David Seymour’s refusing to apologise for a comment about blowing up the Ministry for Pacific Peoples – saying he makes jokes like that all the time.
But Newshub can reveal one person found it so offensive, they referred him to Police.
David Seymour is not a sorry man.
“People shouldn’t have to apologise for having a laugh,” he said.
The ACT leader loves having a laugh at himself and about blowing up ministries.
“It’s a joke I’ve made many times about many government departments,” he said.
His latest joke’s about the Ministry for Pacific Peoples. On Thursday Seymour told Newstalk ZB he would abolish it, partly because it spent $40,000 on a farewell party.
“In my fantasy, we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes in there and it’d be all over, but we’ll probably have to have a more formal approach than that,” he said.
“He should be apologising for a lot of things – this is just one of many things he should apologise for,” said Labour MP Carmel Sepuloni.
“I don’t find it funny. This sort of joke is unacceptable. He should apologise to the Ministry for Pacific Peoples and he should apologise to Pacific communities,” added Green Party MP Teanau Tuiono.
But Seymour said: “You’re politicising comments I’ve made about many different departments many times and no one’s ever noticed before.”
Newshub can reveal someone was so concerned about his comment they reported Seymour to the police.
Police told us they assessed the comments, but did not identify any offence, and are not taking the matter further.
“No harm was intended, no harm was done. We don’t want to live in a country where you have to walk on eggshells because people politicise a joke,” Seymour said.
Seymour himself though has called for an apology over a joke made by Te Pati Māori co-leader Rawiri Waititi and his necklace poison berries.
“When David Seymour’s not looking I’m going to go like this into his water. I’ll tell you what, reindigenise yourself with some native seeds,” Waititi said.
Seymour told Stuff: “I’m genuinely concerned the next step is that some slightly more radical person doesn’t think it’s a joke.”
“My offence was at the racial overtones where he said indigenise yourself. The comments I made were about a government department wasting money hand over fist,” Seymour told Newshub.
ACT has been driving the prosecution against the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ spending, like its $40,000 leaving bash for its former chief executive.
On Thursday morning – before Seymour joked about blowing it up – two men went into the ministry and tried to film staff while asking them about how much the ministry was spending. Police were called.
“He is the leader of a political party and there are people on the far right who look to him for leadership so it is important that he sends the right signals to his followers and in particular those far right followers, that his comments were unacceptable,” Tuiono said.
“Usually they provoke laughter but in the current world they’re provoking a media beat-up but I think people will see that for what it is,” Seymour said.
But clearly not everyone sees the funny side.
Ok, there’s two things here we should focus on:
First, let’s start with what a snivelling little easily triggered snowflake David is! He can joke about blowing up the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ but Rawiri can’t joke about poisoning him???
If you dish it out, you have an obligation to take it.
But the second issue, which is far more important, is that Outrage Olympics at David Seymour’s Guy Fawkes comment eclipses the real damage of State amputation he’s attempting!
The identity politics virtue signalling Left are taking David literally when they should be taking him seriously.
By attempting to conflate and equate David’s comments as a literal terror threat to blowing up the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’, the identity politics virtue signalling Left are only succeeding in giving him ammunition!
The Outrage Olympic virtue signalling doesn’t work because of course David Seymour wasn’t literally talking about blowing up anything and focusing on that only gives him unimagined publicity when the truth is that what he actually intends to do is far, far, far worse!
He isn’t just looking at dumping the Ministry for Pacific Peoples’ (who didn’t help themselves with their ill judged $40 000 piss up), he is intending to dump the Ministry for Youth Affairs, Ministry of Womens Affairs, the Ministry for Māori Affairs, the Ministry for Ethnic Affairs and the Human Rights Commission, while stripping out all the environmental legislation passed over the last 6 years, including any worker rights and renter rights on top of a referendum where he will redefine the Treaty and then just force it upon Māori!
THAT is what he is planning to do, yet the identity politics virtue signalling Left are getting their non binary knickers in a twist by pretending he is going to blow up a building.
ACT intend to amputate the State and implement a referendum that will start race conflict we haven’t seen since colonial times, THAT should be what we are concerned about, not twisting his stupid joke into a literal terrorist threat.
Because the identity politics virtue signalling Left live in echo chambers determined by cancel culture and strangling free speech, they’ve lost the art of debate and persuasion and it keeps showing every time they try to take on ACT.
Take ACT seriously, not literally. That’s how you beat their far right madness. All the identity politics virtue signalling Left are doing right now is give ACT another 2 points.
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Working class people are finding the going tough everywhere in NZ. If their mortgage hasn’t gone up then their rent has along with everything else.
The Ministry for Pacific Peoples is so out of touch they do need a bomb under them (figurative expression) Sitting on their flash salaries 150k,200k, 250k they have forgotten what life is like for many of the people they serve.
This is a storm in a teacup. Benito Seymour never actually told anyone to blow up, or maim, or harm, anyone at the ministry of pacific peoples, he just used inflammatory words, and wink wink nudge nudge alt right rhetoric, to insight it, thats all.
Just as Trump never instructed anyone to do anything untoward, or unseemly, or unlawful, at the capitol building, he just insighted it by telling hyped up supporters, to go there and fight like hell, thats all.
Surely no mentally deranged supporter of Benito Seymour will take him at his word, and act out what he said, because Act supporters are such stable moderate considered types, who happen to support the gun lobby. But then again, the probability for such a misunderstanding to occur is not actually zero, C’est la Vy.
“This is a storm in a teacup”. That’s about it. A media opportunity. Seymour didn’t even say the words, but can’t keep a good story down. Sure, guilty by association. And, really, how dumb is him to even bring it up.
Well didn’t Guy Fawkes attempt to blow up the House of Lords? Don’t think you would find too many civil servants in that chamber. Oh that’s right, ACT aren’t big on teaching history. Well at least not all of it. Don’t want to trigger the little ones. They are so f’ing Republican.
Storm in a tea cup approach by media as usual.
Wouldn’t be surprised if he is charged, others like him threatening to kill WINZ workers or blow up a school or assassinate the PM have been prosecuted. A bit of time inside might be good for Seymour, prison will give him a new perspective on the country he hates.
I was so grateful newshub informed us some drooling green voter got offended and complained to police. No humans were mentioned or harmed in Seymour’s joke.
Headline news.
Whack jobs complain to police about everything.
Good airtime for ACT though as the sane majority of the population sees the nepotism and waste of the bloated bureaucracy and wants it sorted.
His joke was lame. God help him if he called them crybabys though. A whole other rabbit hole that one!
It did highlight yet another pointless Wellington bureaucracy however. This one obviously gives abysmal return to the taxpayer and or the people they are supposed to serve. The $40000 piss up shared with us an unbelievable sense of entitlement much less the next party we paid for, for his new gig. These bureaucracies appear to be a 1st class upgrade, a Koru lounge experience from the MSD, in the form of a gold plated work creation scheme. ACT are right to want rid of it!
David Seymour’s immaturity as a leader on full display. ‘Jokes’ like that may have once been accepted at the pub between mates, but those days have gone; they have never been acceptable on public broadcast. Seymour’s inability to see how wrong this was gives a clue to how he will behave should he ever be in a position of power.
If National facilitate ACT in Epsom this election they are effectively condoning, inspite of Luxon’s words, Seymour’s behaviour.
Agree with you Martyn.
You are spot on in your analysis.
The whole point of the Guy Fawkes story is that he DIDN’T SUCCEED.
He did NOT blow up Parliament. He was caught red handed, tried, and hanged, drawn and quartered for his treason.
As a possible fate for David Seymour I have to say it has a certain attraction…
Probably too good for him.
I love it when the woke left give ACT another 2% with their woke ailenating nonsense.
We are in the middle of an anti democtatic revolution. It’s time for a counterevolution and this election may be the start of it
Its also anti-enlightenment
lol – the ruling classes who ACT represent having a counter-revolution? against themselves? that I would love to see.
It’s getting harder not to vote for ACT.
If they drop the neoliberal policies then I’d vote for them in a heartbeat. I’m voting Te Pati Maori at this stage soley because their tax policies are the best. But yeah the ministries for woke affairs need to go.
Gone country for a few days and have seen the cynical ACT Party hoardings, mostly on large farm holdings: e.g. ‘ End Division By Race Vote Party ACT’, accompanied by the cheesy, grinning face of Seymour himself. His intention is, of course, to obliterate the ToW of any meaningful obligation to pakeha whatsoever. Such action will inevitably increase division, probably with violence.
Seymour and his gun-toting party seem the sort to literally wipe Maori off the face of this earth (strangely, including members of his own Parliamentary party; call it ‘colateral damage’), as white Australian settlers (mostly convicts) tried to do with the Aborigines, and failed.
Seymour is, on many counts, a very dangerous, brinkmanship-practicing politician.
Vote for ACT at your peril! It will come to government with policies that will almost certainly have dire and dreadful consequences that you probably have never thought would happen in NZ.
Going on, your going to love our new Government, it’s what you all deserve. Failures swept away, a brighter future for all.
You just labelled the 9 years of the National/Act government Rat, thanks for the reminder.
Labour over the last 6 years has pushed this country into an economical mess and made the racial division the worst in years.To vote them back in would lead them to cut deeper into the fabric of society and push more to leave for greener pastures following those already there. ACT is not my cup of tea but if working with them is the price to oust Labour then so be it.
Like voting for Hitler as he got the trains running on time.
Reliable public transport is important to reduce emissions, what’s not to like 😉
Like 100%
Another Twerk from Seymour. But that’s what people like about him, a sense of humor and political wit.
Oh my pearls! Must clutch them…
Foxy boy, methain dispenser
Can i say,, shoot straight you fuckers.
Engel, what a care knowing.
Bomber, wit war these fences, eh!.
Egit, your ignorance, of fences, how, be nice,to your egit.
What wall absorb their bullets, hide.
Eh! Aoatearoa, what a thing.
Ana.
Henuki them all, them dare question dare try.
Puppet glove,our care.
Bugger, they who, caught.
Fred, eh Engel, whit call this thing.
The pair of them fought, call the thing.
Socialist.
Bomber, best left alone, the trade union leader, friday night manners mall. wellington, jim knox waving a huge t bone steak, join the union,get one ever friday night. what a knowing.
Eh! lies, never.
T BONE,THE TRUTH, KNOWING;
Care knowing.
Socialism, what a care.
Jeckyll and Hyde, David Seymour represents the authoritarian tyrant of plutocracy.
Are we going to be allowed to light fireworks on the 5th ?
As well as the $40,000 piss up the PP ministry spent $100,000 on prezzie cards the previous year. It does need a bomb under it.
I’m not a fan of Act, nor David Seymour, but there is something to be said against attributing words to people that weren’t said. “Blowing up” aren’t Seymour’s words, as far as I can see. It’s a media construction through association. Ok, its the intention you might say. And thought and language is the same thing, yes. Maybe. But it’s all swampy ground.
In my fantasy, we’d send a guy called Guy Fawkes in there and it’d be all over, but we’ll probably have to have a more formal approach than that,” he said.
As long as it’s the Beehive and you’re there at the time, David.
I’m all for a gutting of central government and a society based on local co-operation and direct democracy – unfortunately, the ruling classes, who ACT represent, will never go for it – all just a bunch of empty rhetoric and tinkering of an elitist system designed to keep the community at arms length.
for such a “progressive” blog, this place is sooo conservative. You should be lambasting Seymour for not including the whole of the parliamentary precinct in his comment.
…with him in it.
Everyone has a right to representation and to agitate for the same. Are you miffed because there isn’t a Ministry for Privileged Woke Wankers?
Guy Fawkes’ cunning plan was thwarted with those remaining alive tried for high treason, found guilty and sentenced to death. Hung by the neck until dead or drawn and quartered I believe. Seymour gets off lightly.
Seemore a so called proud Maori missed the Koroneihana and why is that folks?
Sure the twerking little whimp, who is unlikely to have had a root in his life that was not paid for, did not plan to literally bomb the office. But, but, but…he symbolically fed fillet steak to his audience, and he well knows it going by his media channel statements and their adoring responses.
Greens and TPM are doing a good job informing people of what NActFirst would take off working class people in this country–for the few not the many–is their policy. It is time for NZ Labour to join them if they want any chance of defeating the likes Seymour.
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