No, minister: Seymour to maintain Morning Report blackout while deputy PM

Sunday, 13 April 2025

ACT leader David Seymour, who will become deputy prime minister in just a few weeks, has turned down about two dozen interview requests with RNZ’s flagship show Morning Report in the past year.

And it’s understood he does not intend to start picking up the phone after taking over from Winston Peters on May 31.

It’s part of a long-running boycott of the programme by Seymour and his fellow ACT MPs, dating back to at least 2021, after he complained of rude and dishonest treatment behind the scenes on the show, which at the time was hosted by Corin Dann and Susie Ferguson.

Since then, Ferguson has left, and been replaced by Ingrid Hipkiss; Seymour has entered the coalition government; and he’s performed the duties of both acting PM and deputy PM on several occasions.

But despite these changes in circumstance, and his upcoming elevation, the boycott remains.

A list of interview requests obtained by the Sunday Star-Times under the Official Information Act shows Seymour has been asked to appear on Morning Report 23 times since May last year - or roughly once a fortnight.

On three occasions, Seymour was acting PM when the requests were made, including at least one time when he would have been filling in for Christopher Luxon during his pre-scheduled, weekly appearance on the programme.

That interview would have been in the week following the assassination attempt against US then-candidate Donald Trump in July last year.

Other declined appearances included a request to discuss the minister’s under-fire school lunches scheme; controversy over a letter he had sent to disgraced eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne prior to becoming a minister; and protests against his Treaty Principles Bill.

When asked about the boycott in 2021, Seymour told The Spinoff that he had been appearing on Morning Report “out of a feeling of public duty” but was “belittled and abused with all their snarkiness”.

Three years later, he laid out his issues further in an interview with the NZ Herald.

“They’ve shown themselves over the years to have an incredibly toxic culture, and they’ve been deeply disrespectful, and when we raised issues, they basically told us to shove it.”

While Seymour did not speak to the Star-Times for this story, it’s understood he hasn’t changed his views around appearing on the breakfast programme.

Seymour, who is now a shareholding minister of RNZ, is believed to have previously met with senior leadership at the broadcaster to discuss his concerns and was unsatisfied with the response, though it’s not clear what precise changes he would like to see happen behind the scenes.

A request for correspondence between RNZ leadership and Seymour did not result in any messages being released, with RNZ saying such correspondence did not exist.

Seymour has appeared on Morning Report on a few select occasions during his boycott, effectively due to an agreed workaround in which pre-recorded interviews conducted by RNZ press gallery reporters at Parliament have been played on the breakfast show.

This is above board, in ACT’s view, and a spokesperson for the party maintained it had a positive working relationship with RNZ’s team in the press gallery.

Seymour also makes regular appearances on other RNZ programmes, including Midday Report and Checkpoint.

The minister isn’t the first to hold a long-running grudge against a particular media outlet or programme. Te Pāti Māori doesn’t speak with the NZ Herald and rarely if ever appears on Newstalk ZB (both outlets are owned by NZME).

Jacinda Ardern notably pulled the plug on the prime minister’s weekly interview with Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking, a move Seymour went on to describe as “hubristic”.

At the time, Hosking said Ardern was intentionally hiding away from “answering tough questions”.

Christopher Luxon avoided TVNZ’s Q+A programme for over a year after becoming PM, though appeared on the programme before the end of 2024.

It’s understandable that MPs with dedicated online followings would occasionally opt to bypass certain media outlets, especially given they are all routinely pressed for answers in person at Parliament.

Jacinda Ardern, at the height of her popularity, would regularly go live on Facebook, while MPs from ACT and New Zealand First have taken to sharing their own unedited videos of press conferences - often with the goal of showing how the media had taken certain remarks out of context.

However, said political commentator Janet Wilson, this shouldn’t be the case.

“Any comms person will tell you the more people you talk to, the more you potentially can reach in some way,” said Wilson, who worked as a press secretary for Judith Collins when she was National’s leader. Of Seymour, he should “absolutely 100%” be making himself available to Morning Report, she added.

“He’s not speaking to people who could potentially vote for him. As a politician you need to be getting out and speaking to as many disparate groups as you can in the hope of gaining their interest and getting their eye,” said Wilson.

“Isn’t this an opportunity for him … to step up and show what leadership looks like by going on programmes that he is clearly manifestly opposed to?”

For the same reason, it was a “bad mistake” for Ardern to avoid Mike Hosking, said Wilson.

“There are centrists who could be persuaded by her arguments as there are right-of-centre people who listen to Morning Report who could be persuaded by Seymour’s arguments.”

Politicians who choose to “go over the heads of journalists” were missing an opportunity, she added.

“We’re reaching a crisis of trust and it’s being exacerbated by politicians who don’t act in good faith and decide they’re not going to speak to certain organisations because they don’t fit what they perceive to be [to] their ideological benefit.”

Mark Stevens, RNZ’s chief news officer, said in a statement that the network would “continue to offer” Seymour the opportunity to appear on Morning Report despite his repeated denials.

“Mr Seymour is regularly interviewed on a wide range of RNZ programmes and across our digital coverage in his capacity as a Minister of the Crown and leader of ACT. He is also regularly interviewed by our political reporters in Parliament,” said Stevens.

“RNZ has a rigorous editorial policy and robust complaints system and is subject to both the Media Council and the Broadcasting Standards Authority, which should give confidence our guests are treated fairly and with respect.”

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