Act Party leader David Seymour has taken issue with a joke by Te Pati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi about poisoning Seymour with karaka seeds. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Act Party leader David Seymour has taken issue with a joke by Te Pati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi about poisoning Seymour with karaka seeds. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Act Party leader David Seymour has taken issue with a joke by Te Pati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi about poisoning Seymour with karaka seeds.
During a session at Te Pāti Māori's annual conference, Waititi talked about his efforts to change some of the Westminster traditions of Parliament and then got distracted by a karaka seedpod necklace scratching his neck.
He told the audience the poisonous seeds were still in it.
"These are karaka berries and they've still got the poison in them. So next time I go into Parliament this is what I'm going to do. When David Seymour's not looking, I'm going to go like this into his water." He tapped a seed pod over an imaginary glass. "There you are, re-indigenise yourself with some native seeds."
The manner of delivery was comedic and everybody laughed, including his fellow co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer sitting next to him.
Waititi clearly had a belated awareness his joke might not be universally enjoyed. He added that he hoped it wasn't being livestreamed, and "if the man carks it, then we know what happened: Debbie poisoned him."
Asked what he thought, Seymour said he did have a sense of humour but questioned whether the joke was acceptable.
He said he was often accused of risking inviting extreme views or actions from those listening to his comments, regardless of how he intended them to come across, and the same could be said about what Waititi had said.
"The thing people always say is that the problem with what you're doing is how people will react to it.
Te Pati Māori co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer. Photo / Mark Mitchell
"So we are held to a standard to be careful about what we are saying, and to be careful about how the craziest person might respond to it.
"If they're going to say white people shouldn't live in New Zealand and joke about poisoning people, shouldn't they be held to the same standard?"
He pointed to Te Pāti Māori President John Tamihere's recent remarks on Māori TV that Act was "the white settler party and if they don't like it here, they should buy a one-way ticket to Australia."
"That was singling people out on racial lines and saying "if you don't like it you should go," and now someone else from the same party is saying "we are going to poison you," Seymour said.
"If this was a white supremacist saying it, people would be up in arms and perhaps they should be.
"I don't think it's acceptable for people to say you should leave the country or that we are going to poison you. Is this how we want to do politics?"
Tamihere said he had nothing to say about Waititi's joke "because that was definitely in the Kiwi vernacular of taking the mickey."
He did not regret the white settler comment, saying it was made in the context of Seymour's opposition to the Māori Health Authority.
"I do regret having to say that, but I don't regret it in the context of the conversation he is fronting. You have to fight fire with fire sometimes."
"When he's struggling to lift his vote then he attacks anything to do with any Māori involvement. In political discourse, I've got every right to call that out," Tamihere said;
Seymour had also taken aim at Tamihere at the Act party conference on Sunday over the white settler comment and had a dig at Labour's Willie Jackson, who had previously said of Seymour that while he was Māori "he's a useless one" - adding that what he meant was Seymour was "useless" at advocating for Māori.
In his speech, Seymour questioned Jackson's intentions as Broadcasting Minister around the new public media entity as TVNZ and RNZ merged, and then added "the thing about Willie Jackson is he's easy to laugh at, and it feels like a grown-up will take the keys away before he does any real damage."
Act and Te Pāti Māori MPs sit next to each in Parliament but have been at loggerheads over the issue of co-governance in areas such as the Three Waters reforms, health reforms, and Māori seats in local government and the Māori electoral option.
Te Pāti Māori thinks co-governance needs to be more comprehensive while Act claims it is leading to separate systems for Māori and Pakeha, and changes in electoral areas are anti-democratic and fall foul of the principle of equal voting power.
