February 15, 2025 • 6 mins
It's been a big week for ACT's David Seymour - who's been in and out of the news after a series of scandals.
Last Sunday, it was revealed Seymour wrote a letter to police in support of Philip Polkinghorne during the investigation of the death of the former surgeon's wife.
Later, Seymour found himself in trouble after he drove a Land Rover up Parliament's steps - and had to stop after authorities claimed he was breaking the rules.
Newstalk ZB political editor Jason Walls says this isn't a good look for Prime Minister Chris Luxon.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And Time to Talk Local Politics Now and I'm joined
to buy news Talk ZDB political editor Jason Wall's good morning, Jason.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Oh, good morning, right, David Seymour.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's been a week for him, hasn't it. There's been
a letter the landroma the school lunches, let's all go.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It is all go.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I mean, I mean, I'm struggling to remember all of
it because there has been such a long string of
activities in David Seymour's log book this week. And yeah,
it started off with the polking Horn letter and then
that story was released by The Herald's last Saturday or
Sunday over the weekend last week. Then at the Prime
Minister's post cabinet press conference he said that that letter
(00:48):
was ill advised. Then David Seymour went on to Orange
Z to say that Chris Luxon calling it ill advised
was in and of itself ill advised. And you don't
usually hear a minister talk about the Prime minister like that. Basically,
if you're a minister, everything the Prime Minister says is
corre all the time, no exceptions, but the difference is
(01:10):
David Seymour is a politician from a different party in
a coalition, so the rules are a little bit different.
But both of them played it down, saying it was
just a little bit of a you know, this is
just MMP politics, this is just how it works. And
of course as this was playing out, we had the
land rover up the front steps of Parliament, which is
the dumbest story that I think I've covered for a while,
but it was still quite rather entertaining because you know,
(01:32):
if you asked me guess two hundred things that are
going to happen this week, I wouldn't have guessed that
I would have needed thousands of guesses to get to
that point. But anyway it happened. It dominated quite a
lot of the discourse during question time this week, with
Speaker Jerry brownly having to stand up and essentially say
that David Seymour had offered somewhat of an apology, and
he actually had to come into bat for the security
(01:53):
guard who David Seymour basically said that it was his
fault for coming up and telling him to stop coming
up the steps of Parliament. So one heck of a
week for David Seymour and the coalition government.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
How does his behavior and LUs inability to do anything
about it and picked the Prime Minister in his reputation.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Well, I mean, looking at it from the outside in,
it kind of does look a little bit unstable. You've
got somebody that's ill disciplined sort of running around and
saying and doing exactly what they want. But you've got
to look at this quite holistically, and this is what
I think is the probably the Prime Minister's greatest achievement
is crafting these coalition agreements so it's not just about
a gray blob of three parties coming together and losing
(02:36):
their identities. The Prime Minister has been very careful to
let Act be Act, to let New Zealand First be
New Zealand First. And if that means that they act
a little bit differently than a National Party minister, that
is okay because it means these parties still retain a
sense of identity and when it comes to the next election,
they'll still have a good voter base because they didn't
lose the core of who they were.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
However, I do.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Think that this is the first time that we've seen
this go too far and the Prime Minister will be
probably behind the scenes quite annoyed because it seems like
he's been giving David Seymour an inch and he's been
taking one or two miles.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And of course he's going to become our deputy Prime
Minister midway through this year. Do you think you'll rain
himself in a little bit? I do.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I do actually think that. I mean, he's got to
be a statesman, not a stuntsman when he gets to
that point in the political cycle. And you know, like
for the most part, David Seymour is extremely good at
being a statesman. It's just every once in a while
he lets the veil slip and I think that he's
going to have to probably rain that in in saying that.
Everybody thought that Winston Peters was going to be a
(03:41):
little bit of a rogue agent when he was in
the Deputy Prime Minster role, but he's been anything but.
I mean, Winston Peters is essentially the best foreign Minister
that New Zealand has ever had, and he continues that
over into his role as Deputy Prime Minister as well.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Jason. We also saw this week Nicola Willis say she's
keen to see the grocery market open up, but we
don't really have any seat plan or anything to do that.
It was a little bit sort of hypothetical. Hey, we've
got a proposal, bring it to me, Well, see what
we can do.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, yeah, I mean her speech was pretty wishy wash
in that sense. We were expecting an announcement of some
sort or some moving the dial in terms of what's happening,
but it was basically just her repeating her rhetoric about
the fact that she doesn't think that the supermarket sector
is competitive. And we already knew that because the Commerce
Commission had decided that it wasn't competitive. In fact, they
(04:30):
didn't decide that they found evidence to suggest that this
was the fact. So Nikola Willis was essentially just saying
she would like to see another entrant into that market.
The news that we did get is that she had
been approached by another supermarket entity. Now she wouldn't say
what that is, only that they're in discussions. But to
be honest, if it were to actually do something tangible
(04:52):
about the duopoly in New Zealand and do something tangible
about the prices people pay at the supermarket, that would
have to be a massive player. It would have to
be somebody big enough to shake up the system, or
else it just seriously wouldn't have much of an impact
at all.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You mentioned Foreign Minister Winston Peters just before. Of course,
he's been very focused this week on the Cook Islands
signing a deal with China. A little bit of a
diplomatic crown here. Do we know anything more about this agreement?
Speaker 3 (05:21):
We at this stage no. I mean Mark Brown, who
is the Cook Island's Prime Minister, went over to China.
He didn't consult with New Zealand before signing this cooperation
agreement with them, and basically that's where we've left it.
We've almost been waiting in limbo over the last couple
of days. Now Winston Peters probably knows more now. The
last time we spoke to him about this was on Thursday,
so he probably has some more information and we'll be
(05:43):
looking to probe into that this week to see what
more that we know. But the problem here is the
Cook Islands is such a strong partner of New Zealand.
There's such a they're not technically an ally, the only
technical ally that we have as Australia, but they're a
very very close partner. The fact that they're going away
and doing deals with China and not consulting US or
essentially letting New Zealand knows what happened, letting New Zealand
(06:05):
to knowing what happened is quite concerning. And this is
part of a wire to push from China into the
Pacific in terms of they're looking at this charm offensive
to get more influence in the region. At the same time,
the US is really looking to step up its involvement
in the region as well. So we're seeing the first
steps in the sort of soft power battle. In fact,
(06:26):
we've seen actually no scratch that we've been seeing soft
steps for quite some time. This is just another escalation
on that front.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Jason Wolves, thanks so much for your time. Enjoy the
rest of your Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDB.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
And Time to Talk Local Politics Now and I'm joined
to buy news Talk ZDB political editor Jason Wall's good morning, Jason.
Speaker 3 (00:18):
Oh, good morning, right, David Seymour.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
It's been a week for him, hasn't it. There's been
a letter the landroma the school lunches, let's all go.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
It is all go.
Speaker 3 (00:28):
I mean, I mean, I'm struggling to remember all of
it because there has been such a long string of
activities in David Seymour's log book this week. And yeah,
it started off with the polking Horn letter and then
that story was released by The Herald's last Saturday or
Sunday over the weekend last week. Then at the Prime
Minister's post cabinet press conference he said that that letter
(00:48):
was ill advised. Then David Seymour went on to Orange
Z to say that Chris Luxon calling it ill advised
was in and of itself ill advised. And you don't
usually hear a minister talk about the Prime minister like that. Basically,
if you're a minister, everything the Prime Minister says is
corre all the time, no exceptions, but the difference is
(01:10):
David Seymour is a politician from a different party in
a coalition, so the rules are a little bit different.
But both of them played it down, saying it was
just a little bit of a you know, this is
just MMP politics, this is just how it works. And
of course as this was playing out, we had the
land rover up the front steps of Parliament, which is
the dumbest story that I think I've covered for a while,
but it was still quite rather entertaining because you know,
(01:32):
if you asked me guess two hundred things that are
going to happen this week, I wouldn't have guessed that
I would have needed thousands of guesses to get to
that point. But anyway it happened. It dominated quite a
lot of the discourse during question time this week, with
Speaker Jerry brownly having to stand up and essentially say
that David Seymour had offered somewhat of an apology, and
he actually had to come into bat for the security
(01:53):
guard who David Seymour basically said that it was his
fault for coming up and telling him to stop coming
up the steps of Parliament. So one heck of a
week for David Seymour and the coalition government.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
How does his behavior and LUs inability to do anything
about it and picked the Prime Minister in his reputation.
Speaker 3 (02:12):
Well, I mean, looking at it from the outside in,
it kind of does look a little bit unstable. You've
got somebody that's ill disciplined sort of running around and
saying and doing exactly what they want. But you've got
to look at this quite holistically, and this is what
I think is the probably the Prime Minister's greatest achievement
is crafting these coalition agreements so it's not just about
a gray blob of three parties coming together and losing
(02:36):
their identities. The Prime Minister has been very careful to
let Act be Act, to let New Zealand First be
New Zealand First. And if that means that they act
a little bit differently than a National Party minister, that
is okay because it means these parties still retain a
sense of identity and when it comes to the next election,
they'll still have a good voter base because they didn't
lose the core of who they were.
Speaker 1 (02:58):
However, I do.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
Think that this is the first time that we've seen
this go too far and the Prime Minister will be
probably behind the scenes quite annoyed because it seems like
he's been giving David Seymour an inch and he's been
taking one or two miles.
Speaker 2 (03:11):
And of course he's going to become our deputy Prime
Minister midway through this year. Do you think you'll rain
himself in a little bit? I do.
Speaker 3 (03:20):
I do actually think that. I mean, he's got to
be a statesman, not a stuntsman when he gets to
that point in the political cycle. And you know, like
for the most part, David Seymour is extremely good at
being a statesman. It's just every once in a while
he lets the veil slip and I think that he's
going to have to probably rain that in in saying that.
Everybody thought that Winston Peters was going to be a
(03:41):
little bit of a rogue agent when he was in
the Deputy Prime Minster role, but he's been anything but.
I mean, Winston Peters is essentially the best foreign Minister
that New Zealand has ever had, and he continues that
over into his role as Deputy Prime Minister as well.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Jason. We also saw this week Nicola Willis say she's
keen to see the grocery market open up, but we
don't really have any seat plan or anything to do that.
It was a little bit sort of hypothetical. Hey, we've
got a proposal, bring it to me, Well, see what
we can do.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, yeah, I mean her speech was pretty wishy wash
in that sense. We were expecting an announcement of some
sort or some moving the dial in terms of what's happening,
but it was basically just her repeating her rhetoric about
the fact that she doesn't think that the supermarket sector
is competitive. And we already knew that because the Commerce
Commission had decided that it wasn't competitive. In fact, they
(04:30):
didn't decide that they found evidence to suggest that this
was the fact. So Nikola Willis was essentially just saying
she would like to see another entrant into that market.
The news that we did get is that she had
been approached by another supermarket entity. Now she wouldn't say
what that is, only that they're in discussions. But to
be honest, if it were to actually do something tangible
(04:52):
about the duopoly in New Zealand and do something tangible
about the prices people pay at the supermarket, that would
have to be a massive player. It would have to
be somebody big enough to shake up the system, or
else it just seriously wouldn't have much of an impact
at all.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
You mentioned Foreign Minister Winston Peters just before. Of course,
he's been very focused this week on the Cook Islands
signing a deal with China. A little bit of a
diplomatic crown here. Do we know anything more about this agreement?
Speaker 3 (05:21):
We at this stage no. I mean Mark Brown, who
is the Cook Island's Prime Minister, went over to China.
He didn't consult with New Zealand before signing this cooperation
agreement with them, and basically that's where we've left it.
We've almost been waiting in limbo over the last couple
of days. Now Winston Peters probably knows more now. The
last time we spoke to him about this was on Thursday,
so he probably has some more information and we'll be
(05:43):
looking to probe into that this week to see what
more that we know. But the problem here is the
Cook Islands is such a strong partner of New Zealand.
There's such a they're not technically an ally, the only
technical ally that we have as Australia, but they're a
very very close partner. The fact that they're going away
and doing deals with China and not consulting US or
essentially letting New Zealand knows what happened, letting New Zealand
(06:05):
to knowing what happened is quite concerning. And this is
part of a wire to push from China into the
Pacific in terms of they're looking at this charm offensive
to get more influence in the region. At the same time,
the US is really looking to step up its involvement
in the region as well. So we're seeing the first
steps in the sort of soft power battle. In fact,
(06:26):
we've seen actually no scratch that we've been seeing soft
steps for quite some time. This is just another escalation
on that front.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Jason Wolves, thanks so much for your time. Enjoy the
rest of your Sunday.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it'd be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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