Echo Chamber: The trouble with taking David Seymour at his word

The Spinoff

2 days ago

If the Act Party leader misspoke in a forest and no one was around to hear it, would it still make a sound?
Echo Chamber is The Spinoff's dispatch from the press gallery, recapping sessions in the House. Columns are written by politics reporter Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Wellington editor Joel MacManus.
A long weekend stumbled into a short week back in the House, where a Mad Hatter call of 'change places!' has seen NZ First and the Act Party swap sides at the tea party. Over the weekend, some 642km north, NZ First leader Winston Peters' reins of power as deputy prime minister were handed over to Act leader David Seymour, who celebrated the occasion in typical low-key style: with an Auckland brunch for fans of David Seymour to pay their respects to David Seymour.
Peters, sat in the south end of the chamber, now rests in a no man's land two seats away from Te Pāti Māori, where co-leader Rawiri Waititi shot glances to his koro from up north throughout the session. Meanwhile Seymour, at the prime minister's side, whispered sweet nothings into Christopher Luxon's ear then flipped through documents throughout the circus, with three full glasses of water at his side.
Before Tuesday's question time began, Te Pāti Māori's Hana-Rawhiti Maipi-Clarke called for the House to acknowledge the 30-year anniversary of Waikato Tainui's raupatu settlement, with which only one party leader took issue. If we celebrated every single successful Treaty settlement, Peters argued, we'd be losing valuable time almost every day of the week. Labour MP Peeni Henare's unimpressed voice floated through the chamber: 'Wooooow ….'
Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick was first up on oral questions, and once the prime minister agreed that yes, he did stand by all of his government's statements, she went in for her kill: the funding, or lack thereof, for the government's increased KiwiSaver contributions, an alleged hole in Budget 2025 that the party has been quite happy to claim responsibility for discovering.
Luxon shot down Swarbrick's claims the government had failed to budget for its own employer contributions to KiwiSaver, saying the bill would be footed through baselines. And the prime minister also didn't accept claptrap from Labour leader Chris Hipkins, nosily asking how many families had received the $250 Family Boost rebate promised last March.
'I don't have the numbers in front of me,' Luxon said, before being cut off by Labour's Willow-Jean Prime: 'Do you have them at all?'
The minister for resources, Shane Jones, had spent the first 30 minutes of question time spurting his favourite slogans – 'mining!', 'fossil fuels!', 'heavy metal!' – at random, even when no one was talking about mining, fossil fuels or heavy metals. Finally, his NZ First colleague Tanya Unkovich offered him some patsies, so he could relish in the noble art of drilling a well into gas fields like those in Taranaki, and having the Crown take a 10-15% stake from these projects.
'Gas is short,' Jones started – 'not from you!' an opposition voice called – then 'talk is cheap'. The country's natural gas resources have been in decline, he declared, thanks to a 'foolish and dangerous … fateful decision of 2018 ' to ban oil exploration (Jones was indeed a minister for that Labour-led government at the time). Labour MP Kieran McAnulty, a star student of the school of standing orders, raised a point of order: that was clearly a political statement, he told the speaker, and shouldn't have been allowed.
Well, I disagree with you, Gerry Brownlee replied – how could a government campaign against something and not be able to talk about it? Proving his respect for Brownlee's rulings and never-ending wish for unity among the parties, Jones began his next answer: 'Decisions riddled with woke ideology from the past government …' and the House erupted in laughter, clearly tired of such performative acclaim.
Labour MP Duncan Webb was allowed to pose a question to a member of parliament rather than a minister, asking National backbencher and chair of the finance and expenditure committee Cameron Brewer why the submission window for the Regulatory Standards Bill was only open for four weeks, when the bill had a six-month reporting deadline. Parliament's left bloc has gone hard on campaigning against said bill, an Act Party classic hit, with claims that it's more controversial and damaging to Treaty obligations than the recently deceased Treaty principles bill.
Mr Speaker, Brewer explained, the minister for regulation (aka Seymour) has already written to me to explain that he had 'misspoken' when the bill had its first reading on May 23. You may remember Seymour moved for the bill to be reported to the House on December 23, 'when he in fact meant to say September 23!' He'd take the minister at his word, Brewer said, as groans rippled through the House.
So, Webb continued, would the committee chair bend to Seymour's demands, or follow the usual parliamentary process which asks that select committees be given six months to report back to the House? Brewer quoted former clerk David McGee's Parliamentary Practice: 'it is not uncommon for bills referred to select committee for four months to have a submissions period of four weeks'.
Seymour, clearly tired of having his name and work thrown around with such indifference, rose for a point of order. When he failed to argue that there was no decision of the House to even be disregarded in this case, Seymour continued to argue with the speaker from his seat, annoying a voice on the opposition side: 'Just because you're deputy now!'
Eventually, Brownlee was happy with Brewer's assertion that Seymour 'clearly misspoke', and McGee's guidance was enough to 'end the matter'. The faces of the opposition looked like they would be doing anything but, and maybe that's the trouble with taking Seymour at his word: nothing he says will ever be good enough for at least half of the entire 54th New Zealand parliament.
Once question time had wrapped up, Seymour headed to Brewer's bench, perhaps passing along some further notes and corrections to misquotes. A tiny question time blip, a long weekend to celebrate his ascension to 2IC and now in the UK to take part in an Oxford Union debate on stolen land, the Act Party leader's cup still runneth over, even as his three water glasses remained untouched.