The Country 28/04/25: David Seymour talks to Jamie Mackay

The Act Party Leader and soon-to-be Deputy PM defends banks, talks about Trump and tariffs, and says that Act favours more dairy conversions. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
David Seymour as the act Party leader soon to be
Deputy Prime Minister. We talked to him a couple of
weeks ago and suggested that he might want to get
out of the naughty chair and be a good boy
when he gets the second top job in the country. David,
I want to start with Banks if I can, before
I talk about the topic du jour, which is dairy
conversions shock horror headline on the Herald website this morning.

(00:22):
Seymour sides with Banks. Is that like Trump siding with Putin?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
No. I think the fact that you'd compare New Zealanders
who work in the banking sector with a murderous dictator
probably tells you everything you need to know.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I was being facetious. I was being facetious.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
You are, but it's interesting that's the comparison you chose,
and I think we all got to take a deep
beef here. I mean, first of all, not many people
will have read the article because it only came out
an hour ago, and a lot of people have to
work a lot of our supporters anyway, And what it
basically says is I asked the Ministry for Regulation, what's
your take on banking capital rules. They came back with

(01:08):
a whole lot of Franklin rubbish that it was all
nothing to see here, and it's fine. I talked to
a few people who happen to know a bit more
about it, and they said, well, I can see why
they'd say that, but here's what they're missing. So I
told the ministry to go back and talk to some
people that know a bit more about it. And occasionally
the bureaucrats are wrong, in fact, actually quite frequently, and

(01:31):
my job is ultimately the buckstops of me to tell
them that's all there is to the story as far
as the politics goes. As far as the practicalities, these
capital ratios, particularly on some lending too high. They're a
product of the Adrian or era. They need to be
made lower. And that's exactly what Nikola willis, our Minister

(01:52):
of Finance, is now doing.

Speaker 1 (01:54):
And apologies to the banks for comparing them to putin, Yes,
those capital holding requirements are too high and that needs
to be changed. Okay, I'll stick with Trump for a moment.
Do you think he's going to walk back this tariff
trade war?

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, what he does is obviously up to him. I'm
always careful to make the point. I'm not here to
tell and other countries elected government what to do, but
I mean, it seems to me that the most powerful
force in the world right now is the markets. And
it's a good reminder that you'll catch all flies with
honey than vinegar. You can lead a horse to water

(02:31):
that you can't make them drink. Ultimately, any government needs
to govern in a way that maintains confidence for investors
in their economy. This applies to the New Zealand government too.
If you do crazy things like just suddenly banning oil
and gas exploration, or cracking down on farmers with crazy
winter grazing laws, or whatever it is that you're doing,

(02:53):
then people lose their confidence to invest in, including in
government bonds. And when the US Treasury bill rate goes
up from four percent to half a percent, well it
doesn't sound like much, but when you've got ten trillion
worth a hof dear, then half a percent is quite
quite expensive, and they, of course will be We're pretty

(03:16):
worried about that. So I suspect that that will have
an effect on any leader in any economy.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Okay, topic is your topic of the day. What does
act have to say about more dairy conversions because that
is being floated at the moment. You are the Party
of Free Enterprise.

Speaker 2 (03:34):
David Seymour, Well, my first question is who owns the land.
If it belongs to you and you've got the water rights,
I think you should be able to do it. Of course,
you know we're replacing the Resource Management Act with the
laws that will set environmental bottom lines. You're not going

(03:54):
to get away with it from that, and no out
of who's in government. But basically, if you own the
land and you can comply with the regulations, which are
going to be a lot more straightforward under the new REMA,
then I think you should be allowed to do it. Frankly,
I don't think it's a politician's job to tell people
what they should be doing. If I knew what kind

(04:16):
of farming to invest in, or if I knew what
to invest in, generally, probably wouldn't be doing this job.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
The COVID inquiry, we got it badly wrong, didn't we not.
The initial response, I think everyone agrees that was pretty good,
or as good as it could be. We didn't have
a blueprint for that, But come twenty twenty one we
cocked it up completely. When I say, we just Cinder
and Co And Grant Robertson, especially when it came to
locking down Auckland.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, well, I was just going to pull you up
on your misuse of pronouns there. It wasn't you me
or your good listeners. It was those muppets in the
New Zealand, first Greens and Labor and then ultimately just
the labor government who really had no sense of where
the boundary was between COVID problems and other problems like

(05:06):
education and mental health and businesses being able to operate.
And they were totally disproportionate in their use of force.
They did things that didn't actually make sense. They weren't
proportionate to the risk. They didn't take up new technologies rapidly.
So when rapid entergen testing came out, for example, not
only did they not adopt it, they actually banned people
from importing technologies that it could have been helpful. And

(05:30):
then they trampled all over civil liberties because COVID just
became everything, almost in obsession. And of course eventually we
got to the stage where there were two countries in
an isolation block, the only two countries left in isolation.
One of them was a communist dictatorship, and the other

(05:50):
one was called China.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
Okay, all right, David Seymore, thank you very much for
your time. But we were kind while we were doing it.
Now I'm duly scolded for being mean to the banks.
Take that one on the chin.

Speaker 2 (06:01):
Thanks for your time, Hey, no worries, Jamie. And and
it's a good point where you know, you start pulling
down the banks then and then it's the supermarkets, and
it just reminds me of when everyone was pulling down
the farmers. If you have that attitude, it's only a
matter of time before it comes back to you.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
No, the banks and the supermarkets are richer than the farmers.

Speaker 2 (06:18):
All leave.

Speaker 1 (06:19):
It's at that game, real tall poppy echoe like you
later say.