah, it's the market, isn't it.
But so that there's those things. The other thing is
when students get disengaged. One of the things we're really
working on with the new rejigged Attendance service is making
(07:35):
sure that you don't just get them back to the
school gate, but you reintegrate and get them there because
if they fall behind, often they'll feel, oh, well, you know,
I'll never catch up and I'm dumb. And so getting
them to reintegrate after a period of not attending for
whatever reason also absolutely critical.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Actually, just on that now, I mean the holiday thing,
that's not really the issue, is it. I mean, kids
who are coming from families who are going to afford
to take a holiday to Fiji, they're probably there one
hundred percent of the time that they're in the country,
isn't it really just as the attitude towards being engaged
in education, isn't that the big one?
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Well, the thing is, as you mentioned earlier, you have
a couple of days off because you're a second and
then maybe you have some sort of family events a
wedding or a funeral, and then you take five days
off in the last week a turn to go to Fiji,
and all of a sudden you're one of those ones
that are down below eighty percent attendance. So yeah, I mean, look,
as often people, I just make the point that the
(08:35):
school's actually only open about one hundred and eighty days
a year. That leaves another one hundred and eighty five
days to do whatever you want. I mean, you know
you actually only have to be at school for six
or seven hours a day, and this is your ticket
a free education in what is still one of the
best education systems in the world. Is your ticket to
(08:56):
a first world future, and you know it's less than
half your time.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So come on, okay, hey, looks, let's move on to
other issues because you know it's our first chat of
the year and with your party leader hat on and
what are you looking to as what are you looking
to see you achieved this year or does it sort
of look we're hoping that the policy, the policies we're
put in place are going to start to bite and
job done.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
It's neither of those. I'm very proud of what we've done.
I think the Party can point to driving savings of
taxpayer money. It's critical to take pressure off inflation and
interest rates, and as you've seen with the threes inflation figure,
that will continue because we won't have an economic recovery
while people are paying high interest rates and their mortgages
(09:45):
through their rental and in their business borrowing, so all
of those things, it's essential that the government keeps a
careful watch on its own spending site. We're proud of
what we've done there. We will continue to keep that
pressure on. It's essential. The same thing with red tape.
You know, we can point to significant cutting red tape
across a whole lot of sectors, everything from being able
(10:08):
to bake a cake at home or put a garden
shed wherever you like, to big big stuff like changing
the entire resource Management Acts of property right, so you
know that's cutting waste, cutting red tape, and I think
also being a bit proud of who we are as
a country, because we have to decide are we this
sort of unusual experiment in biculturalism, or are we a
(10:31):
setler society of people who have come in many ways
to become New Zealanders, but ultimately are all settlers or
descendants of settlers. There's not one that's more important than
the other. So on those issues we will continue, I believe,
to lead the debate.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
Will there be any new legislative announcements outside of announcing
new policies for the election?
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Okay, I don't think there'll be a lot of new
legislation because it's kind of a process where you get
and you get your feet under the desk, You talk
to the bureaucracy, say look, here's the things we'd like
to say, yes minister, and then you sort of play
those yes minister games for a while, and then eventually
you get the legislation drafted, then you get it before Parliament,
(11:15):
and all of a sudden you're sort of into six
months of public consultation get the law passed. So we'll
see the resource management law I mentioned, we see Rockbone
Valden with a Holidays Act. We'll see Nicole McKee with
the Arms Act. You'll see the earthquake laws going through,
which I think are absolutely a miracle of common sense.
(11:37):
It's rights from Parliament. So what you'll see is the
implementation of a lot of the stuff that the government's
been preparing, introducing to Parliament and getting ready to tie
a bow on it before we go back and ask
the people would you like us to continue?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
Would you, by the way, are you happy with the
election date? And actually did you get consulted by the
on that?
Speaker 3 (12:03):
I know the Prime Minister the sort of one of
the very few things that one person gets to decide.
Basically everything else the government does is by a kind
of consensus. But at the end of the day, it's
got to be a Saturday, and there's fifty two of
them every year, and we're up for it whichever one
it is. I think that having this will mean quite
(12:24):
a long campaign. I hope that people will see the
benefits of a lot of the sacrifices that the whole
country has been making for the last couple of years
as we've dug out of the hole. You know, not
just when we talked about school attendance, but it's also
in terms of and spending and inflation and interest rates.
You know, there's a lot of sentiment out there that
(12:45):
this is actually going to be a cracky year. So
I hope that that will will show through crossed and
let people be able to make a choice. I mean,
you know, you can. You can put in the other
guys that bug it up or the guys that actually
made sure that we could get out of the ditch.
Speaker 2 (13:01):
Do you actually I've just got to I don't know
how to frame this question because I'm making as go
along this one. But it seems to me that, for instance,
I don't expect you to comment on Winston, but my
observation is that there's Winston the Foreign Minister. Then there's
Winston and politicking mode. Is there a David Seymour that's
you know, the Deputy Prime Minister and you're getting about
your job and your responsibilities and David Seymour in politiccking
(13:23):
mode And when do we see one versus the other?
Speaker 3 (13:27):
Well, I mean other people might have a view about that,
and I don't want to go on about myself, but look,
all I know is that we've got a huge privilege
to improve the policies of New Zealand. You know, we've
got some real challenges. How do we pay our way?
Why does government frustrate people whoever's in? How we who
are we as a culture? How we balance the budget?
(13:49):
How do we make sure that the next generation feels
like they'll get a fair shot at this place and
not either leave the country or vote for politicians who
basically want to take it out on older New Zealanders.
Those are big challenges, and one thing that even our
worst enemies admit is that the ACT Party is quite
(14:10):
fearless about asking those questions and saying, look, we need
to talk about this. And I'm looking forward to going
to christ Church on February fifteen, the day after Valentine's Day,
to do my annual State of the Nation there. We've
not done it in christ Church before, but you know,
if you loved up on Valentine's Day, come down for
the politics on the fifteenth.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
Okay, lucky, last question. I can't remember who it was
who said it's the economy stupid, but how much of
it is just going to hinge on whether people feel
they've got more money in their pockets.
Speaker 3 (14:43):
There were some people who vote on how they feel.
But you know, I've always tried to make a connection
with the thinking voter and say, look, at the end
of the day, we've got all these challenges. There are
some things that we can change and there are other
things we can't. Probably the easiest and quickest thing we
can change as a country as to make the government smaller,
(15:05):
more efficient. The government that Texas less and regulates left
widens the possibilities for creativity and innovation by the rest
of the society. And if your basic view is that
we need to think and innovate our way out of
our problems, then you know, the act Party I think
can make a claim to advance those values when they're
(15:26):
popular and other times as well.
Speaker 2 (15:29):
Okay, hey, David, thanks for joining us this afternoon. I
appreciate your time. I go well, best wishous chairs. That
is David Seymour, the Deputy Prime Miister and Minister Associate
Education Minister. We're going to be taking some calls. There's
quite a few questions that come out of that. You
can give your feedback in general, but I mean, what
do you think is the election issue going to what
are the important election issues and what did you make
(15:50):
of that education stat of the attendants it's heading in
the right direction. But Blue, I mean, he said he've
got a goal of eighty percent regular attendance. Not immediately,
of course, but it does seem like a hell of
a hell of a way to go from fifty seven
point three percent. I'll be taking your cause. But next
we'll be talking with Steve Cullen, he's a criminal lawyer,
about that disturbing a case in rodua and what difference
(16:13):
the new sentence and guidelines make to some of those
older cases we're still hearing about. We're taking your cause
on that as well, But Steve Cullen is next to
his News Talk Seb twenty six past three.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
For more from the weekend collective, listen live to News
Talk ZEDB weekends from three pm, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.
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