"It's running a marathon through to September 2023.
"If you spend too much energy celebrating a fast 100m, then you're probably not going to finish."
Traditionally, Act had not been well supported in the Waitaki electorate. In 2017, just 109 people voted for the party.
Remarkably, at the 2020 general election, support for Act increased by 4620 per cent as it gained 5145 party votes.
So, what's changed?
"First of all, a lot of things went wrong 10 years ago. It was always going to take some time to come back," Seymour said.
Act had always defended people's basic freedoms, and "in the happy-go-lucky days of John Key, people weren't worried about that".
But an "avalanche of regulations" being introduced by the Government had driven much resentment, especially in rural New Zealand, he said.
"It's the biodiversity, it's the SNAs [significant natural areas], it's the freshwater, it's the Three Waters, it's the local government reform, it's the RMA reform, it's the Zero Carbon Act.
"A freedom party is coming back into vogue, because there's real threats to your freedom — and your property rights."
Last month, Act launched a petition to stop the Government's SNAs "land grab" and announced a policy to remove the requirement for councils to identify SNAs.
Act would create a $10 million fund for local biodiversity initiatives, such as the work undertaken by the Queen Elizabeth II Trust, he said.
"The underlying assumption is farmers are basically bad people so we've got to freeze their land so they can't do any more bad stuff — and that's just not true and it's disrespectful," he said.
"People who farm the land just don't get enough credit for the environmental work that they do."
Seymour said he had visited Oamaru about four times as Act leader.
He had connections to the North Otago town - Dr Paul Baker was his social studies teacher at Auckland Grammar, before he moved to Oamaru to become rector of Waitaki Boys' High School.
Asked about his position on carbon farming at the Oamaru meeting on Saturday, Seymour said "ultimately, I'll always stand up for your right to sell and use your property".
"The difficulty is, I'll stand up for your neighbour's right too, and if they want to sell to someone who's going to farm carbon credits, then good on them."
However, he did not believe the planting of pine trees should be subsidised by the Government, and had concerns about the environmental impacts.
"If you think something might be bad, then arguably it should be regulated ... but certainly it shouldn't be taking money off one taxpayer and subsidising someone to do something that's potentially quite damaging," he said.
"I worry that the real environmental problem is not climate change but the damage that will be done by these pine trees - the soil acidification and the fact you won't be able to plant anything else. That's really damaging and I don't know if we've properly regulated that, to be honest."
