It was his 42nd birthday, and he earned a double celebration. With few exceptions, he was accomplished enough as acting leader of the coalition Government of three parties, as he was required to be, not the leader of Act.
He digressed only once when it looked as though a clearly cold-ridden Health Minister Simeon Brown needed some tonic as he struggled to answer questions. Seymour reminded the House that his party had been responsible for reversing the ban on over-the-counter sales of one of the best cold relief products.
Seymour: “Does the minister need some pseudoephedrine perchance?”
Brown: “I’m currently taking it.”
Seymour didn’t get a great deal of exposure during Question Time because the first part was taken up with a ministerial statement on Iran by Peters as Foreign Minister, speaking for all Government parties.
And with one exception, the Opposition chose not to direct their questions to the Acting Prime Minister.
Labour leader Chris Hipkins put him through his paces on the price of butter and cheese, school lunches, costs for medical students, GP funding, rising fees for childcare, rates and insurance, and cutting funding for pay equity.
Seymour batted them away apart from one question, when Hipkins asked him if he or Finance Minister Nicola Willis or Inland Revenue managed to find one single family that was receiving the $250 a fortnight that National and the Government had promised.
Seymour: “The fact is it’s not our job to go hunting for people,” he said, and in doing so, reinforced the possibility that there may not be a single family receiving it.
However, Seymour recovered in the political sense by turning his defence into an attack.
“I would recommend that that member goes and hunts for one person in the Labour Party that believes he is going to last to the election.”
Rating for Question Time: 7
Seymour’s best performance this week was not Question Time but his first post-Cabinet press conference as Acting Prime Minister.
During a crisp 25 minutes, he was as nimble as any predecessor, acting or fulltime, and certainly more so on both counts than Luxon or Peters.
He switched seamlessly from one subject to another, with a wit as quick as Lange, and a pair of fangs as mean as Muldoon.
The issues included the Middle East, his Regulatory Standards Bill, critics of the Regulatory Standards Bill, a Ngāpuhi Treaty settlement, the cost of living, the Cook Islands agreement with China, and comments made in the UK about smokers and smoking law.
He began as David Seymour, the intellectual, by paraphrasing 19th-century French economist Claude-Frédéric Bastiat, who apparently meant that trade and investment were critical to preventing conflict when he said, “if goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will”.
It was intended as an oblique segue to war and to talk about New Zealand’s position on the United States’ bombing of Iran in a bid to destroy its ability to produce a nuclear weapon.
At this point, Seymour did his job of conveying the country’s position well, which had been articulated an hour earlier in a statement by Peters.
Essentially, the position is officially to take no side, take no view on the legality of the US action, while clearly leaning towards sympathy if not support for it.
Seymour: ... at this point, we don’t have all of the intelligence that other countries may have.
Newstalk ZB: In saying that, what do you make of the Opposition’s response to this? The Labour Party have been against what the US has done. Te Pāti Māori in a similar vein.
Seymour: Well, speaking of people that don’t have all the intelligence, I categorise them that way.
Of course, New Zealand has no more or less information than plenty of other countries that have decided to support or oppose the US action.
It may be that even if New Zealand government advisers believe the US acted unlawfully, its politicians believe it was worth it, or that it is hedging to help get a plane into Israel or Iran for evacuations.
Whatever the reason for the equivocation, Seymour three times described it as neither fence-sitting nor a rush to judgment but a measure of New Zealand’s independent foreign policy. That is smart.
He took questions about Shane Jones’ proposed bill to insist on only one commercial settlement for Ngāpuhi, and properly explained the divergent views about whether Ngāpuhi is actually an iwi before being asked to predict the future.
RNZ: How confident are you that there’ll be a settlement in your lifetime?
Seymour: Well, are you taking wagers on the settlement or my life expectancy, is the first question [laughing]. I certainly hope to on both counts.
He reserved his acerbic wit for Wellington Mayor and Green Party supporter Tory Whanau, who has got involved in opposition to Seymour’s Regulatory Standards Bill.
Seymour has described some opponents as having Regulatory Standards Derangement Syndrome and highlighted some as “victim of the day”.
Whanau, whose mayoralty has been peppered with controversy, has complained to the Prime Minister about Seymour’s criticism, saying it targets opponents and breaches the Cabinet manual, and Seymour was asked about it.
Seymour: Tory is accusing me of inappropriate behaviour? Now I’ve heard it all ... There’s no such breach. If people want to go out and make completely incorrect statements, then I’m going to get a bit playful and have some fun with them.
“All right folks well, look, this has been a slice,” he said, using a Canadian idiom for a good time.
“I really enjoyed talking to you all and hopefully we’ll be able to do this lots more times.”
Rating for press conference: 8
