Heather du Plessis-Allan: David Seymour and the UN letter

I’m as interested as anyone on this mystery about whether David Seymour is in trouble over the letter he sent to the UN. 

Whether the media reporting is right that the Prime Minister gave Seymour a telling off, or whether David was right that it was just a nice chat, or whether the media reporting is right that Winston is cross with David for sending the letter, or whether David’s right that Winston is fine and is basically going to send the same letter again, or whether Winston is right when he says that’s not true – I’m as interested as you are in what the truth is. 

But regardless of whether David is in trouble, he was right when he called the letter "presumptive, condescending, and wholly misplaced". 

I personally think he did us a favour giving the UN a slap-down for piping up on the Regulatory Standards Bill with their letter, which started the chain of correspondence. 

In particular, what the UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples got wrong is his assertion that the bill fails to uphold indigenous rights guaranteed in the Treaty, including partnership. 

There is no partnership guarantee. It’s not in the Treaty. It was a judge's comment in the mid 80's and was subsequently misinterpreted to mean partnership. 

He apparently also claims Māori have been excluded form consultation, which is again not true, because we’ve just had a full week of select committee hearings which included submission from Māori. 

Both of these facts could’ve been discovered with a simple Google search. 

Unfortunately for the UN this makes the case, again, for the thing being scaled back to what it was originally set up for: preventing WWIII. 

They should get out of everything else —climate change, indigenous rights, advocating for wealth taxes— because it’s gone way beyond its original remit. 

It's too political and it's frankly not very good at any of it. Just look at the fact that it hasn’t stopped climate change. 

So thank you to David Seymour for giving the UN a well overdue slap-down. 

Even if he wasn’t really supposed to. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm as interested as anyone about this mystery as to
where the David Seymour is in fact in trouble over
the letter that he sent to the UN. Whether the
media reporting is right that the Prime Minister gave David
a telling off, or whether David is right that it
was actually just a nice chat. Whether the media reporting
is right that Winston is crossed with David for sending
the letter, where the David's right that Winston is not
crossing is basically going to send the same letter again,

(00:21):
or where the Winston is right when he says that's
not true what David said. I'm as interested as you
are and what the truth actually is. But regardless of
whether David is in trouble, can we just agree amongst
ourselves that he was right when he gave the UN
a slap down and called the letter presumptive, condescending and
wholly misplaced. What they did was they piped up on
the Regulatory Standards Bill, this is the UN and they

(00:42):
sent a letter to us right which started the chain
of correspondence. And what the UN Special Rapperteur on the
Rights of Indigenous People got wrong, especially is his assertion
that the bill fails to uphold indigenous rights guaranteed in
the treaty, including partnership. There is no partnership guarantee in
the treaty. It was a judge's comment that was made

(01:03):
in the Midates. It was subsequently misinterpreted to now mean partnership.
He apparently this is the Rapperteur apparently also claims that
Maori have been excluded from consultation, which again is not
true because we've just had a full week of consultation
through Select Committee hearings and that included its submissions from
Yeah you guessed it, Mari. Both of these facts could

(01:24):
have been discovered with a simple Google search. Unfortunately for
the UN, they didn't do it, and it just makes
the case again for the thing, this being the UN
being scaled back to what it was originally set up for,
which was preventing World War three and getting out of
everything else, getting out of climate change, getting out of
indigenous rights, getting out of advocating for things like wealth taxes.
It has gone the UN way beyond its original remit.

(01:46):
It is now too political and frankly not very good
at what it's doing. Just look at the fact that
it's been harping on about climate change forever and have
we stopped it? No, climate change is just accelerating. So
thank you to David Seymour for giving the UN a
well overdue slap down, even if he wasn't supposed to.
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