July 16, 2024 • 12 mins
The Acting PM on: The acting Prime Minister talks about annual inflation falling to 3.3% and the Government’s emissions plan — is New Zealand heading for a pine tree planting frenzy? He then discusses former Prime Minister Helen Clark and former National and Act leader Don Brash’s warning that the Government is dragging New Zealand into the US-China conflict and his comment that the drug-buying agency Pharmac “burned a lot of energy” considering the Treaty of Waitangi.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's welcome on to the country the acting Prime Minister,
king for a day or king for a week. David Seymour,
Is this the first time you've been acting PM?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
David No, I have done it four a couple of
months ago. Basically that works as I got to see
that Chris and Winston have both left the country and
then I can take over.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
What are you going to do while you're in charge?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, hopefully as little as possible, in line with the
party philosophy. There's a lot of politicians who would love
to tax more, regulate more, and generally do more. We're
pretty keen to let you get on with it. I
heard God asked by Hosking yesterday, how do you like
running the country? I just I'm actually not running the country.
(00:46):
Five point three million New Zealanders are running the country.
I'm just running the government, and frankly I think that's
too big already.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, I reckon, while you're in charge this week, you
should get on the blower ring up Adrian Orr and
tell them to drop the official cash rate. Surely there's
a bit of incentive for him to do that. After
that annual inflation number has come out three point three percent,
in the June quarter inflation. In fact, in the gun quarter,
inflation was only zero point four percent. But I guess
(01:14):
the key number, and you alluded to this when we
were chatting earlier, the non tradable number.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, that's right. Look, I think, first of all, we
got an independent reserve bank, so even as the acting
Prime Minister for the week, I can't get on the
blower tool. But you don't need an economics degree to
see that the steam has come out of the economy.
The steam has come out of inflation, and it's time
for him to give some relief, just as he's put
(01:41):
a lot of pressure on firms and farms and households
up until this point. I think, as medicine's working, we
just got to make sure we don't kill the patient
in the process. And as you point out, that non
tradable figure of zero point nine for the quarter, now
non tradable was five point eight last time, it is
(02:02):
five point four this quarter. That's the annual figure, but
the quarterly figure for non tradables now down to zero
point nine. What that means is that we're really taking
the speed so that if you ever go over the
last year, there's still a lot of inflation in that period.
But right now non tradable is coming south very rapident,
(02:23):
and that means that you know, you can see that
the inflationary steam has come out of the economy.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, you can't strong arm the governor of the Reserve Bank.
What can you do about local body authorities? They're just
running a muck with rate rises, And of course they
will say that it's all your fault because central government
is abdicating responsibilities to them. But we're seeing some local
authorities with rises in excess of twenty percent. That's not sustainable.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, how many local authorities have taken it upon themselves
to the treaty and everything that they do that's out
of control and adds huge cost. How many local authorities
have decided that quite up from the government having an
emission's trading scheme and a zero carbonat and a climate
(03:12):
change commission, they also need to run their own little
climate fiefdom. That's out of control. And if you look
at what the government's doing more generally in both those areas,
we're saying that your job is to give everyone the
same services based on need, not race, and actually climate
(03:34):
change that is something the central government is dealing with
you don't need to have your own parallel plan. The
best embodiment of that is Mark Cameron's Members Bill that's
got a lot of coverage in the last week. He's
put up a bill that would say to councilors, look,
central Government's got climate you don't need to bother yourselves
with making your own parallel plan because that's just duplication
(03:56):
and bureaucracy.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Other things to cover off. The government is no longer
on track to meet its third emission's budget. Okay, so
does that mean we're going to have a pine tree
planting frenzy to get ourselves out of the stock, Well.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
A couple of things. Just look at why that's happened.
Number one, I've actually reviewed the methodology of how they
measure emissions, so in some ways they've said that the
amount of emissions has always been higher under the previous government.
And this one, the second thing is probably the biggest
single contributor to the change is actually they point Smelter
(04:37):
continuing the previous emission reduction plan factored in ty closing
and freeing up a whole lot of low carbon electricity
for the rest of New Zealand. Actually the fact that
New Zealand is producing some of the purest, lowest carbon
aluminium in the world is a good thing in terms
of global climate change efforts. So I don't think that
(05:02):
we should see us as being quite as bad as
I'm sure some media outlets will try to paint it. Nonetheless,
with our focus on mess emissions, which is what the
Zero Carbon Act requires the government to do. I might
add that Act would get rid of the Zero carbonac
but unfortunately, fortunately or unfortunately in a coalition government, we
(05:23):
have to follow that law. And yes, that means if
you can't reduce the gross emissions in New Zealand as
much as the law suggests, then your options are either
plant more trees, or borrow or buy more carbon credits overseas.
Neither of those are particularly politically attractive. I think the
(05:45):
main issue will be, from this government's point of view,
making sure that that tree planting has a minimal effect
on the communities where people have been saying for a
long time that's all fine, but you can't eat wood
and tree saplants don't go to the local primary school.
(06:05):
So those conversions are killing our community. We understand that,
and that will be built into the way the government
goes about mitigations.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Now you talked about getting bogged down with the Treaty
of White Tonguey and having to do this, that and
the other to plicate all sorts of people. I was
pleased to see you come out and say, when it
comes to FARMAC, let's kick that, not kick the treaty
to touch, but put it to one side and just
try and get the best health outcome for all New Zealanders.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well that's right, and there's a couple of things about this.
The previous government said that FARMAC had to on bed
the treaty and everything that they did. I've written a
new Expectations letter and said, I know that's what Ei
chever Al, the Labor Minister, told you to do. I
don't think it's appropriate to do that, and you need
to stop. We've got a great chair of FARMAC and
(06:56):
Paula Bennett who's one hundred percent committed to making sure
that happens. And I think it's absolutely critical that we
start promoting a simple idea of universal human rights, one
real world that we can all join hands problem solve
on and stop making everything about race. And the second
thing about removing the racial leans is that it actually
(07:18):
allows you to drill down to the practical reasons why
people have different outcomes. As people say, Mari don't live
as long, and that's true so far as it goes.
But why we need to drill down to things like
poor quality housing. Well, it doesn't matter what your racial
background is. If you live in poorly ventilated housing, you're
more likely to have respiratory illnesses. And what we need
(07:38):
to do is not look at a person and say
what color are you? But actually, can we fix your
house or can we change the housing market so it's
easier to build high quality homes with less crazy regulations,
and another way could look at it. So look, we're
taking a practical problem solving approach based on universal humanity.
And I know that there'll be a lot of noise
about that, but it's got to be done.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
A couple to finish on Minister Helen Clark and former
National and act leader Don Brash a none too please
with Christopher Luxen's commentary on the US China Well it
struggles not the right word, but there's a lot of
geo political tension between those two countries. Was he almost
(08:20):
seems to be taking a pro American stance is that
right or wrong? Do we risk biting the hand that
feeds us?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well, I think you've got be a little bit practical
about this. I mean, they've given quite a major reaction,
but the reality is that the previous labor government was
in discussions about UGUS. Technically, we haven't actually been invited
to join it or accepted membership of Pillar two of Aucus.
This government's basically just continued what the previous government was doing.
(08:52):
The other thing is, you know, I've met Helen and
I'm actually secret admirer of Helen Clark. I have know
and Don for many years. I stood for election with
him in twenty eleven, and both of them on this
issue are strangely a moral So yep, they will treat
(09:12):
China as though it's just another country in Americas, it's
just another country. Forgetting that one of them, no matter
how imperfect, is actually a democracy that's having an election
right now and does actually have in its constitution a
commitment to human rights that they do their best to uphold.
The other one is not a democracy and does not
(09:35):
have a good track record of respecting human rights. And
it seems strange that Helen Clark and Don Brash too
passionately moralistic, people who have stood for causes, sometimes at
great personal cost, are curiously amorl about this particular issue.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
It's been a fascinating week in US politics. You could
not write a script, should I say, like the Trump
assassination attempt.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I did no one to believe it, No, no.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
One would believe it. And it was like scenes from
a movie. I was going to say, a B grade
Hollywood movie. But when you look at that e regima
frame with Trump walking down the stairs first rays the
American flag in the background, that's kind of a grade.
That vision will last for years and years and years,
(10:27):
and he's going to waltz into the White House come November.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Well, that's what some people like to say that I
was reading the Act newsletter, a Free Press, which I
highly recommend people to subscribe to. Some people say it's
for the best political newsletter out there. That just made
the point. But sometimes you get really unexpected changes and
swerves and elections. You take the New Zealand election in
(10:53):
twenty seventeen, and some people listening they remember when Materia
Tore actually declared herself to be a benefit Thodster. Now
you would think that would be bad for your polling,
but she ran for the Green so it shot up
and that came at a cost to labor, so they
then panicked and dumped their leader seven weeks before an election.
(11:14):
You would think that would be a disaster, but they
got to Cinder and one hundred billion dollars later, we're
still dealing with the impact of that changed to New
Zealand's history. I would suspect that there'll be a few
more twists and turns and totally unpredictable events before the
selection's over, So I wouldn't assume that it's game, set
(11:35):
and match just yet.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Okay, I'm really looking forward to the vice presidential debate,
if indeed there is one, between Kamala Harris and the
Trump clone JD. Vanes.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, he's a curious character, isn't he. I loved his book, Hellbiliology.
It was a beautiful read and had a real honesty
about it that I haven't really followed him in the
eight years since. He does seem to have an ability
to change his position and be all things to all
people at the right time, in the right place, and
in some ways that's innadirable quality. In other ways. It's
(12:10):
something that makes people a bit cautious.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Hey, David Seymour is a bit like your coalition partner Winston.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Well, you know we're all happy coalition partners. I couldn't possibly.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Come David Seymour act Party Leader, acting Prime Minister this week.
Thank you very much for your time on the country.
Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
No, don't worry. Thanks Janney, you have a great day.
Let's welcome on to the country the acting Prime Minister,
king for a day or king for a week. David Seymour,
Is this the first time you've been acting PM?
Speaker 2 (00:09):
David No, I have done it four a couple of
months ago. Basically that works as I got to see
that Chris and Winston have both left the country and
then I can take over.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
What are you going to do while you're in charge?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Well, hopefully as little as possible, in line with the
party philosophy. There's a lot of politicians who would love
to tax more, regulate more, and generally do more. We're
pretty keen to let you get on with it. I
heard God asked by Hosking yesterday, how do you like
running the country? I just I'm actually not running the country.
(00:46):
Five point three million New Zealanders are running the country.
I'm just running the government, and frankly I think that's
too big already.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Well, I reckon, while you're in charge this week, you
should get on the blower ring up Adrian Orr and
tell them to drop the official cash rate. Surely there's
a bit of incentive for him to do that. After
that annual inflation number has come out three point three percent,
in the June quarter inflation. In fact, in the gun quarter,
inflation was only zero point four percent. But I guess
(01:14):
the key number, and you alluded to this when we
were chatting earlier, the non tradable number.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, that's right. Look, I think, first of all, we
got an independent reserve bank, so even as the acting
Prime Minister for the week, I can't get on the
blower tool. But you don't need an economics degree to
see that the steam has come out of the economy.
The steam has come out of inflation, and it's time
for him to give some relief, just as he's put
(01:41):
a lot of pressure on firms and farms and households
up until this point. I think, as medicine's working, we
just got to make sure we don't kill the patient
in the process. And as you point out, that non
tradable figure of zero point nine for the quarter, now
non tradable was five point eight last time, it is
(02:02):
five point four this quarter. That's the annual figure, but
the quarterly figure for non tradables now down to zero
point nine. What that means is that we're really taking
the speed so that if you ever go over the
last year, there's still a lot of inflation in that period.
But right now non tradable is coming south very rapident,
(02:23):
and that means that you know, you can see that
the inflationary steam has come out of the economy.
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Well, you can't strong arm the governor of the Reserve Bank.
What can you do about local body authorities? They're just
running a muck with rate rises, And of course they
will say that it's all your fault because central government
is abdicating responsibilities to them. But we're seeing some local
authorities with rises in excess of twenty percent. That's not sustainable.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Well, how many local authorities have taken it upon themselves
to the treaty and everything that they do that's out
of control and adds huge cost. How many local authorities
have decided that quite up from the government having an
emission's trading scheme and a zero carbonat and a climate
(03:12):
change commission, they also need to run their own little
climate fiefdom. That's out of control. And if you look
at what the government's doing more generally in both those areas,
we're saying that your job is to give everyone the
same services based on need, not race, and actually climate
(03:34):
change that is something the central government is dealing with
you don't need to have your own parallel plan. The
best embodiment of that is Mark Cameron's Members Bill that's
got a lot of coverage in the last week. He's
put up a bill that would say to councilors, look,
central Government's got climate you don't need to bother yourselves
with making your own parallel plan because that's just duplication
(03:56):
and bureaucracy.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Other things to cover off. The government is no longer
on track to meet its third emission's budget. Okay, so
does that mean we're going to have a pine tree
planting frenzy to get ourselves out of the stock, Well.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
A couple of things. Just look at why that's happened.
Number one, I've actually reviewed the methodology of how they
measure emissions, so in some ways they've said that the
amount of emissions has always been higher under the previous government.
And this one, the second thing is probably the biggest
single contributor to the change is actually they point Smelter
(04:37):
continuing the previous emission reduction plan factored in ty closing
and freeing up a whole lot of low carbon electricity
for the rest of New Zealand. Actually the fact that
New Zealand is producing some of the purest, lowest carbon
aluminium in the world is a good thing in terms
of global climate change efforts. So I don't think that
(05:02):
we should see us as being quite as bad as
I'm sure some media outlets will try to paint it. Nonetheless,
with our focus on mess emissions, which is what the
Zero Carbon Act requires the government to do. I might
add that Act would get rid of the Zero carbonac
but unfortunately, fortunately or unfortunately in a coalition government, we
(05:23):
have to follow that law. And yes, that means if
you can't reduce the gross emissions in New Zealand as
much as the law suggests, then your options are either
plant more trees, or borrow or buy more carbon credits overseas.
Neither of those are particularly politically attractive. I think the
(05:45):
main issue will be, from this government's point of view,
making sure that that tree planting has a minimal effect
on the communities where people have been saying for a
long time that's all fine, but you can't eat wood
and tree saplants don't go to the local primary school.
(06:05):
So those conversions are killing our community. We understand that,
and that will be built into the way the government
goes about mitigations.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
Now you talked about getting bogged down with the Treaty
of White Tonguey and having to do this, that and
the other to plicate all sorts of people. I was
pleased to see you come out and say, when it
comes to FARMAC, let's kick that, not kick the treaty
to touch, but put it to one side and just
try and get the best health outcome for all New Zealanders.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well that's right, and there's a couple of things about this.
The previous government said that FARMAC had to on bed
the treaty and everything that they did. I've written a
new Expectations letter and said, I know that's what Ei
chever Al, the Labor Minister, told you to do. I
don't think it's appropriate to do that, and you need
to stop. We've got a great chair of FARMAC and
(06:56):
Paula Bennett who's one hundred percent committed to making sure
that happens. And I think it's absolutely critical that we
start promoting a simple idea of universal human rights, one
real world that we can all join hands problem solve
on and stop making everything about race. And the second
thing about removing the racial leans is that it actually
(07:18):
allows you to drill down to the practical reasons why
people have different outcomes. As people say, Mari don't live
as long, and that's true so far as it goes.
But why we need to drill down to things like
poor quality housing. Well, it doesn't matter what your racial
background is. If you live in poorly ventilated housing, you're
more likely to have respiratory illnesses. And what we need
(07:38):
to do is not look at a person and say
what color are you? But actually, can we fix your
house or can we change the housing market so it's
easier to build high quality homes with less crazy regulations,
and another way could look at it. So look, we're
taking a practical problem solving approach based on universal humanity.
And I know that there'll be a lot of noise
about that, but it's got to be done.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
A couple to finish on Minister Helen Clark and former
National and act leader Don Brash a none too please
with Christopher Luxen's commentary on the US China Well it
struggles not the right word, but there's a lot of
geo political tension between those two countries. Was he almost
(08:20):
seems to be taking a pro American stance is that
right or wrong? Do we risk biting the hand that
feeds us?
Speaker 2 (08:29):
Well, I think you've got be a little bit practical
about this. I mean, they've given quite a major reaction,
but the reality is that the previous labor government was
in discussions about UGUS. Technically, we haven't actually been invited
to join it or accepted membership of Pillar two of Aucus.
This government's basically just continued what the previous government was doing.
(08:52):
The other thing is, you know, I've met Helen and
I'm actually secret admirer of Helen Clark. I have know
and Don for many years. I stood for election with
him in twenty eleven, and both of them on this
issue are strangely a moral So yep, they will treat
(09:12):
China as though it's just another country in Americas, it's
just another country. Forgetting that one of them, no matter
how imperfect, is actually a democracy that's having an election
right now and does actually have in its constitution a
commitment to human rights that they do their best to uphold.
The other one is not a democracy and does not
(09:35):
have a good track record of respecting human rights. And
it seems strange that Helen Clark and Don Brash too
passionately moralistic, people who have stood for causes, sometimes at
great personal cost, are curiously amorl about this particular issue.
Speaker 1 (09:54):
It's been a fascinating week in US politics. You could
not write a script, should I say, like the Trump
assassination attempt.
Speaker 2 (10:05):
I did no one to believe it, No, no.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
One would believe it. And it was like scenes from
a movie. I was going to say, a B grade
Hollywood movie. But when you look at that e regima
frame with Trump walking down the stairs first rays the
American flag in the background, that's kind of a grade.
That vision will last for years and years and years,
(10:27):
and he's going to waltz into the White House come November.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Well, that's what some people like to say that I
was reading the Act newsletter, a Free Press, which I
highly recommend people to subscribe to. Some people say it's
for the best political newsletter out there. That just made
the point. But sometimes you get really unexpected changes and
swerves and elections. You take the New Zealand election in
(10:53):
twenty seventeen, and some people listening they remember when Materia
Tore actually declared herself to be a benefit Thodster. Now
you would think that would be bad for your polling,
but she ran for the Green so it shot up
and that came at a cost to labor, so they
then panicked and dumped their leader seven weeks before an election.
(11:14):
You would think that would be a disaster, but they
got to Cinder and one hundred billion dollars later, we're
still dealing with the impact of that changed to New
Zealand's history. I would suspect that there'll be a few
more twists and turns and totally unpredictable events before the
selection's over, So I wouldn't assume that it's game, set
(11:35):
and match just yet.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Okay, I'm really looking forward to the vice presidential debate,
if indeed there is one, between Kamala Harris and the
Trump clone JD. Vanes.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Yeah, he's a curious character, isn't he. I loved his book, Hellbiliology.
It was a beautiful read and had a real honesty
about it that I haven't really followed him in the
eight years since. He does seem to have an ability
to change his position and be all things to all
people at the right time, in the right place, and
in some ways that's innadirable quality. In other ways. It's
(12:10):
something that makes people a bit cautious.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
Hey, David Seymour is a bit like your coalition partner Winston.
Speaker 2 (12:17):
Well, you know we're all happy coalition partners. I couldn't possibly.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Come David Seymour act Party Leader, acting Prime Minister this week.
Thank you very much for your time on the country.
Appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
No, don't worry. Thanks Janney, you have a great day.
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