Act leader David Seymour crashes e-bike in Parnell

Act Party leader David Seymour came a cropper on his electric bike in Parnell on Sunday, and says he got a lot of help from passersby - but one onlooker was not quite so supportive.

Seymour was cycling on Parnell Road after leaving the Holy Trinity Cathedral’s Commonwealth service in the early evening.

“I just didn’t see a car. It wasn’t their fault, they had right of way. So I slammed on the brakes and realised I was going to cartwheel over, but I also realised I was still going to hit the car so I slammed on the brakes harder and over I went.”

Seymour says he did not hit the car, and the people in it stopped and came back to check on him. “They were mortified, but it wasn’t their fault.”

He was unhurt other than the shock and a sore wrist that he hoped would heal quickly. A number of people turned up to check on him, bringing out water and offering him a ride home.

However, there was one negative reaction to his plight.

“While I’m sitting on the traffic island in a state of shock, some guy comes over and starts filming me. I thought ‘that’s a bit weird’ and then he says ‘you know what, sometimes you get exactly what you deserve”.

“In a [British] accent, he said ‘look what you’re doing to Māori, you’re just a trust fund baby who’s out of touch with reality.”

“I thought ‘I am Māori, and I don’t have a trust fund’.”

Seymour has been prominent this year for pushing his Treaty Principles Bill, which attempts to define the principles of the Treaty, and the coalition Government has also told government departments to use their English titles ahead of the te reo Māori title.

He said other than that, people had been very good to him. They included Auckland Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson, who was in a car behind him. “She was very worried.”

“And there was a wonderful woman, who I thought must have been a doctor, [who] was also extremely supportive. I really was touched by how many people came out of their houses and were supportive and offered to help.”

He said it had taught him a few lessons, beyond the basic lesson of the give-way rule: “We live in a wonderful place, when we think about some of the nuttier, nastier people in our society, they’re a tiny minority.”

Asked if it was a good case for cycle lanes in Parnell, he said he doubted it would have helped since the problem was that he didn’t see the car.

The Government has recently released its draft Government Policy Statement on transport, which will see funding for cycling and walking improvements cut from up to $1 billion under Labour to $510 million over the next three years.

Seymour has used an e-bike to get around Auckland since at least 2016, describing it at that point as “a great way to get around so long as it doesn’t rain and motorists keep being kind”.

In a Facebook post after a day of getting to meetings on his bike, he said “I thought I might become a convert to cycleways, but found that most of the time I was going somewhere where there wasn’t one. Unless practically every street had a cycle way, I’m not sure they would make a lot of difference for most trips. Buses are very annoying.”

He also used it during the Auckland floods in 2023 to check on businesses and people in his electorate.