A week in the life of an acting prime minister

Saturday, 28 June 2025

In 2021, Kelly Dennett followed ACT’s leader David Seymour around the country ahead of a campaign for a shot at government. A few years later Seymour is right where he wants to be - deputy prime minister and the leader of a party of influence. This week, The Post shadowed Seymour once more.

A few hours before David Seymour’s birthday, he padded down the stairs of the Beehive’s cinema-like theatrette and stopped all conversation. A few seated journalists, among a pack of 20 and half a dozen camera operators, swivelled their heads.

Because at 3.57pm this recent Monday, Seymour was committing an oddity. The ‘post Cabinet press conference’, essentially a media briefing the prime minister or acting prime minister gives after a Cabinet meeting where consequential decisions are made, is scheduled for 4pm.

Usually it starts a few, or quite a few, minutes late (especially since Christopher Luxon has been PM). The prime minister is a busy person.

Seymour was prepared, he was ready. He was early.

With Luxon out of the country, as Middle East tensions reached a crescendo, this conference fell to Seymour as acting prime minister. He’d been preparing with his trusted advisor beforehand, running through potential questions journalists might ask. A short speech was prepared.

This week wasn’t Seymour’s first acting PM rodeo. Previously when Luxon and former deputy Winston Peters were out of the country Seymour stepped in. On those occasions Chinese warships arrived in Australia’s backyard and a major computer error shut down the world’s planes, airports, and payment systems.

So what could go wrong this time?

The Post was invited along for parts of the ride.

Monday

“Howdy folks, how you doing?” Seymour paused at the theatrette lectern, looking at his notes, before launching straight in, quoting the late liberal French economist Claude-Frédéric Bastiat.

“If goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”

Seymour went on to address the escalating tensions in Iran and Israel, with the former attacking the latter over the weekend, and New Zealand sending a Hercules over in preparation to get Kiwis out. Seymour wouldn’t know this, but the conflict was about to intensify.

It may have been imperceptible to anyone but journalists used to hearing Seymour speaking confidently, but they could hear a slight wobble as Seymour read his prepared statement, no doubt written with input from Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ office, with a view not to say anything that would jeopardise Kiwis, the Defence Force, or New Zealand.

Seymour very briefly tripped over his words as his director of communications Simon Clarke and a younger colleague watched from the back of the room, Clarke mostly scrolling on his phone but occasionally peeping up.

About 30 minutes later it was over, and Seymour concluded more jovially than he began, “All right folks, well, look, this has been, this has been a slice, I’ve really enjoyed talking to you all, and hopefully we’ll be able to do this lots more.”

A slice?

“It’s Canadian.”

Seymour’s life is diarised in half hour slots. Within minutes he’s gone on to meet with ministerial colleagues, then education officials. And by early evening he’s having his dinner with ACT deputy Brooke van Velden, a regular fixture on the calendar.

Tuesday

“You know, five years ago, I was quite nervous about doing a stand up for the whole Press Gallery,” Seymour admits the next day.

Monday’s press conference, his first, was new territory for him (so new that Clarke declines The Post’s shadow while they practised questions in the half hour beforehand).

“Yeah,” Seymour agrees, when asked whether he was nervous.

“Because, first of all it’s a different form, it’s a new format, and second of all, you know, there’s some really serious consequences, for example we don’t want to make New Zealanders or the NZDF personnel in the region a target because of a position taken by our government.”

Today Seymour turns 42. His day had started at 7am, with a media interview.

By 9am in the kitchen of the ACT Party offices two chocolate cakes have been procured by caucus colleagues and staff as Seymour runs through a weekly ‘procedures’ meeting, attended by party MPs, advisers and the few electorate staff who beam in from Auckland.

Procedures is the week ahead in Parliament, the bills to be introduced, and questions to be asked in the House. There are also discussions about ACT Local, the party’s first foray into standing local body candidates, the “political agenda” including Iran and Israel - overnight Iran has launched a strike on a US military base - and some soft polling the party has undertaken which shows it remaining “strong” although Seymour notes the economic recovery is slower than hoped.

The ‘freedom fighter of the week’ is chosen, a years-long tradition that is essentially employee of the week. Nominations are given on the spot. MP Mark Cameron, recently returned from kidney disease treatment, is nominated and is neck-and-neck with a policy advisor who has been doing good work but misses out “by a whisker” because, Seymour says, his kidneys are functioning.

Seymour’s performance this week is also noted - by him: “It’s a good opportunity for us to establish ourselves as the party you can trust with important jobs,” he tells the room.

A few hours later, across the precinct, up a few floors in his spacious Beehive office, Seymour is prepping for another round in front of the cameras. In the foyer of the office waiting guests have multiple magazines to choose from, including a recent Listener with Seymour’s face on the cover. A whiteboard has happy birthday messages scrawled on it.

In a routine known as ‘bridge run’ journalists stop ministers on their way to the House, after they cross the bridge between the Beehive and Parliament, a ritual repeated before and after the House sits.

This kind of scrutiny Seymour is used to, but press secretary Clarke, a tall and bespectacled gentleman who exudes a quiet and calm energy, and who Seymour calls “Clarkey”, runs him through some questions anyway.

Perched on a sofa, leg over knee, Clarke quietly reads questions he thinks journalists are going to ask from a list prepared on his phone, barely pausing as Seymour, across from him on a couch, leg also crossed, launches into a response on each: To Trump’s claims of a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, New Zealand’s position on the US strikes, a potential meeting between the PM and Trump, the potential scrapping of local councils.

“GP funding - have you got a line on that?” Clarke asks.

“We don’t always rehearse this much,” Seymour says after, “though if we did rehearse …that’s what it would look like.”

The Post puts to Seymour a tougher question: How old is he now?

Seymour briefly sings a Blink 182 song before answering, “I’m 42. I think my life expectancy is 84, so halfway there. It’s a bit of a worry.”

How is he feeling about that?

“Not good. I hope the second half is easier to be honest.”

Seymour nominates a special birthday treat as the first reading of the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill, which later passes.

Shortly before 2pm, Seymour, Clarke, and a videographer - Seymour has taken to filming his interactions with journalists for his social channels - high tail it into the Beehive lifts to make their way to bridge run. The lift stops on multiples floors, the doors opening, at one point, to Shane Jones’ press secretary who appears incredulous when she sees the tiny elevator stacked with Seymour, two camera operators, a press sec and a journo.

And then it’s the final sprint. Seymour is surprisingly fast. A group of journalists and cameras are waiting on the other side in a semi-circle, and like a diver into a pool, Seymour launches himself in.

“What do you make of the situation in terms of the ceasefire? We’ve got Donald Trump saying there is one, we’ve got Iranian foreign minister saying there’s not. Do you have any briefings? What’s going on?”

Scheduled in the diary later that day: meetings with regulation officials, leaving drinks for RNZ political editor Jo Moir, meetings with colleagues, and from 8.20pm to 10pm it’s reading briefings, writing emails, and signing things.

Wednesday

By 7.20am the next day Seymour is on the Herald’s new video format, and the remainder of the day is filled with meetings: with cabinet committees, his private secretary, and Pharmac.

At 3pm Seymour has a date with University of Canterbury political science students, who wait patiently for him in an ‘education’ room next to the theatrette, filled with nerdy political mementos.

When he arrives about 10 minutes late he apologises, introduces himself, makes some jokes, and then proceeds to pop some chips into his mouth from a small packet as he fields ever more questions.

“They never let you eat in this business,” he tells the students.

If the students are excited to talk to Seymour, they don’t show it. But they do ask some very good questions. Has he ever had to trade off personal beliefs for party beliefs, what’s his view on lobbying, the situation in the Middle East, and market regulation?

Simon Clarke watches on. Seymour does not trip over his words.

Thursday

The next morning, flags in front of Parliament are lowered to half mast.

About 7.30am on Thursday Seymour receives a call from Speaker Gerry Brownlee, informing him that Te Pāti Māori MP Takutai Tarsh Kemp has died suddenly, aged 50. Kemp had been battling kidney disease, but the news is shocking.

“It doesn’t matter if you work in a saw mill or a law firm, you just don’t expect people who were at work the previous day to die overnight,” Seymour tells The Post, a variation of a line he gave journalists on bridge run that day.

The mood in Parliament for the rest of the day is “really sombre”. The House is adjourned early as a mark of respect, but not before MPs pay tribute to Kemp in an emotionally-charged sitting. Flowers occupy Kemp’s seat and desk.

It’s not typical to see jokey, rabble-raising Seymour this statesman-like. He tells journalists his mother died at 50.

“And it just strikes me how young that really is,” Seymour says. “To die at 50 is a real tragedy, a huge misfortune.”

Later that night Seymour flies home to Auckland, ready for electorate work.

Friday

As rain beats down on Auckland, Seymour’s got community meetings with deputy mayor Desley Simpson. He’s also expecting a “rhythm of people” to visit his electorate office, bringing with them a plethora of concerns: immigration is a biggie, and he’s expecting a development on an “absurd” mistaken identity case.

Momentarily, Seymour stops talking to The Post - “sorry, I’ve just seen a massive bus with police on it, a 60 seater coach, in police livery,” he recounts like a reporter in the field. “I’ve never seen anything like that before. Why would you have a 60 seater police bus?”

After the last election Seymour decided he’d do a kindness for himself - Saturdays off.

In 2021 Seymour and party MPs, then in opposition, undertook an “Honest Conversations” tour, travelling through heartland New Zealand to talk to fed-up business owners and farmers. Then, a Red Bull skulling Seymour (he says he’s on two or three coffees a day now but he calls that “excessive” and would like to cut back) described a kind of match fitness in preparing for long working weeks.

“It’s like those crazy people who run 20km every day, once you’re in that rhythm it’s not actually difficult,” he said then.

Says Seymour now, “I thought I was busy then.”

The verdict

David Seymour, acting prime minister, how was your week?

‘It’s been great, I think. A bit of trepidation because there were a million ways it could go wrong, especially with this global situation which has thankfully subsided for now.”

And how would you rate your performance, out of 10?

“I was listening to a radio station this morning and they gave me a seven, and I noticed [Herald writer] Audrey Young gave me an eight…so I’ll say based on the average of the scores out there, 7.5.

“I wasn’t perfect, but I think I did OK.”