David Seymour: ACT Party leader on Winston Peters looking to repeal the Regulatory Standards Act

David Seymour isn't impressed with New Zealand First's promise to campaign on repealing ACT's Regulatory Standards bill. 

The Bill passed last Thursday - supported by New Zealand First, National and ACT - and became law two days ago. 

NZ First leader Winston Peters has since called it a 'terrible overreach' and 'not fit for a modern democracy'.

Seymour gave his opinion on this move. 

"People want to play politics - I mean, it's not even an election year yet."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
To the coalition. Winston Peters has done a bit of
a funny thing. He told Watier News today that he
plans to repeal the Regulatory Standards Bill.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
We did our best to neutralize its adversity effects, and
we will campaign in the neessolation to repeal it.

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Okay, But what's odd about it is that the bill
that he wants to repeal only passed two days ago,
and he actually voted to pass it. David Seymour was
the leader of the ACT Party. Hi, David, Hey, Heather, Okay,
what's going on here? Did he want something included in
the bill or excluded in the bill that he didn't
get that's caused him to go sour on it.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
No, we've worked pretty hard to try and find out
exactly what the objections are, and we're being prepared to
make changes. I thought some of them were actually positive,
and we included them, and then we passed the bill
because it's government policy. But I mean more fundamentally, this
country is tied up in red tape. We are poorer
than we would otherwise be. People have their lives destroyed

(00:58):
by stupid rules, such as a woman I wrote about
in the Post yesterday. She lost her life savings to
silly earthquake rules that should have been properly vetted before
they were made. The Regulatory Standards Bill is designed to
fix that the same way that the Reserve Bank Act
fixed out a control inflation and the Public Finance Act
fixed out a control debt back in the day. Now,

(01:20):
you know that's the objective here. It's quite serious stuff.
And yeah, people want to play politics. I mean it's
not even election here.

Speaker 1 (01:27):
Yeah, I mean, do you think that's what's going on.
He's passed it, happily passed it, and now he sees
an opportunity to play politics.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Yeah. Look, I don't know. I mean, you know where
actors at the moment is that we're basically been given
a job by the voters and the taxpayers at the
last election, and i'd like to think that we're doing it.
I mean, the most important thing the government's done today,
in my humble opinion, is announced that you're going to
be able to bring in groceries labeled in select foreign

(01:56):
countries using QR codes to add New zeal And additional information. Now,
if that stops you having to put silly stickers on
foreign goods as you sometimes see in the International Aisle.
It means you can get a wider range of groceries
into New Zealand. It might actually improve the prices we
pay by increasing competition, and that's the kind of thing
we're doing. May not set the world on fire, but

(02:18):
it might actually make a difference.

Speaker 1 (02:19):
Do you think the theory that you've expressed earlier today
is that you think that Winston Peters is preparing to
potentially go with labor after the election. Do you really
believe that?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Well, that's you know, that's the arm chair political commentators
views that the position that he's expressed is you know,
precisely the labor position, So you could speculate that. But
mean again, you know you've called me a policy nerd,
and I wear it proudly, Heather. I'm not really so
much into politics as policy, and what we're trying to

(02:52):
do is just make sure the policy settings are right
so people can get on in this country. I mean,
last night we passed legislation through Parliament fundamentally changed the
way early childhood centers are regulated because they've been fed
up with red tape.

Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, but I want to talk about your theory about
Winston going with labor. How do you rate the chances
of it.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Well, he's done it before, and a lot of what
this government is doing is fixing.

Speaker 1 (03:23):
It's very sober wrong because I think he's wrong.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Well, it would have been wrong if he had said
it in twenty seventeen, as we know, to our great
cost of about one hundred billion dollars. So you know
that it has happened before. And my message is that
the party will be campaigning to keep the government because
you see the other guys. If they get in a
lot of people will just be gone. And a guy
said it to me today. I said, mate, I'll probably

(03:47):
be on the seat next to you. And at the
same time, we need to make it better because while
I think the government has done a pretty good job
in very tough circumstances, the reason I'm in the party
is I always think that we need a bit more
ambition on the policy front.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
All right, David, thank you very much appreciated David Cebell,
Leader of the Act Party. For more from Hither Duplessy
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