THE COALITION government’s polling collapse has produced many strange political contortions, but David Seymour’s latest outburst against Radio New Zealand is remarkable even by his standards. With the government staring down the barrel of a possible election defeat, Seymour has chosen to launch an extraordinary attack on the state broadcaster for the apparent crime of hiring a journalist he doesn’t like. The appointment of John Campbell as co-presenter of Morning Report should be unremarkable in any functioning democracy. Instead, it has become the latest front in Seymour’s ongoing war against public broadcasting.
Seymour is not just any critic. As a shareholding minister in both RNZ and TVNZ, he sits in a position of direct influence over the very institutions he is now publicly berating. That alone should give New Zealanders pause. But Seymour has gone further, declaring that Campbell’s appointment should have been 'out of the question' because of 'the kinds of things' he has previously written. The implication is unmistakable: journalists who have criticised the ACT Party should be disqualified from senior roles in public media. For a politician who endlessly postures as a defender of free speech, the hypocrisy is almost too obvious to point out.
Campbell’s supposed offence is that he has, in the past, written critically about ACT and suggested its leadership was 'out of ideas'. In any healthy media environment, such commentary would be considered routine political analysis. But Seymour’s reaction reveals something deeper: he is not interested in free speech as a principle, only as a weapon. When ACT supporters or right-wing commentators attack their political opponents, Seymour celebrates it as robust democratic debate. When a liberal journalist expresses an opinion he dislikes, Seymour suddenly discovers a need for political intervention.
His threat to change the composition of the RNZ board 'with the aim of changing RNZ’s direction' is not subtle. It is a declaration that the government intends to reshape public broadcasting to better reflect its own ideological preferences. This is precisely the kind of political interference that public service media around the world are struggling to resist. From the BBC to NPR to the ABC, governments have increasingly sought to starve public broadcasters of funding, intimidate them into compliance, or stack their boards with loyalists. Seymour’s comments place New Zealand squarely within that global trend.
What makes this attack even more absurd is that RNZ has hardly been a bastion of radical dissent in recent years. If anything, it has become more cautious, more conservative, more deferential to the government of the day. Its coverage of Israel’s assault on Gaza is a case in point. While international human rights organisations, UN experts, and much of the global South have described Israel’s actions as genocide, RNZ has largely avoided the term. It has often appeared to be looking over its shoulder, anxious not to offend official sensibilities. Yet even this level of timidity is apparently too much for Seymour, who cannot tolerate the presence of a single liberal journalist in a prominent role.
The irony is almost too rich: Seymour chose to launch his tirade on The Platform, a right-wing online station founded by former Morning Report presenter Sean Plunket. The Platform makes no secret of its political loyalties. It is openly partisan, proudly ideological, and consistently sympathetic to the coalition government and the ACT Party. This, it seems, is the kind of media environment Seymour prefers—one where journalists cheerlead for the government rather than scrutinise it.
He has also never expressed concern about Newstalk ZB’s reliably favourable coverage of the coalition, nor about the broader right-wing media ecosystem that amplifies ACT’s talking points daily. Bias is only a problem, it seems, when it leans left.
Seymour’s attack also serves as a convenient distraction from the government’s mounting failures. While New Zealanders grapple with a cost-of-living crisis, rising inequality, and the accelerating impacts of climate change, the coalition has offered little beyond austerity, deregulation, and culture-war theatrics. Instead of addressing the structural issues driving hardship, Seymour has fixated on RNZ and TVNZ as though public broadcasting were the country’s most urgent issue. It is a classic political manoeuvre: when you cannot solve the real crises, manufacture a fake one.
Public broadcasting is not perfect, and RNZ certainly deserves criticism for its timidity and its reluctance to challenge entrenched power. But the solution is not to turn it into a government propaganda arm. A publicly funded broadcaster must be independent precisely because the state funds it. Its legitimacy depends on its ability to hold governments to account, not to flatter them. Seymour’s vision—an RNZ whose board is reshaped to ensure ideological compliance—would destroy the very purpose of public media.
New Zealanders should be clear-eyed about what is happening. This is not a debate about one journalist. It is an attempt to intimidate a public institution at a moment when the government is politically vulnerable and increasingly desperate. Seymour’s message is unmistakable: dissent will be punished, criticism will be policed, and public broadcasting will be brought to heel.
RNZ may be funded by the state, but it does not belong to the government. It belongs to the public. And the public should reject any attempt—by Seymour or anyone else—to turn it into the megaphone of the coalition government.
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