Barry Soper is Newstalk ZB’s senior political correspondent.
OPINION
Acting Prime Minister David Seymour, well that’s what he is at the moment, said before the last election that National should stop campaigning from the right and governing from the left.
With the way this Government has governed over the past six months, you would think he would have very little to complain about.
Take the Budget with the Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll showing 76 per cent saying it was okay to very good, but Act reckons Nicola Willis could have gone further.
At least public opinion was on the right side of the ledger, but not right enough for Act.
In the party’s Free Press, a weekly online offering where Seymour clearly dots the Is and crosses the Ts, they (or more likely he) reflected on his current elevated position this week pondering, if it was his permanent job then things would be different.
In a not-so-subtle poke at National, Act tells us there would be a Government “more confidently stating the basic truths, and acting on them”.
Rather than pussyfooting around laying off public servants here and there, they’d wipe out whole Government departments which they say don’t deliver a service, but do engage in Wellington politics on behalf of the X and Yers.
Act leader David Seymour in his Beehive office. Photo / Mark Mitchell
That would save at least $6 billion a year adding to the billions that would be saved by axing corporate and middle-class welfare that Act believes gives with the one hand and taxes with the other.
But for Act, it’s little more than wishful thinking, or banging their heads against a brick wall.
Imagine what it’ll be like when Seymour’s Treaty Principles Bill passes its first reading - especially if the Prime Minister’s campaign promise is anything to go by, Act will be suffering a migraine.
Christopher Luxon said repeatedly National won’t support the bill past its first reading which means it’ll be dead in the water.
Although, don’t dismiss the possibility of the bill’s first reading being delayed. With the Māori Party acting like screaming banshees and polarising the public’s tolerance, the mood will inevitably shift.
Their calls for the likes of a Māori parliament along with, in my opinion, racist comments about the Children’s Minister Karen Chhour and claims the Government’s on a mission to exterminate them makes them politically toxic.
And then there’s the inquiry, which is set to grow beyond the current Statistics NZ probe, into allegations they misused highly sensitive census data and Covid immunisation data to target Māori voters to vote for them and to change rolls in the run-up to the last election.
Labour is distancing itself from the Māori Party, which could eventually be its ticket back onto the Treasury benches, saying they want a more substantial inquiry.
