David Seymour: ACT Party Leader on the Treaty Principles Bill being voted down in its second reading

Act Leader David Seymour doesn't regret spearheading the Treaty Principles Bill. 

The widely unpopular bill was voted down by all but its own MPs at its second reading yesterday.  

MPs called it racist, divisive, ugly, grubby, and an assault on history and rights.  

Seymour told Mike Hosking he's standing up for equal human rights. 

He says the Crown has an obligation to uphold all people’s rights, including Māori, and we are all equal before the law.   

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the Treaty Principles build was finished off yesterday, not
without a bit of noise and ground standing on the
second reading, David Seymour didn't go down without some resistancies
with us. Very good morning to you.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Good by any way, No regrets, not at all. I'll
never regret standing up for basic human rights being equal
and also for standing up for truth. And if you
watched the debate yesterday, the most interesting thing is that
not a single opponent pointed to here's one of the
principles proposed, and here's why I oppose it, and this

(00:31):
is why we're going to have a better country without it.
Fact is that Parliament does have the complete right to
make laws. The Crown does have an obligation to uphold
all people's rights, including Maris, such as property rights, and
we are all equal before the law. Now, obviously it's
taking a while for certain people in Parliament to catch
on to that. But the challenges how else do they

(00:51):
want a country to work?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
And that's the difficulty. You haven't been able and this
is not a criticism of you, but you haven't been
able to apply the logic so liberally people finally get it.
In other words, you're never going to turn them where.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
I think what this debate has revealed is quite how
far New Zealand has departed from liberal democratic principles. If
you go out there and say, well, I don't actually
think the treaty is a partnership between races. I think
we're just all people who have either migrated here or
our ancestors did, and we should be afforded the ability
to grow our culture and our lives economically and socially

(01:26):
and make the most of our time on earth, which
is all equally special to each of us. A whole
lot of people say, oh no, no, no, we've got
to be part of this sort of bizarre binary cult, frankly,
where you've got to bow down and have strange courses
at your university and constantly worship people based on things
that happened two hundred years before you're born. That's where

(01:49):
New Zealand is. And if the bill has done anything,
it's probably revealed to me that we've gone further down
that track in the last thirty or forty years than
people have realized. But that's not a reason to have regrets.
Thank God, I just wish i'd been born twenty years earlier.
And got into the sooner.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, exactly is it wise to put it to the
people's vote. My argument against it is, and I struggle
with it, is that people will vote without the knowledge
they need and they'll vote on a motion. Or is
that democracy and that's just life.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
Well, I'll tell you a funny story. I was debating
in the House last week and I used to term
from economics. I ticket was something like opportunity cost and
someone from the Mari Party, which has piped up and said, oh, what,
you're just making it up, that's kaka, and I thought
far out. You know, we let people into parliament with
no rudimentary knowledge of year ten or year eleven economics.

(02:41):
If they say that people need to be more educated
to have an opinion, maybe they should start themselves. Good on.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
You'm nice to talk to you appreciate it. David Seymore
act a party lead it.

Speaker 2 (02:50):
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