The Country 18/05/26: David Seymour talks to Jamie Mackay

The Deputy PM is not impressed by his predecessor Winston's plan to buy the BNZ, plus he applauds Education Minister Erica Stanford cracking the whip on NCEA.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's the act party leader and Deputy Prime Minister as
predecessor in the Deputy PM role, wants to buy the
ben Z. David Seymour, You're always up for a good idea,
Is this one of them?

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Well, I always give every idea that the consideration it deserves.
Let's put it that way. But it's really not clear
other than a political signal to people are feeling pretty
fuzzled after the last six years, and this feels like
we're all going to do something together and take control
of something. So I understand that emotional appeal, but as

(00:34):
soon as you start asking basic questions it all falls apart.
I mean, first of all, it's not actually for sale.
We have closer economic relations agreements signed with Australia's government
that is the underpinning of our whole economy, a common
economy with Australia, and if we were to start breaching

(00:56):
that by forcing the sale of a bank that's owned
by an Australian company, then we would be in all
sorts of trouble. So the alternative would be to just
pay whatever they want to sell it to us, which
I'm sure the Ausies wud be laughing all the way
well all the way to the bank, I suppose. And
then there's the fact, even if you could buy it,

(01:16):
they want to merge it with Kiwi Bank. Well, everyone
else is trying to increase the number of competitors that
actually be four banks instead of five banks in the
market all of a sudden. And then there's the problem
that if the taxpayer owns it, they need politicians to
do the management for them. So it might sound like
a good idea now and it's going to make a

(01:38):
profit and pay it back at all the rest. But
hang on a second. This is a democracy. The left
will get back into power. I don't relish that, but
I'd rather have a democracy that changes from time to
time and live in a dictatorship. And you're going to
see at some point is Chloe Swarbrick like characters appointing
the board, writing the letter of expectation from the government

(02:00):
as a shareholder to the bank. And they'll be doing a
whole lot of things that the politicians of the day
want them to do, losing money, and none of us
will seem very braces be a little bit like here
in New Zealand without the planes.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
I guess why you have put up a good argument
to convince Winston. Otherwise, mind you, he could always get
the twenty or thirty billion or whatever it's going to
hypothetically cost and just pump that into key We Bank,
make it a kick ass bank. They would give it
a bit of capital.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
If you wanted to achieve the goal. That would be
a simpler and smarter way of doing the same thing.
But even then, Keywi Bank's been around for twenty years.
It was supposed to introduce competition. It really hasn't done that.
And I don't think anyone today thinks that we have
great banking because Keywibank introduce competition. I suspect that reality

(02:52):
things are what they are, and if anything can be changed,
it's the amount of red tape and regulation that hold
people that has made us poorer than we need to
be because it's so damn hard to do anything. If
you fix that, you get a bit more competitive economy.
All of a sudden things start to look better. But
this kind of meddling, you know, it's a few months

(03:13):
back we had Winston trying to tell farmers what to
do with the Fonterra sale, and of course ninety percent
of farmer's vote it the other way. And I think
there's a bit of a pattern emerging here about what
sounds good in the political marketplace and what actually works
in the commercial marketplace.

Speaker 1 (03:29):
So you don't agree with one of your coalition partners,
Winston on buying the Bends editor is a bit of
a hair brain scheme as well, if you ask me,
a bit of a populist policy, though heading into the
election it may not harm us chances. Now do you
know who I reckon is a really good and effective minister.
She's not in your party. She's in the National Party,

(03:49):
Erica Stanford. I reckon she's doing great work in education.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, I tend to agree with that. If you look
at the changes to the curriculum, to the teaching approach
to the nca these are things that ACTS has actually backed.
I mean, changing the history curriculum was one of the
things we assisted on and that's been done really well.
I think that the NCAA has been a bit of
a wet week for a very long time. And having

(04:16):
an exam having grades from ABCD and having subjects that
you have to do numeracy, you have to do literacy,
you have to do science. It really represents the kind
of shift that we hoped would happen if the government changed.
But ultimately, the number one measure of New Zealand's future

(04:38):
success is how many children went to school today. And
I'm really pleased to see attendants going up to by
the way, But then what have they learned? How much
knowledge was passed from one generation to the next in
order to ensure that the next generation are equipped to
handle way of a challenges.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
Hey David, they're all turning up to school to get
some of your nutritious three dollar lunches.

Speaker 2 (04:58):
You realize that, or they are, and they also know
that there's going to be hundreds of millions of dollars
less government debt when they graduate because I've managed to
have the price of it.

Speaker 1 (05:10):
David Seymour, thanks for your time, and we'll take the
ben Z off the drawing board.

Speaker 2 (05:15):
I think that would probably be a good thing for
the taxpayer and the bank customer in the long term