August 3, 2025 • 13 mins
The Deputy PM comments on what, if anything, we can do about Trump's 15% tariff. Plus, he also comments on a radical shake-up of the country’s main secondary school qualification, which will see NCEA abolished and replaced with two new qualifications at Years 12 and 13.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
But let's kick it off with the Deputy Prime Minister,
David Seymour. David, good afternoon. Thanks for waiting through that
long intro. What's the story informative? Well, thank you, David.
I've hopefully I've brought Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Have they brought Christian cullenby.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
No, he hasn't been brought back. He might be a
bit like you and I are a bit long in
the tooth, but we'll come back to the all black squad.
Talk to me about the fifteen percent tariff. And I
heard the Prime Minister speaking to Mike Cosking this morning.
The reality of it is, we've just got to do
what we've told, what we're told when it comes to
(00:36):
this from the US.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, I always a big fan of I think it
was Saint Francis of ASSISI said the trick in life
is to have the courage to change the things you can,
the serenity to accept the things you can't, to the
wisdom to know the difference. You know, We'll continue doing
what well we've been doing for a while, which is
just quietly talking to the American government saying, look where
(00:59):
kind of some of the good guys here, we're free traders. Ourselves.
It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to
be punished. And by and large, I mean, you know,
a couple of countries got ten percent, but fifteen is
pretty good. But that doesn't mean that it's good enough
for a free trading country like New Zealand that would
prefer tariffs to be zero everywhere if we had our way,
(01:23):
because when you trade, people can specialize, do what they're
good at. Everyone eats more and that New Zealand agricultural
sector is a perfect example of that. So then you say,
all right, that's our position. Can we change it? Maybe,
but at some point we've got to accept that democratic country,
they elected their own government, they make their own policy,
(01:45):
and then we come back to okay, what else can
we change? Opening up trade agreements? So working really hard
on India, you know, done good work with the Gulf
States and also UAE, growing trade now with the EU
in the UK as those trade areements come on stream,
and then we sort of say, okay, look into is
(02:07):
the one that we'd really like to get. The second
thing is, you know, you can talk about market access,
and obviously the government's working hard on that, including with
the United States, but ultimately it comes down to what
do you have to sell? And ideally you have stuff
to sell what people are beating a path to your
door asking if they could buy it, rather than us
(02:29):
going to their door begging to sell it. And that's
one area where you know, at least the last forty years,
in particular the New Zealand primary industries have been one of,
if not the greatest example in the world of a
group of people who relentlessly innovate and provide stuff that
everyone's beating a path to your door to buy.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
While you were going through that wonderful dissertation there, David,
I did get a text from a lowly National Party
back bench for Grant. Do you know Grant?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I do. He's actually a very good example of someone
who can overcome disadvantage. His parents sent him to King's
College and that you can really ruin a lot of people.
I know a few people who have been ruined that way.
He's actually turned out as a half seacent blow.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, he just sent me a text and he said
that I was remiss and saying no new Caps and
the squad because Simon Parker from Northland is a new
Cap and he says feel free to mention to see
more that Kings are going to beat Grammar again this
weekend in New Auckland School semi final. So good on you,
Grant mcnational. We'll have more about that all black team
(03:41):
at the bottom of the hour. Okay. So it would
appear to me and I was reading that text while
you were talking, I wasn't paying total attention. I should
be slapped on the wrist and made to reset NCEEA
David Seymour. But if we'd run a trade deficit with
the US, like for instance, Olia does, we would have
got a ten percent tariff too. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, that's I don't want to speak for the US government,
but that's certainly what they've intimated year.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah. So I've read other commentary on this this morning.
At ten percent, especially when it comes to the likes
of beef and maybe some of our fine wines, I
don't know the market was prepared to absorb it. They
won't be at fifteen percent when they can get Ossie
beef at ten percent.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, you're reading an argument that New Zealand produce is
no more than five percent better than Aussie I reckon,
we can beat the Aussies by five percent and that's
that's reality.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know, we will do.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Our best to change it, but we may have to
have the serenity to accept what we can't change. And
then it's simply a question of well, what can we
do to access other markets, how can we compete them
even with the margin, and go from so.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I also heard Tim Grossis speaking on zb this morning
saying basically what you've said. We have zero chance of
changing Trump's minds, so we've got to put up with
the deal we're given. Are we wasting taxpayers' money by
putting Todd McClay business class over to the US to
talk to them because we're not going to change anything.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, I think you can answer the question for yourself.
If the New Zealand government was not sending a minister
to speak to officials on the US government, I think
we'd be told that that was neglectful. And if we said, well,
we're not doing it in order to save one I
think people would say that was pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Oh no, I was using that. It was a poor example.
We do share We do share a headline reciprocal tariff
rate with Venezuela, a country run by a regime the
US once refused to recognize Venezuela does not have an
FBI office either. Seymore.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, I remember the days when people on the
left of New Zealand politics used to say that Venezuela
was an example of socialism and action and something that
we should look up to. And every now and then
it just pays to remind these characters that socialism doesn't work.
It's never worked, makes people poor, and it also leads
to a lot of violence. And that's your public address
(06:24):
announcement just for today.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Do you know anything? And we're going to talk to
Riley Kennedy from Business Desk about this shortly regarding the
potential sale of our own of our only farmer owned
meat cooperative or Meat process and cooperative, the Alliance Group
to an Irish meat company or seventy percent stake they're
supposedly going to take in it. I also read commentary
(06:48):
this morning that it shouldn't have any trouble getting past
Act or National but Winston might kick up a wee
bit about it.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well, let's just see. I mean, I've I'm a little
bit responsible as for Minister for Overseas Investment Policy, but
I haven't dealt with that particular one. I mean, I
just make the point that you know, New Zealand is
a country where we have low wages and a lot
of people, you know, very angry about the prices of
things in supermarkets, particularly dairy products lately. And I always
(07:22):
try and put it around the other way. The problem
is not that dairy prices are high. That's a good
thing for New Zealand. The problem is that on average
New Zealand wages are low, and that leads to a
lot of frustration with prices. So then you say, okay,
we'll wire wages low in part because New Zealand workers
have less capital to work with, we have less sophisticated machinery.
(07:45):
It's not that we don't work hard in New Zealand,
we just can't produce as much as people off shore
who have more investment. And then you say, okay, well
you've got two basic choices. You know, you can try
and be an island in a metaphorical sense as well
literal and say we don't want the world to send
us money. We don't want their know how we want
(08:05):
to basically chop our nose off despite our face. All
we can say, well, you know, more capital means fire productivity,
means small wages. And there's a lot more capital outside
New Zealand's borders that are inside. So where we're going
to get it, so that I just take a very
I don't know, I guess you might say engineer's approach
(08:25):
to this wages, good productivity, good capital. Needed capital overseas,
Let's get it, and that way New Zealanders can produce more,
earn more and buy more of the stuff that we
all want.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Let's put on your education hat a radical shakeup of
the country's main secondary school qualification. We'll see nc EA
abolished and replaced with two new qualifications at year twelve
and thirteen and having educationalists. Can I put it that way?
Teachers in our family, I think there would be I
(09:00):
think NCA has let us down and has led our
young people down.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, we kind of case. How long have you got?
I mean, strangely, this was the thing that first made
me pay attention to politics. My principle at the school
I went to had a massive public fight with Trevor
Mallard over the introduction of NCA. His name was John Morris,
and he's been proven right and basically everything he said
(09:28):
twenty five years ago. He said that if you didn't
have a clear exam that is sat by everybody, with
a bunch of things that you have to know and
you can't avoid, then what would happen is that you'd
end up with different standards at different schools because different
teaching and different assessment styles, children choose different credits. And
(09:52):
what's basically happened is the NCDA. You know, we don't
want to tell children that are working hard on it
right now that it's not worth anything, because it is
worth something, but it's worth what you put into it.
It's worth the value of the credits that you get,
especially if you take the heart and more rigorous ones.
But as a system for a country that is trying
to transfer valuable knowledge from one generation to the next,
(10:15):
it is a terrible failure because it doesn't have that
core base of knowledge. These are the things one generation
wants to pass on and we will test you and
assess you to see if you've learned it. Now, in
the time that we've had the NCAA, we've gone from
a top five country in the world according to the
(10:36):
OECD to being something like twenty second in the world
for maths, for example. That's not good enough. I mean,
children today at fifteen years old know about one year
less of learning. It's like they've been at school one
year less than the same age children back at the
(10:57):
start of the century when NCAA started. Look, I think
it's been a real problem. I think it can still
work for students, but we need it to work for everybody.
And that's why I just think, you know, in a way,
it's kind of the reason I got interested in politics,
and I'm thrilled to be part of a government.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I just want to quickly finish on David Sema. I
know you're probably a keen watcher of a Q and
A with Jack Tame. Did you see that young guy who,
you know, the tech startup billionaire with his education system
talking about nca and why, for instance, our education systems
letting our kids down. And the comment that's stuck to
(11:38):
me was he's got thirty degrees or something like that
and he still gets exam anxiety. He says, that's a
good thing, and he's dead right. We give them a
soft run with internal credits and all this sort of nonsense.
But life is about pass or fail, and you do
have to handle the pressure, whether it's the pressure of
an exam or the pressure of a workload that might
(12:00):
come in your daily job. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Look, I agree with that sentiment. At some point, life
is going to send you a tough challenge, and ideally
it's not the first tough challenge you've faced, because all
your life you've faced a series of increasingly large challenges
that have built up your resilience and your confidence over time. Now,
when you get a generation who are hugely anxious, massive
(12:28):
problems when it comes to mental health, and the number
of children that report that the distressed mentally is basically
quadrupled in the last fifteen years, you have to wonder
how much of that is because you don't have that
long series of small challenges the way that we did
in the past, And so in a way, trying to
(12:50):
be kind and taking a softly softly approach has actually
left children less resilient and able to face the challenges
in their life and actually ironically more mentally distressed. So
you know, I completely endorse those sentiments.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well, being kind is so twenty seventeen to twenty twenty three,
isn't it, David.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, we tried that. Now we've just got to be.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Real good on here. Thanks for your time, David Seymour,
But let's kick it off with the Deputy Prime Minister,
David Seymour. David, good afternoon. Thanks for waiting through that
long intro. What's the story informative? Well, thank you, David.
I've hopefully I've brought Chris.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Have they brought Christian cullenby.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
No, he hasn't been brought back. He might be a
bit like you and I are a bit long in
the tooth, but we'll come back to the all black squad.
Talk to me about the fifteen percent tariff. And I
heard the Prime Minister speaking to Mike Cosking this morning.
The reality of it is, we've just got to do
what we've told, what we're told when it comes to
(00:36):
this from the US.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
Well, I always a big fan of I think it
was Saint Francis of ASSISI said the trick in life
is to have the courage to change the things you can,
the serenity to accept the things you can't, to the
wisdom to know the difference. You know, We'll continue doing
what well we've been doing for a while, which is
just quietly talking to the American government saying, look where
(00:59):
kind of some of the good guys here, we're free traders. Ourselves.
It doesn't make a lot of sense for us to
be punished. And by and large, I mean, you know,
a couple of countries got ten percent, but fifteen is
pretty good. But that doesn't mean that it's good enough
for a free trading country like New Zealand that would
prefer tariffs to be zero everywhere if we had our way,
(01:23):
because when you trade, people can specialize, do what they're
good at. Everyone eats more and that New Zealand agricultural
sector is a perfect example of that. So then you say,
all right, that's our position. Can we change it? Maybe,
but at some point we've got to accept that democratic country,
they elected their own government, they make their own policy,
(01:45):
and then we come back to okay, what else can
we change? Opening up trade agreements? So working really hard
on India, you know, done good work with the Gulf
States and also UAE, growing trade now with the EU
in the UK as those trade areements come on stream,
and then we sort of say, okay, look into is
(02:07):
the one that we'd really like to get. The second
thing is, you know, you can talk about market access,
and obviously the government's working hard on that, including with
the United States, but ultimately it comes down to what
do you have to sell? And ideally you have stuff
to sell what people are beating a path to your
door asking if they could buy it, rather than us
(02:29):
going to their door begging to sell it. And that's
one area where you know, at least the last forty years,
in particular the New Zealand primary industries have been one of,
if not the greatest example in the world of a
group of people who relentlessly innovate and provide stuff that
everyone's beating a path to your door to buy.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
While you were going through that wonderful dissertation there, David,
I did get a text from a lowly National Party
back bench for Grant. Do you know Grant?
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I do. He's actually a very good example of someone
who can overcome disadvantage. His parents sent him to King's
College and that you can really ruin a lot of people.
I know a few people who have been ruined that way.
He's actually turned out as a half seacent blow.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, he just sent me a text and he said
that I was remiss and saying no new Caps and
the squad because Simon Parker from Northland is a new
Cap and he says feel free to mention to see
more that Kings are going to beat Grammar again this
weekend in New Auckland School semi final. So good on you,
Grant mcnational. We'll have more about that all black team
(03:41):
at the bottom of the hour. Okay. So it would
appear to me and I was reading that text while
you were talking, I wasn't paying total attention. I should
be slapped on the wrist and made to reset NCEEA
David Seymour. But if we'd run a trade deficit with
the US, like for instance, Olia does, we would have
got a ten percent tariff too. Is that correct?
Speaker 2 (04:05):
Well, that's I don't want to speak for the US government,
but that's certainly what they've intimated year.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Yeah. So I've read other commentary on this this morning.
At ten percent, especially when it comes to the likes
of beef and maybe some of our fine wines, I
don't know the market was prepared to absorb it. They
won't be at fifteen percent when they can get Ossie
beef at ten percent.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
Well, you're reading an argument that New Zealand produce is
no more than five percent better than Aussie I reckon,
we can beat the Aussies by five percent and that's
that's reality.
Speaker 1 (04:46):
You know, we will do.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Our best to change it, but we may have to
have the serenity to accept what we can't change. And
then it's simply a question of well, what can we
do to access other markets, how can we compete them
even with the margin, and go from so.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I also heard Tim Grossis speaking on zb this morning
saying basically what you've said. We have zero chance of
changing Trump's minds, so we've got to put up with
the deal we're given. Are we wasting taxpayers' money by
putting Todd McClay business class over to the US to
talk to them because we're not going to change anything.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
Well, I think you can answer the question for yourself.
If the New Zealand government was not sending a minister
to speak to officials on the US government, I think
we'd be told that that was neglectful. And if we said, well,
we're not doing it in order to save one I
think people would say that was pretty crazy.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Oh no, I was using that. It was a poor example.
We do share We do share a headline reciprocal tariff
rate with Venezuela, a country run by a regime the
US once refused to recognize Venezuela does not have an
FBI office either. Seymore.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
You know, I remember the days when people on the
left of New Zealand politics used to say that Venezuela
was an example of socialism and action and something that
we should look up to. And every now and then
it just pays to remind these characters that socialism doesn't work.
It's never worked, makes people poor, and it also leads
to a lot of violence. And that's your public address
(06:24):
announcement just for today.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Do you know anything? And we're going to talk to
Riley Kennedy from Business Desk about this shortly regarding the
potential sale of our own of our only farmer owned
meat cooperative or Meat process and cooperative, the Alliance Group
to an Irish meat company or seventy percent stake they're
supposedly going to take in it. I also read commentary
(06:48):
this morning that it shouldn't have any trouble getting past
Act or National but Winston might kick up a wee
bit about it.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Well, let's just see. I mean, I've I'm a little
bit responsible as for Minister for Overseas Investment Policy, but
I haven't dealt with that particular one. I mean, I
just make the point that you know, New Zealand is
a country where we have low wages and a lot
of people, you know, very angry about the prices of
things in supermarkets, particularly dairy products lately. And I always
(07:22):
try and put it around the other way. The problem
is not that dairy prices are high. That's a good
thing for New Zealand. The problem is that on average
New Zealand wages are low, and that leads to a
lot of frustration with prices. So then you say, okay,
we'll wire wages low in part because New Zealand workers
have less capital to work with, we have less sophisticated machinery.
(07:45):
It's not that we don't work hard in New Zealand,
we just can't produce as much as people off shore
who have more investment. And then you say, okay, well
you've got two basic choices. You know, you can try
and be an island in a metaphorical sense as well
literal and say we don't want the world to send
us money. We don't want their know how we want
(08:05):
to basically chop our nose off despite our face. All
we can say, well, you know, more capital means fire productivity,
means small wages. And there's a lot more capital outside
New Zealand's borders that are inside. So where we're going
to get it, so that I just take a very
I don't know, I guess you might say engineer's approach
(08:25):
to this wages, good productivity, good capital. Needed capital overseas,
Let's get it, and that way New Zealanders can produce more,
earn more and buy more of the stuff that we
all want.
Speaker 1 (08:39):
Let's put on your education hat a radical shakeup of
the country's main secondary school qualification. We'll see nc EA
abolished and replaced with two new qualifications at year twelve
and thirteen and having educationalists. Can I put it that way?
Teachers in our family, I think there would be I
(09:00):
think NCA has let us down and has led our
young people down.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
Yeah, we kind of case. How long have you got?
I mean, strangely, this was the thing that first made
me pay attention to politics. My principle at the school
I went to had a massive public fight with Trevor
Mallard over the introduction of NCA. His name was John Morris,
and he's been proven right and basically everything he said
(09:28):
twenty five years ago. He said that if you didn't
have a clear exam that is sat by everybody, with
a bunch of things that you have to know and
you can't avoid, then what would happen is that you'd
end up with different standards at different schools because different
teaching and different assessment styles, children choose different credits. And
(09:52):
what's basically happened is the NCDA. You know, we don't
want to tell children that are working hard on it
right now that it's not worth anything, because it is
worth something, but it's worth what you put into it.
It's worth the value of the credits that you get,
especially if you take the heart and more rigorous ones.
But as a system for a country that is trying
to transfer valuable knowledge from one generation to the next,
(10:15):
it is a terrible failure because it doesn't have that
core base of knowledge. These are the things one generation
wants to pass on and we will test you and
assess you to see if you've learned it. Now, in
the time that we've had the NCAA, we've gone from
a top five country in the world according to the
(10:36):
OECD to being something like twenty second in the world
for maths, for example. That's not good enough. I mean,
children today at fifteen years old know about one year
less of learning. It's like they've been at school one
year less than the same age children back at the
(10:57):
start of the century when NCAA started. Look, I think
it's been a real problem. I think it can still
work for students, but we need it to work for everybody.
And that's why I just think, you know, in a way,
it's kind of the reason I got interested in politics,
and I'm thrilled to be part of a government.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
I just want to quickly finish on David Sema. I
know you're probably a keen watcher of a Q and
A with Jack Tame. Did you see that young guy who,
you know, the tech startup billionaire with his education system
talking about nca and why, for instance, our education systems
letting our kids down. And the comment that's stuck to
(11:38):
me was he's got thirty degrees or something like that
and he still gets exam anxiety. He says, that's a
good thing, and he's dead right. We give them a
soft run with internal credits and all this sort of nonsense.
But life is about pass or fail, and you do
have to handle the pressure, whether it's the pressure of
an exam or the pressure of a workload that might
(12:00):
come in your daily job. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Look, I agree with that sentiment. At some point, life
is going to send you a tough challenge, and ideally
it's not the first tough challenge you've faced, because all
your life you've faced a series of increasingly large challenges
that have built up your resilience and your confidence over time. Now,
when you get a generation who are hugely anxious, massive
(12:28):
problems when it comes to mental health, and the number
of children that report that the distressed mentally is basically
quadrupled in the last fifteen years, you have to wonder
how much of that is because you don't have that
long series of small challenges the way that we did
in the past, And so in a way, trying to
(12:50):
be kind and taking a softly softly approach has actually
left children less resilient and able to face the challenges
in their life and actually ironically more mentally distressed. So
you know, I completely endorse those sentiments.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well, being kind is so twenty seventeen to twenty twenty three,
isn't it, David.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, we tried that. Now we've just got to be.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Real good on here. Thanks for your time, David Seymour,
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