David Seymour: Deputy Prime Minister on his withdrawn letter to the United Nations

David Seymour is standing by his letter to the UN - now withdrawn.

He wrote responding to an official who'd expressed concerns about the impact of Seymour's Regulatory Standards Bill on Māori.

The Prime Minister says that's a job for the Foreign Minister and Seymour's conceded it's better to a have a single Government response, led by Winston Peters.

Seymour says he still needs to work out how to undo the letter he sent.

"I'll probably have to go through Winston, he probably doesn't want me to write direct to the UN again - I think that would probably miss the whole point of the exercise." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bryan Bridge, shit havever you turn from? David Seymour Today,
after writing an impassioned letter back to the UN over
the weekend defending the Regulatory Standards Bill, the Minister has
been reigned in by the Prime Minister and reminded basically
whose boss as in the Foreign Minister.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
Winston Peters, as our Minister Foreign Affairs, he holds the
relationship with the United Nations. He will have a comprehensive
reply in due course with the United Nations that the letter.
I think all of us in government can read the
letter and say, hey, it's total bunkum.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
Turns out Winston Peters asked David for a meeting on
the whole thing yesterday.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well, I went to find out.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
I had to talk with David about who is responsible,
how it works, and this is a matter of experience
here it's called a parmacy.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Davin't seen what is the Deputy Prime Minister with me tonight?
Home Minister, Hey, Ryan, how are you doing good? Thank you?
Did Winston just tell reporters you're the inexperienced one or
are we reading Are we reading into this too much?

Speaker 3 (00:57):
I think everyone's reading far too much into it. There's
lots of people in the media, and I'm sad to
count you among them that seem to have a fantasy
that this is some huge conflict that I've been rained
in and making a U turn. Lets be very clear,
I absolutely stand by the letter. In fact, what I'm
hearing from people is actually they love the letter and

(01:18):
kind of would love to say that to the UN.
In terms of the practicalities of it, I was under
the impression that we should reply to the parts of
the letter that related to our particular responsibilities in my
case regulation. Winston came and said, look, really I need
to respond on behalf of the government, myself as the
Minister of Foreign Affairs. I said that's absolutely fine, and

(01:42):
subsequently caught up with course, who I think is fair
to say loves the letter too. He said that what
the UN wrote was buncom but it's just a matter
of who replies and what sequence and out. I'm a
bit too efficient to answering my correspondence.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
So there's no You say, there's no U tune, But
did you unsend the letter?

Speaker 3 (02:01):
Well, I will, But in terms of what the messages,
the same message is going out. It's just a matter
of formating.

Speaker 1 (02:08):
Who's sending it. But so how do you undersend a letter?

Speaker 3 (02:12):
Well, I still got to work that out. Of course,
I just got it. I got a check that I'll
probably have to go through Winston because you know, he
probably doesn't want me to write direct to the U N. Again,
I think that would probably miss the whole point of
the exercise. So look, I've sought that out. But the
end of the day, you know, everyone in our governments
united on one thing that what the UN wrote to

(02:33):
us was well what a what did Chris A bunkhem?
And we got to send a response. And I said
to Winston, look, I don't mind pulling my letter back
as long as the one you eventually write makes the
same points. And he said to me, you won't be disappointed.
So I'm looking forward to seeing that.

Speaker 1 (02:47):
You all agree on the substance of it. It's just
about who's pushing the button, who's hitting Zeen.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, yeah, and there's and there's one other thing that
bear in mind that you know, the UN letter actually
targeted about five different ministers, so he wants to get
together everybody's and put it in one response, which is fine.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
And the coalition agreement between New Zealand first and Nationals.
I mean, anyway, it was quite wide ranging, very quickly.
While we've got you Lux and the Prime Ministration say
said yesterday he thinks the idea of a regulatory standards
bill is good. He said, ah, regulatory standards bill and
talked about improvements. You know, would be silly not to
make the changes. He doesn't seem totally convinced of the bill.

(03:26):
What exactly have you guys agreed to. Is that is
the bill as you want it? Or is it the
bill as it ends up?

Speaker 3 (03:33):
Well, it's the bill as I would like to see it,
because this is the commitment from the other two parties
to act. There's things that those guys want to do
that we support. If we're honest, we probably all come
to the government were slightly different views. X thinks that
the biggest basic problem we have in this country is
too much red tape and regulation. That's why it's hard

(03:55):
to build your supermarket, it's hard to build homes, hard
to open a bank account. I mean, it all comes
back to too much red tape. At the end of
the day, it pushes up the cost of everything. So
so it's fair to say this is that this is
our drive but ultimately and are committed to in the
agreement the Regulatory Standards Bill, but of course you know

(04:16):
we we we there will be changes. There's changes to
every bill that's ever been through Parliament and history, but
we're pretty clear that there's some core principles that need
to be there to get strong.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
You're going to bring the government down over.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
It, well, I can't imagine that they would reneg on
the deal and make that necessary. So I can't. I
can't see them putting them in that position. Every other
coalition commitment to date has been kept and I would
expect that. You know what that brings to the table
is we've got to get serious about regulation in this country.

(04:49):
We're going to solve other problems and you know that's
that's what we expect our partners to be serious about too.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
David Act, Leader, Minister of Regulation, Deputy Prime Minister.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
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Speaker 1 (05:02):
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