Parliament hasn’t seen so many references to the scriptures since Shane Jones’ cryptic biblical updates during the coalition negotiations after the election, nearly a year ago. It is an apt anniversary – because one of the reasons the negotiations were dragging out so long was because Seymour dug his heels in over the Treaty Principles Bill.
The bill itself still does not exist. It was discussed at Cabinet for the first time on Monday but Prime Minister Christopher Luxon did not want to say what was discussed.
It was not until Tuesday that Seymour explained the point of the Cabinet meeting was to firm up a time frame and work out what Parliament’s drafters should be told to include in the bill.
The timeline will see the bill introduced in November and then go through the usual six-month select committee period, including public submissions.
There has clearly been a fair bit of arm wrestling around that.
Luxon will want it done as quickly as possible – preferably before Waitangi Day next year when he will again have to face the wrath of the Māori people over bits of the Government’s agenda that he doesn’t want to carry the blame for.
The phrase in the coalition agreement that the bill be introduced “as soon as practicable” has been doing a bit of heavy lifting in order to try to achieve that.
Judging from Seymour’s answers, Seymour has had to cave in on his hopes of having a draft exposure bill go out to the public to have a say on before the bill proper is put forward. That would effectively have given him a double-dip serving of the public debate he wanted - a debate Luxon doesn’t want a bar of.
In return, Luxon has had to cave in and allow the usual six-month select committee period rather than a shorter period. That will mean submissions will be under way round about Waitangi Day instead.
As yet, it remains undecided when or whether it will go up for the second reading, at which point it will be voted out of existence.
The battles over the bill are set to continue for some time to come.
At the time of the coalition agreement Luxon must have thought he had come up with an elegant solution: National and NZ First would be obliged to support it at its first reading and to a select committee, whereupon Seymour would get some of the public debate he wanted and the bill would then die a prompt death.
Elegant solutions sometimes go awry and the bill has plagued him ever since – popping up at the most inconvenient moments, such as after acknowledging the late Kīngi Tūheitia’s call for kotahitanga (unity).
Luxon has since named it the “unhappy compromise.”
This week’s skirmish was between Seymour and the churches calling for it to be scrapped on the morning Cabinet sat down to discuss it.
Staring down God is not a new thing for Seymour, as he pointed out. He’d done it for the End of Life Choice Bill and prevailed (although did have to water down his initial hopes a tad).
This time round, he is unlikely to be as successful given the position of his fellow politicians.
Nonetheless, God loves a trier so he gave it a good nudge.
His first attempt to blunt the churches’ pitch was to try to turn it into a debate about whether religion and politics should mix. He suggested the churches were anti-democratic and should stay in their lane. He suggested the reason church membership had declined over the years was because of churches dabbling in political reckons.
(He did not speculate whether the reverse of that was why political party membership had also declined over the years).
Then Seymour pitched his (limited) knowledge against the theologians on the list of 400. He pulled out the concept that God created man in his own image.
Given a few MPs suffer from a God complex, it was unclear whether this illustrated self-awareness by Seymour or was a philosophical argument.
By day two, Seymour had crowd-sourced Bible verses. The handy thing about the Bible is that there’s a verse to suit any position or situation you require - from losing an eye, to feeding the throngs.
Seymour sent out a second social media post with the results he deemed most apt. They came from the books of Galatians, Romans, Proverbs and of course, the Book of Acts.
Seymour’s strategy includes hoping National MPs come under pressure from their constituents and party members to support the bill.
In his dream scenario, those MPs would then pressure the caucus leadership to change the vote on the bill. And lo, it would come to pass.
It’s an optimistic strategy given Luxon’s black and white declaration not to support it beyond the select committee.
So are the National MPs copping it? A random survey was inconclusive. They didn’t want to talk about it any more than their boss did.
Barbara Kuriger was the most forthcoming. She said she would prefer a shorter select committee period. “Because if it appears it might not go anywhere, then it’s a lot of talking that perhaps we don’t need.”
Other National MPs said in clipped voices there had been “mixed feedback” or it was rarely raised with them.
Asked if the bill was a good idea, Treaty Negotiations Minister Paul Goldsmith paused and then said it was part of the coalition agreement and that was that.
“There’s nothing to be gained from me having reckons about the merits of it or not, it’s part of the coalition agreement.”
As for Seymour, his response to the critics is to claim the majority of the public support it - based on a Curia poll from before the election last year, in which 60% said they would back the move in a referendum (although only 45% wanted a referendum on it.)
Seymour has argued National and NZ First – and other naysayers - should wait to see the bill before deciding they don’t like it.
Of course, it’s a different rule for anyone who says they support the bill: Seymour has no compunction in claiming they are the righteous ones who understand the move without any suggestion they too should wait to see the bill before deciding on it.
