Q&A interview with Act leader and deputy prime minister-in-waiting David Seymour:
Q: If you could take three Māori to dinner, who would they be and why?
DS: I generally wouldn’t take people to dinner based on their race, but if I was going to do that, I’d take Kipa Munroe from Ngāti Rēhia, Karen Chhour (Act MP) and Nicole McKee (Act MP). Kipa is knowledgeable and has a wicked sense of humour and Karen and Nicole are incredibly real, driven and motivated. They are wonderful people who happen to be Māori.
Q: What does Māoriness mean to you?
DS: It’s one of the strands that makes up my blended ancestry. I’m part Scottish and part English, it makes me think about the past. My Māori ancestors sailed across the Pacific Ocean with extraordinary skill and ability and built a society here in New Zealand. I think where I might be different from the way some people would answer that question is that being Māori doesn’t bind me. I could also look at various parts of my Scottish or English history. It’s only about 400 years since the English were burning people at the stake on suspicion of being witches. I don’t really want that part of my English history. I feel I can pick and choose and I feel the same about my Māori background.
Q: You say your Māori background doesn’t bind you, but neither does your European influence?
DS: That’s precisely the point and that, that’s why I don’t have to wear a kilt, I don’t have to be a monarchist and I also don’t have to subscribe to Mātauranga Māori either.
Q: Are you proud of being part Māori?
DS: I’m proud of all of my backgrounds. It’s like people who support a sports team. They get excited when the team wins and they say we won but they didn’t win, the team won. Am I proud of what the English have achieved in the last 100 years since the industrial revolution and democracy and rule of law? I guess so, but I didn’t do any of that. It’s important that each of us recognise our ancestry, but what happens next is up to us.
Q: Labour MP Willie Jackson once described you as a useless Māori. Now that you are in a position to make effective change for Māori, what’s your response?
DS: It’s better for everybody to be able to flourish in your own way to make a difference in your own life and the lives of those you care about. The problem with state dependency is that when the state gives something to you, It changes the dynamics of your own efforts. If you’re dependent on the state, then once you start doing something for yourself, you lose what you are getting from the state. We need to move towards tino rangatiratanga (self-determination). It should be a touchstone for all people in New Zealand. It’s a big part of our story. I talk about some of my Māori ancestors who navigated here and that’s pretty extraordinary when you see the comparison of sailing the Pacific Ocean in a small boat and then I think about people getting off the plane at Auckland Airport today to begin their journey as New Zealanders. They both took an enormous risk to go to a most isolated place because they want a better tomorrow. I think it sums up who we are as New Zealanders and the one thing that we all have in common no matter who our ancestors were.
Q: What do you think about the Treaty of Waitangi and why are your change proposals necessary?
DS: The Treaty of Waitangi is a wonderful document and it reflects what you might expect given the nature of British politics at that time and says the government has a right to govern and we all have the rights to self determine, especially over our own property - we all have nga tikanga katoa - the same rights and duties for all New Zealanders. The Treaty of Waitangi is a beautifully simple document and a fabulous foundation for a society and I think we should restore that literal conception of what it says. Unfortunately, over the last 50 years, since particularly the State Owned Enterprises Act in 1986, this conception of the Treaty as a partnership between races, where you can have a different role in society depending on whether or not you are Maori is destructive. As an example, when it comes to resource consenting, often in order to get things done that will benefit the whole community you need to get a cultural impact assessment from a relatively small number of people who are no different from anyone else, except who their ancestor was, and we getting poorer than we need to be and that’s creating resentment. We need to change and say te tiriti gives the same rights and duties and self-determination to all New Zealanders.
Q: Is the Waitangi Tribunal still relevant and fit for purpose?
DS: If you look at what the Waitangi Tribunal was set up to do, and the way it was modified 10 years later in 1985, it would appear that they have fulfilled their second purpose of settling the various grievances. I’m proud as a New Zealander that we have forensically examined the wrongs of the past and sought to redress them. I don’t think a lot of societies would have done that. I know the Irish have their truth and reconciliation that the South Africans have tried to, to try and fix some of their wrongs. New Zealand’s done an amazing job with the Treaty settlement process, notwithstanding Ngāpuhi. So what is its role now? You actually have to go back to the original 1975 role. But what appears to be is the Waitangi Tribunal is fashioning itself almost as a House of Lords, an unelected second parliament. It puts forth its opinions on what the actual parliament and the people elected is doing. That’s fundamentally incompatible with democracy. Some of the parallels would be the ombudsman or the auditor-general or the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who hold those powers, who make sure that the law’s been properly administered. But they (the Waitangi Tribunal) is actually demanding that elected politicians make themselves accountable - if not more accountable - to them, than the people that elected them. When people start saying we are more equal than others, then you no longer have a democracy.
Q: You immediately scrapped the Māori Health Authority as a waste of money and have looked under the hoods of all government organisations. What do the motors look like?
DS: It wasn’t just the Maori Health Authority, it was actually the whole merger into Health New Zealand which was the problem. They didn’t focus on the patients and the service they get but focused on the organisational chart or the wiring diagram of how the back office was organised. And the truth is we, we’re not going to get a better service by reorganising the back office. We’re going to get better service by having better trained people with the right patient at the right time with the right treatments and the right data are available. I was at Waikato Hospital last week and they said if somebody’s in a car crash from Auckland and come into the emergency department, they have to actually get someone from Auckland to email the patient files. Now, you know, what would have been helpful is if we put all that money, not into a Maori Health Authority, not into a big merger, actually just getting one database of patient records, so wherever you go in New Zealand, the doctor knows who you are and what your medical conditions are, and if you did that, the other thing that would happen is we could start understanding which patients are getting better and which patients are not. And then we might understand whether or not the things that we’re doing are actually good for them and that would help us to help Maori patients more.
Q: The data shows Māori health outcomes are poor, how do you turn those statistics and their health around?
DS: People say that Māori health is worse and I challenge that. If you put all Māori in one bucket and all non-Māori and in another bucket, then that’s racially profiling and we are opposed to that. I suspect people who live in bad houses, Māori and non-Māori who don’t have ventilation and poor heating will tend to get respiratory issues and people who eat badly will be more prone to diabetes or heart disease. There are those who will say we need to start treating people culturally. I prefer a practical approach. Maybe the number one thing we really need to do is get warmer, drier homes so people don’t get sick as much.
Q: You have cut back on the money for kids’ school lunches, is this now sustainable?
DS: This programme was scheduled to cost $340 million next year, but the previous government did not include that in their budget. So we had to either borrow an extra $340 million, tax, or cut something else worth $340 million and none of those were really an option for us, so we had to find a way to make it more affordable and I think it can be sustainable.
Q: We talk about parents’ accountability, where does that lie with this Government?
DS: When parents don’t do basic things for children, that puts a cost on everyone else, including that child. There’s basic things parents you should be doing and making sure that your child gets access to education is one. It’s free and we try to make it easy. We have a network of schools you can walk into it and enrol for without paying. Parents should refrain from any kind of violence or emotional or physical abuse and be good role models. Health-wise, and this is a delicate subject, but only 80 per cent of 1 to 4-year-olds have had their MMR vaccine. Measles kills and as a society we are unbelievably vulnerable. It can, it can kill dozens of people very easily including children. Getting your MMR vaccine is a pretty basic thing that you can do for your child and for the wider society to stop it spreading. And if you can afford to make lunch for your child, you should be proud to do so, and not relying on the taxpayers to do it.
Q: The previous government made a huge investment in Matatini, will this Government continue to fund it?
DS: Matatini should be put on a level playing field with everything else that’s going on. If you have an event, like an opera or an orchestra or a high school rock quest, I would think Matatini would have a pretty good bid to get their share of the public funding for these types of events.
Q: How come Winston Peters was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for the first 18 months and you got the second half. Was it a lottery or rock paper scissors?
DS: I can’t actually remember how that happened. I think it might have been a two-second conversation but it was such a wild time and so much was going on. It doesn’t make a huge amount of difference to me because ultimately it’s a huge honour to be a Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister or the Prime Minister, it’s an honour to be a Member of Parliament. I’ve always said that’s not in itself an achievement, it’s an opportunity to do good, to do better public policy. I’m more focused on what are we doing about red tape and issues like charter schools and school attendance, are we fixing up Pharmac and so on and so on.
Q: Is there a parting comment you’d like to leave?
DS: One of the questions that people have is why, why are we so critical of these Treaty-based policies? This elevation of Māori to a different set of rules and everything from education, to resource management. The reason why is that we passionately believe in a free society where each person is able to flourish in their own way. And we believe it’s incompatible with a free society that truly values each and every human being as a thinking and valuing individual. It’s incompatible to have a system where you say some people are tangata whenua and some people are tangata Tiriti. Our tradition is each human has their own special identity, we’d all like to have that recognised. It doesn’t mean you can’t express yourself as being Māori or Scottish or English or play bagpipes or go to Matatini or do whatever you like. All we want is a society that’s modern, that’s multi-ethnic, that values our universal humanity ahead of our differences. Let people flourish in their own terms because in New Zealand, there should be a place for everybody.
Joseph Los’e is an award winning journalist and joined NZME in 2022 as Kaupapa Māori Editor. Los’e was a chief reporter, news director at the Sunday News newspaper covering crime, justice and sport. He was also editor of the NZ Truth and prior to joining NZME worked for Urban Māori Authority Whānau Waipareira.
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