So, when the music's over, turn out the lights, turn out the lights

Otago Daily Times

a day ago

What song is David Seymour dancing to, Sir Ian Taylor asks.
I have to confess, I underestimated David Seymour.
Like many, I was distracted by the sequins. The man who tangoed into our living rooms on Dancing with the Stars . More jester than artist. A novelty act in lycra. But back then we kept him in the game long after the judges had given up on him.
And we have done it again. We have allowed Seymour to dance his way into the second-most powerful position in the country, wielding power far beyond the mandate given by his 8.6% share of the public vote. And he has wasted no time laying out his vision.
A week before stepping into the role of deputy prime minister, Seymour offered this reflection in the Listener on the state of the world, and the ideology he believes brought us here: "At the end of the day, people have never lived this long, this happy, this healthy, this free from violence, this prosperous and well-nourished. I think the jury is in, and liberalism won. Our job is to keep expanding those spheres of liberty."
This was classic Seymour. Sharp, certain, self-congratulatory and completely at odds with the world we see unravelling around us.
" ... people have never lived this long, this happy, this healthy, this free from violence, this prosperous, this well-nourished ... " — this is not just tone deaf. It is detached from the reality that confronts a growing number of New Zealanders every day.
When a political leader declares victory on behalf of a system clearly failing so many, both here and abroad, he is not just ignoring reality, he is giving permission for that failure to continue.
Ironically, the vision Seymour now claims as reality was first built by a libertarian, Richard Seddon, who, in the 1890s, laid the groundwork for New Zealand's welfare state, introducing old-age pensions and protections for workers.
By the 1930s, under Michael Joseph Savage, we became global leaders in social policy. The Social Security Act delivered universal superannuation, unemployment and sickness benefits, state housing, free healthcare, strong unions and full employment. The world looked to us as a bold example of what a compassionate democracy could achieve when it put people's wellbeing at the heart of policy.
Growing up in the 1950s and '60s, I was a beneficiary of many of these policies. I lived in a warm state house and began school at the Raupunga Native School (yes, that's what they were called), where truancy was rare, probably because all our parents had jobs.
I gained a free university degree and entered a job market where unemployment was virtually zero.
If Seymour's vision ever existed, it was then. It is clearly not the case today.
So, what is the "liberalism" that Seymour claims as the winner? Putting aside the vagaries of an electoral system that gifted him Epsom in 2014 and which now lets him wield disproportionate influence with just 8.6% of the vote, we have to ask: where do his ideas come from?
To answer that, we need to look beyond his upbringing in the far north, beyond the whakapapa that ties him to this land. We need to look to Canada.
This was where Seymour worked as a policy analyst for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (FCPP) from 2006 to 2010. The FCPP is a right-wing collective publicly associated with climate change denial, free market ideology, deregulation, privatisation and cuts to public spending. Sound familiar?
Just four years after leaving the FCPP, Seymour became Act New Zealand's leader. His colleagues back in Canada have taken keen interest in his rise to power.
In 2023, in a gushy press release after the new coalition government was announced, the president of the FCPP proclaimed: "The winds of political change are sweeping across New Zealand as David Seymour, leader of the Act Party, brings a renewed emphasis on classical liberal values ... . The Act Party's principle-driven approach is evident in its opposition to identity politics, specifically regarding special benefits for the Maori community."
That specific reference to Māori can be placed in context by views recently shared with Mahinerangi Forbes (RNZ) by Prof Tom Flanagan, chairman of the FCPP's Aboriginal Governance Board. In answer to a question on indigenous rights, he replied: "There is a difference between civilised and non-civilised people, what used to be called savagery, although we can't use that term today. Civilised people are, in the long run, more powerful than uncivilised people, so the task of the government today is not to indulge in continual breast beating about colonialism but to invite people whose ancestors lacked these elements of civilisation into the tent. Call that assimilation if you like. But it has to happen."
That idea was echoed here in New Zealand in 2017 by a group called 1Law4All who distributed flyers declaring: "Māori have benefited from colonisation lifting them out of a violent stone-age existence."
To be clear, Seymour has rejected this radical view. He does, after all, trace whakapapa back to the early voyagers we both share as tupuna. But the neoliberal notion of "one law for all" remains central to his argument on te Tiriti. He claims it is not racist. I guess he sees it as an invitation into the tent. His tent.
And despite his latest protestations about computer bots, Seymour must have known his Treaty Principles Bill was going nowhere. His dancing partners in the coalition had made that clear.
But this is where Seymour performs best. I believe the Bill was his lycra outfit, costing taxpayers millions, but meant to distract us from the real prize: the Regulatory Standards Bill.
This Bill is Seymour's rewrite of the legislative rulebook. Framed as neutral and technical, it is anything but.
Beneath its bland title lies a blunt instrument. One that can be used to strike out laws that honour te Tiriti o Waitangi, protect the environment or support collective wellbeing.
One law for all, but only if it fits the script Seymour began writing in a Canadian neoliberal think-tank, years ago.
And, on the day his colleagues clashed in the chamber over the Te Pāti Māori haka ruling, Seymour, the man who lit this particular fire, had left the tent.
He was on a new dance floor at Oxford University, in the land of Queen Victoria, the Crown's signatory to te Tiriti, dancing his Treaty tango.
The question we have to ask ourselves is: when the music stops, who will be left to face the consequences?
■Sir Ian Taylor is founder and managing director of Animation Research Ltd.