Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour is certainly making the most of his new big-boy pants. Something tells me he’s going to enjoy the next 18 months. His mud-wrestle with a bunch of over-the-top academics this week was no Trumpian threat of violence; it was free speech in action and Seymour was like a pig in the proverbial.
But he’s got everyone crying foul and lodging formal complaints over the style in which he duelled with the country’s best and brightest thinkers. He told former New Zealander of the Year and highly respected academic Dame Anne Salmond that she was suffering Regulatory Standards Derangement Syndrome, describing her as the Victim of the Day.
That’s Seymour having what he regards as some fun, but Salmond, writing for Newsroom, saw it as “unethical, unprofessional and potentially dangerous to those targeted”.
“Debate is fine, online incitements are not,” she wrote.
“How can he get away with this?” some have asked. Easily, it’s called free speech, and this is an open democracy. Academics don’t get to critique something and not expect a response.
At his first post-Cabinet press conference as acting PM, Seymour told the academics he was going to have some fun replying to them. Sure it was childish, but that’s not surprising for a man who once let a rooster free in front of Parliament and turned to the cameras claiming, “The French love le coq.”
If Seymour is persistent and consistent in his antics, he’s also been likewise with the Regulatory Standards Bill, which prompted the outcry. It’s something the Act party, which Seymour has led since 2014, has been trying to introduce since 2006.
I predict that nothing much will come of the Regulatory Standards Bill, especially when media interest wanes. We’ve heard many times before that the sky is about to fall in and seen mass protests to counter seemingly dire threats to our democracy.
Grim predictions over things from mining – on Great Barrier Island, of all places – to the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) and, most recently, the Treaty Principles Bill have failed to materialise into the disasters they were tipped to be. Once again, we’re being told democracy is under attack with the Regulatory Standards Bill, which will see industries like mining and tobacco requiring compensation if laws that restrict their ability to make huge profits are passed.
Seymour has every right to defend the Bill and counter what he sees as misinformation and scare-mongering. Perhaps Seymour should have ignored the comments, perhaps he’s showed himself as being a sensitive wee snowflake himself, but it’s not illegal to do what he did, nor should his approach be banned.
The introduction of the Regulatory Standards Bill, like the Treaty Principles Bill, has raised questions about the influence minor parties wield and whether it’s too much. On that, I believe people are right to be concerned.
For 30 years, I’ve been paid to entrench myself in the finer details of politics and wider public society. I’m certainly not an academic; instead, I’m a journalist with a few runs on the board. Sadly, that’s meant I’ve been at some seriously boring announcements, court cases, select committee hearings, prime ministerial announcements and protests.
While I’ve seen many of those things come to nought, I do believe there is too much horse trading done in secret. Voters, having cast their votes, have no say in which government is formed. But there haven’t been widespread critiques about the machinations of MMP.
Where were the howls of protest when New Zealand First, with 7% of the party vote, opted to form the 2017 coalition government with Labour and the Greens when the National Party won more seats and a higher percentage of the vote?
But back to David Seymour’s antics. He’s not going to be boring as a deputy PM; he will try to get things done and he’s hard worker who doesn’t suffer fools gladly.
He’s doing a competent job, he takes questions on the run better than PM Christopher Luxon, he has opinions and positions on everything (unlike the PM), he appears well briefed and knows the issues, (unlike the PM) and you can’t argue that he’s weak and indecisive (unlike the PM).
Even if you don’t agree with him – and lots of people most certainly don’t – he’s courageous for standing up for the things he believes in. People may be rude about him, and it’s becoming something of a national pastime to ridicule him, but he’s always polite, always fronts and that says to me he’s willing to back himself.
Sure, his ideas are idiosyncratic but at least he has them, as well as passion and energy. He earns his keep, and that’s something you can’t say about all our MPs. So I say step outside the well-worn narratives, be brave and listen to one of his speeches, or read more widely about what he’s proposing and then make up your own mind.
Which is what we should do with all our MPs. At least you’ll be judging them on facts, not mockery or knee-jerk opposition.
