The Country 03/03/25: David Seymour talks to Jamie Mackay

We ask the Act leader if NZ should opt out of the Paris Agreement, and talk about cutting red tape for farmers, a four-year term of Parliament, and the latest with school lunches.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yes, Rick Assley. According to Rolling Stone magazine, this is
one of the ten worst songs from the nineteen eighties.
I reckon Rick Astley is a bit of a doppelganger
for our next guest on the country, David Seymour, soon
to be Deputy Prime Minister act Party leader. But David,

(00:20):
this piece of wit by me is completely wasted on
you because you don't know who Rick Astley is.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Good afternoon, Mace, Good afternoon. I wasn't memorizing saying likely
in the ladies are still being born, but I do
recognize that song and just feel sorry for the guy.
At least he may not have had great looks if
he's my doppelganger, but at least he could sing unlike me.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
Now, should we opt out of the Paris Agreement? I
sent you a text last week before I was chatting
to Winston, just to get your view on him. This
is what you came back with. Not yet. At some point, though,
enough of our trading partners will tip to the point
where the cost of being in is greater than the

(01:05):
punishment for leaving. But I don't think we're there yet.
That is a quote from you. Do you stick by that?

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah? Absolutely. I was just as you were raising the topic,
I was thinking what would I say, and then you
read out exactly what I was going to say. They're
great news about being consistent in telling their lives, as
you don't have to remember anything fair enough.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
Will it be, as Shane Jones eloquently pointed out last
week on the show, will it be every man for
himself leading into the election next year? Because the NATS
want us to stay in Winston and Shane want us out,
and you're saying, look, eventually we're probably going to have
to get out.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, I think everyone in the government is ultimately here
for New Zealand, and I think that they will want
to evaluate what is the calculus. It's also true that
sometimes these things aren't a zero some game. You can
bring new ideas at the table. And one idea that
I was discussing with Mark Cameron and Andrew Hoggard a couple

(02:06):
of weeks back when this first became an issue, was
the idea that we should be looking to renegotiate on
methane and we should start by forming an alliance of
like minded countries that are fully exposed to methane. Uruguay
is actually an ally who knew, But actually most of
South America has a lot, has a lot of bovines

(02:29):
and maybe the odd sheep that are omitting a lot
of methane and they're getting punished for it. Then you
go through Southeast Asia and you see how much a
mission there is actually from rice, actually more than from bovines.
And I think we should be starting to look put
a fewers out to our friends around the world and
say we need a methane alliance so that we can

(02:51):
get a better deal for countries like ours. Instead of
the bureaucracy going overseas and coming back to represent these
international organizations to New Zealanders, maybe they could start representing
the hopes and dreams of New Zealanders to these international organizations.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
You're kind of the Elon Musk of New Zealand politics.
He was set to cut all the red tape and
regulation out of the US Civil Service. If you call
it that, I don't know what they call it over there.
You've been given the same job here as regulation minister,
and you've started, you've started merrily into your work. You've

(03:29):
cut quite a bit of red tape for farmers.

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, that's right. Look, it's a real shame that if
you want to get inhibitors, herbicides, animal medicine'es pesticide, you
know it can take up to five and a half
years to get a consent. Now that's not going to
work for New Zealand because even though we are mighty,

(03:55):
we are still relatively small. So for example, our apples
may be fantastic, but only zero point six percent of
the world's apples are produced in New Zealand. Now, as
the EU starts to change its approach, they want softer chemicals,
new products. The longer it takes for us to switch

(04:16):
products and change and get consent for new products, the
further behind we get and we put our market access
at risks. So what the Ministry for Regulations done has
gone out done a pretty sharp review that I've listened
to eighty different groups, taken fifty submissions, often quite detailed
and technical, and they've come up with an action plan

(04:36):
for both the EPA and the Animal Compounds in Veterinary
Medicine Department at MPI. First of all, for them to
work together, because that's one of the big problems. Second
of all, to have a stakeholder group that is there
to represent the interests of those people actually trying to
import products, and finally to set some targets for getting

(04:59):
the weight list down. All of this is designed to
make sure that New Zealand farmers, New Zealand horticulturalists can
get access to the best products in the world faster,
and I'm really excited. It's the first of these sector
of views that the Ministry for Regulations done, and I
think that as small of them roll out, we're going.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
To get along one good on you for cutting red tape.
A couple to quickly finish on where do you sit
or where does the act Party sits on a four
year term for Parliament? Could we, for instance, have a
referendum in the next general election twenty twenty six around
this one. It would seem would make good sense to
me to put a government in for four years.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Well, I go to first of all concede. I recognize
I'm probably on a hiding to nothing for the behavior
of politicians around the world and even in New Zealand.
Sometimes for a politician to say just trust us for
another year is probably going to land on deaf years
or even be resented by many voters. And I get that,

(06:00):
but I fully support it because I honestly believe that
moving to a four year term will mean that we
get slower, more intelligent, thoughtful debate and lawmaking, and ultimately
less of the flip flopping and chopping and changing that
just makes this a damn hard place to do business.
So you know what i'd say to people, as I

(06:22):
know I'm not hiding to nothing, but please have a
look at what we're proposing, and in particular, what the
government's proposing is actually initially, at least based on my
old Members Bill, it says that we'll only get a
four year term if the Select committees are independent and
controlled by the opposition, to get extra scrutiny. So if

(06:43):
we're going to give politicians the extra year, and I
say politicians because this is a long term thing, this
is probably for you know, won't really be in effect
till after I'm gone, but you know, if we're going
to go to a four year term, will also get
more scrutiny of the government by select commands.

Speaker 1 (07:01):
Okay, really quickly to finish on have you bitten off
more than you can chew? Metaphorically? Of course, when it
comes to the reform of your school lunch is Clear Trevett,
one of my favorite writers in the Herald, even though
she's gone unfortunately or will go. She writes, governments can
live or die by an accumulation of small failings, and

(07:23):
the issue of school lunches has started to be devil
this government. Imagine if you bring down the coalition because
he has school lunches.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
David Seymour, Well, that does take a lot of imagination.
I mean a couple of things. One is, we're saving
one hundred and seventy million bucks. So if people want
to save money and actually have less step in lower taxes,
you have to be prepared to do things like this.
Second of all, it started off with some real problems.

(07:52):
We had on one day in one city only eleven
percent off the meals were delivered on time and full.
Now we're hitting a hundred percent basically, where basically every day.
There's a few places that are ninety seven or ninety
eight percent some days, but for the most part it's
one hundred percent delivery in full, on time. Then there's
people complaining about the quality. There's issues there, and just

(08:14):
as we fix the on time delivery, we will fix
those two and at the end of the day, we'll
be able to point to many kids who are writing
in Principles, who are writing in saying, look, actually, this
is better than what we had last year. There'll be
people who want to make a big political issue out
of it, but at the end of the day, we're
going to get as good, in many cases better lunches

(08:36):
than last year at half the cost. And that's actually
the kind of thing the government needs to do. I
just acknowledged the other seventy five percent of parents who
are sending their kids to school with lunch. I campaigned
against even having this policy, but in a political twist
of phase, I ended up in charge of it. So

(08:56):
I'm now going to make it as efficient as possible
for the taxpayer.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
David Seymour, thank you very much for your time.