‘Get woke, go broke’: David Seymour pushes sale of Air NZ after $59m loss
Thursday, 26 February 2026
ACT leader David Seymour is criticising Air New Zealand for failing to do its job following its reported $59 million loss for the first half of the 2026 financial year.
Seymour wants to see the Government-owned enterprise sold off, saying it had become distracted by “a million other objectives”.
“Get woke, go broke. We hear about electric planes, glossy reports on climate change, paper cups in the Koru Lounge. What they can't seem to do is take off and land on time.”
The ACT Party is calling for the majority government-owned enterprise to be sold, saying the airline was not serving a purpose for the New Zealand taxpayer if it was not providing an affordable and timely service.
Read more:
“What really matters is taking taking off and landing on time and doing it for a competitive price. They're clearly failing at that.”
Seymour disputed Air New Zealand’s claim that domestic demand was down, and said when he flew they were nearly always full.
He also criticised expensive airfares, calling $600 one-way flights “crazy”, and said overseas travel appeared more competitive and at times even cheaper than domestic flights.
Seymour wanted a policy that limited MPs’ travel budgets to save taxpayers money and reduce emissions by encouraging politicians to fly on cheaper flights and airlines.
The policy was promised by the party in its election campaign, with an aim to reduce the number of flights taken by MPs, and carbon emissions, by a quarter.
This would be done by increasing the number of days Parliament sits from three days to four days and reduce the number of weeks it sits from 30 to 23.
He said Parliament must be the only workplace in the country that had an unlimited travel budget.
The ACT leader said his party aimed to fly affordably where it could, saying he had flown Jetstar frequently in the past, while also using Air New Zealand.
Last month The Post reported taxpayers were forking out more than $1m every three months on MPs’ domestic travel.
Seymour spent a total of $57,261 on airfares between January and September 2025.
The highest individual spender was Te Pāti Māori's Rawiri Waititi at $273,681. The second was Labour list MP Damien O’Connor on $211,592, while Prime Minister Christopher Luxon spent $112,611 - Government’s highest internal travel bill.
Air NZ needs to start being on-time and getting the often absurd regional costs down so they aren’t more expensive than a flight to Australia and back.
But calls for the government to sell our shares when the airline market is in a downturn is economic lunacy.
Air New Zealand is our national carrier and a national asset. As the majority shareholder, the government should be backing its future rather than dragging it down and hocking it off.
New Zealand used to own 100% of both AirNZ and KiwiRail prior to the disastrous neoliberal experiment started by Labour in the late eighties and continued by National in the early nineties selling off our assets - New Zealanders haven’t forgotten what that economic sabotage of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia did for future generations.
NZFirst is the only party that will stop this economic privatisation madness of selling our national assets - we will ensure our country’s interests and future are put first.
Posting on X, NZ First leader Winston Peters said Air New Zealand needed to start being on time and lower its 'often absurd' costs so it was not more expensive than a flight to Australia and back.
But he said calls for the Government to sell its shares when the airline market is in a downturn is “economic lunacy”.
“Air New Zealand is our national carrier and a national asset. As the majority shareholder, the government should be backing its future rather than dragging it down and hocking it off,” he wrote.
Air New Zealand responded it had nothing further to add.