“Jacinda Ardern texted me and said, ‘I apologise, it’s not something I should have said and she said, as my mum would say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say it’.
”I agree with the sentiment and it is all good as far as I am concerned. I just said, thank you and I hope you have a very Merry Christmas. At the end of the day, it’s not the end of the world.”
Seymour told Newstalk ZB’s Heather du Plessis-Allan he’d been called worse, and he actually saw it as “a victory”.
“I asked her the question...before she said it...can she give us one example where she’d made a mistake, admitted it, apologised and fixed it.
“She couldn’t answer the question which is probably why she was a bit flustered...the great irony is now I actually have got her to apologise for something. So that’s progress. I just wish she’d apologise for a few other things.”
Seymour had been asking Ardern a series of questions relating to senior Labour MP Nanaia Mahuta’s performance, hate speech reforms and other policies.
After answering, as Ardern takes her seat, she can be heard saying to Grant Robertson, who sits beside her: “Such an arrogant prick.”
Such remarks would ordinarily not be heard, but Ardern’s desk microphone picked up the comment.
Seymour did not hear the remark himself. It was only after the Herald picked up on the comments and asked Seymour to comment on them that Seymour raised a point of order in the House, noting that Ardern had made an “exceedingly unparliamentary remark”.
He asked that Speaker Adrian Rurawhe have Ardern withdraw the remark and apologise.
Rurawhe did not immediately allow that, noting the remark was not reported in Hansard.
However, Seymour’s questioning of the remarks ensured that they would be recorded in Hansard for posterity - as interjections that are addressed in the chamber, as Seymour addressed Ardern’s comment, get recorded in Hansard.
