DAVID SEYMOUR'S 'REVOLUTION FROM ABOVE'

David Seymour and Act seek a 'revolution from above' on behalf of capital. So why isn't the media talking about it?

 

ACT LEADER David Seymour has grabbed the media's attention this week after he provocatively claimed that his small party had wielded 'disproportionate influence' over Government policy. He told RNZ that 'I think we've made a disproportionate contribution to policies of the government. If you look at these quarterly plans, often half the ideas come from the party that has only one sixth of the MPs in the government.'

That Seymour was being deliberately provocative is beyond question. He knows that if he throws the mainstream media a juicy bone it will usually run after it. And it did in this case. David Seymour and Act remained in the headlines while the media sought a response from hapless Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. By the end of the week this incident will have been largely forgotten, adding nothing to the sum total of our political knowledge and providing even fewer insights. But its more publicity for Act. More grist-to-the-mill.

But there were far more serious and concerning comments that Seymour made during the course of the interview and which the media have conveniently ignored.

During the course of the debate on the Treaty Principles Bill, Labour MP Willie Jackson described Seymour as 'a dangerous man'. Well, I don't regard the man who 'twerked' on Dancing with the Stars as particularly dangerous, but his far-right ideas surely are. And he expressed some of those dangerous ideas during the course of the RNZ interview.

Asked about Act's plans for 2025, Seymour suggested that a 'conversation' was needed about our failing health system. For 'conversation' read 'ideological war'. Said Seymour:

'Fundamentally, for the number of patients and their demands and the amount of money that's going in we've got very good health professionals stuck in the middle and the system is failing them and the patients. I think that it is going to need to change, and I think we'll have more to say about that in 2025.'

The reason why our public health system is in crisis is because it has, and continues to be, chronically underfunded. Its problems have only been exacerbated by this Government's austerity agenda, and which Act supports. It was only in June that David Seymour was arguing that not enough public service jobs had been slashed.

Seymour has not been above telling porkies during the Treaty Principles debate. Next year we can expect his 'conversation' about the health system will revolve around the myth of a lumbering bureaucratic, over-staffed public service versus an alleged dynamic and innovative private sector. The Act leader's solution to the many problems facing the health system will be privatisation. Because, after all, it's been such an overwhelming success in the electricity industry, hasn't it?

While some will draw comfort from the fact that Act has minimal popular support, we can't be complacent about its intentions. Seymour isn't seek seeking a revolution from below, from within the community. He's agitating for a revolution from above, from within the state, the corporate sector and the mainstream media. He seeks to simply bypass popular opinion. Act is seeking, but won't admit it, the dismantlement of the welfare state.

Perhaps Act's support from within the corporate media explains amount of coverage it receives, and which is far more than is warranted for a party with less than ten percent support in the opinion polls. It might also help explain articles like this, where Stuff journalist Phoebe Utteridge provides Seymour the platform to promote charter schools, a direct attack on our public education system. But the article is entirely absent of any criticisms of charter schools.