David Seymour: ACT Party leader responds to social media post shared by Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi

David Seymour's responding to a post evoking him as needing trimming like a lawn.

Te Pāti Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi re-shared his partner's post showing him cutting the grass.

The caption read: 'I told him to behave as though every piece of grass is a David Seymour. The lawns are getting a good effing hiding.'

Seymour says that's objectionable - with its suggestion of attacking a person you disagree with.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, David Seymour and Darbity won't two. It's all on again.

(00:03):
He's with us now, David, good afternoon, good evening, well.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Good evening, And actually it's not all on. One person
has made an objectionable comment. That's it. Okay, So what
to imply that most parties are somehow guilty of totally misleading?

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Okay, all right, well I'm sorry for misleading everybody. David,
what's your what's your what's your problem with this?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Well, look, I just make the point that if you
go out on social media and say that you know
you're mowing your lawns and you think that you're going
to treat the lawns like David Seymour and they need
a good hiding, or any other political figure or any person.
I just think if we all know, if I was

(00:51):
to say that about another politician, I'm sure it'd be
leading the news for three or four nights. But the
sad reality is that we now have a political party
in New Zealand that is race based but preaches violence.
This is not the first time that preaches racial supremacy,
and unfortunately we've all been giving them an easy pass

(01:15):
because we hold them to lower standards because imri and
it's horrible to say all that, but I don't know
how else you described the situation.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Can you not just sit back and have a laugh
and think, oh, he's just having a joke, you know,
like you did with the Ministry Pacific people's I mean
I looked at that and I thought, he's just having
a joke. That's kind of funny. I don't think David
Seymol is a terrorist. Do you think Narwity whit White
he's a murderer? No, So let's just have a laugh.
Move on.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I did it a bit of a plausibility question. If
your argument is that I was going to disinter a
guy from four hundred years ago who had a failed plots,
you know, there were many layers of irony in that,
and I disowned it as soon as I said it.
On the other hand, you know you've got someone who's saying, well,
I think a person should get a good hiding. That

(02:01):
actually is plausible as people out there that probably think
that they should attack people that they disagree with physically,
so that there is actually a big difference in plausibility.
One is so obviously ridiculous, it's the other ones not
I can.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
All right, let's move on very quickly. I want to
ask you, David, sorry, Christopher Luxen was asked over in
India overnight about the coalition of them willing to do
with Ukraine. I'm interested to know would you, as the
act Party. I know that you have been the party
in particular has been big in supporting Ukraine, support New
Zealand troops being on the ground, and in any way
that they can be supportive to some sort of peace resolution.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Well, a couple of things. First of all, there actually
has to be a post conflict situation, and then there
has to be a coalition at the moment. Neither of
those things are true. However, the New Zealand government has
been participating in discussions with a number of other militaries
twenty or thirty other militaries in Europe about what that

(02:59):
might like. Once there's a proposition on the table, then
I think we as a government can start to make
a decision about what that looks like. I think on balance,
you know, and this is not the government policy. We
haven't discussed this, but I think New Zealand is a
country that you cannot defend itself alone. We must rely

(03:20):
on collective security, defending ourselves in line with other countries
to share our values, and that of course means that
as we have in the past and two World Wars
and many other conflicts, it means that sometimes we must
join such coalitions. I just hate that there isn't one yet,
but that's been traditionally our stance as a country.

Speaker 1 (03:41):
David, thank you very much for your time. The party leader,
David C.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
Thank you for more from Hither Duplessy Alan Drive.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
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