A change of clowns

New Zealand’s 3-ring circus government had a major change today when the leader of the hard-rightwing Act Party, David Seymour, became Deputy Prime Minister (aka “DPM”), replacing Winston Peters, leader of the rightwing populist New Zealand First Party (Peters will remain Foreign Minister). On the surface, its not a big deal at all, but it may prove to be one for entirely partisan political reasons.

The job-share Deputy Prime Minister position (a description of the job that both Seymour and Peters loathe, which is ironic since they both say disparaging things about opponents that are far, far worse) was part of the two parties’ coalition agreement with the right-of-centre National Party, headed by current Prime Minister Chris Luxon. The role of Deputy Prime Minister exists so that someone is “in charge” when the Prime Minister is out of the country, at which time the DPM becomes acting prime minister. Because there were times over the past 18 months when both Luxon and Peters were out of the country, Seymour has been the acting PM a couple before. And that’s where the unimportance ends.

By taking the first half of the job-share role, Winston is free to start campaigning for next year’s General Election. He has never won re-election after serving in Government, but he clearly hopes that this will give him the distance to run against the very government he was part of. Interesting ploy from the wily Winston, but it’s by no means certain it’ll work. The election of "change” was 2023, and 2026 will be largely a reaction to the past three years of this Government.

I wrote about this circus arrangement back in 2023, and in that post I quoted TVNZ journalist John Campbell making the same point about Winston’s motivation for being DPM first. Today, 1News published a new piece about his interviews with Winston and David about the job-share change, and Winston confirmed the reason he went first. So… not so secret then. Clearly.

Seymour, on the other hand, apparently wanted to be the sole DPM because his party won more seats in Parliament than Winston’s did. Those of us who oppose this rightwing government have dreaded this job-share change because, of the two, Seymour is way more reprehensible. His “Treaty Priniciples Bill” was the most divisive—and racist—bill in decades, or even longer. It resulted in the largest-ever protest march on Parliament and an astounding 300,000 submissions to Parliament the VAST majority of which opposed the bill. The parliamentary select committee recommended that the bill be rejected, and Parliament did: It only got 11 votes, all from the Act Party’s own MPs—ALL other parties voted against it and former politicians from all over the spectrum denounced the bill.

Among other neoliberal things, Seymour is a proponent of “charter schools”, as he was in the past, and many of his opponents, including me, see it as his way of privatising education by stealth. He and his party are not friends of working people, though in a sort of backhanded compliment, they’ve also never pretended to be. Their policies promote the sort of far-right, neoliberal agenda that could never get through democratically (kind of like the current occupant of the USA’s White House’s “Project 2025” fascist agenda).

Seymour is openly hostile to the news media—often aggressively so (though one suspects it may be mainly performative…) but always in a dickheadish way. John Campbell talks about that, too. Seymour has ties to a far-right a foreign neoliberal network that worked behind the scenes to affect public policy in multiple countries. He dismisses concerns about his past, and denies any connection, even though his policy objectives align with the neoliberals’ priorities. The extent of his involvement in the far-right group and its influence on him, AND his prickly relationship with journalists, can be seen in an RNZ documentary in its “Mata Reports” series, titled “ACT: The Foreign Influences That Have Shaped David Seymour's Political Agenda” presented by veteran journalist Mihingarangi Forbes.

Seymour has a habit of making outrageous and confrontational statements that openly and strongly contradict official government policy, often to claim “credit” for his party. While some of that is purely performative, mainly for the benefit of the minority of New Zealanders who agree with him, he’s always nevertheless consistently promoting an unpopular hard-right political agenda, and he does so with a weird blend of attempted humour and aggressive bullying. It’s never pleasant to watch him perform for the cameras—but, to be clear, he really is very, very good at performing and has a productive social media team, which is why the very journalists he attacks always cover him and his antics.

The bottom line in all this is that for the majority of New Zealanders, Winston was (and is) bad, but Seymour is far worse. To be abundantly clear, I have never voted for Winston or Seymour’s parties, and I can’t conceive of any scenario whatsoever in which I would consider it for even a nanosecond. This is a truly “duh!” statement: As I’ve made abundantly clear over the past 18+ years of this blog, I am absolutely not a “conservative”, much less a hard-rightwinger. It is, in fact, my centre-left politics and values that make me reject both Winston and Seymour. It’s not personal, it’s political.

As difficult as the past 18 months have often been, the coming 18 months may be even worse. If they are, it’ll help ensure this current government is turfed out at the next election. That gives Seymour an incentive to behave himself in his job-share role. Can he do it? Dunno. But I doubt it.