Act leader David Seymour responds to public sector cost-cutting efforts, social media spat with academic

Act party leader David Seymour is embroiled in a spat with the head of a publicly funded anti-extremism centre over the Government’s public service cutbacks.

Professor Joanna Kidman, a director of the Centre of Research Excellence for Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism, lashed out at the Government on Tuesday night.

Kidman wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that she could “only assume that this Government hates children, most of whom will be poor and brown”.

Seymour will be speaking to Newstalk ZB this morning on cost-cutting across the public sector and comments by Joanna Kidman.

“There is so much evidence that military-style youth boot camps don’t work and are expensive,” she wrote.

Kidman also added that the Government “wants to snatch children’s lunches” in response to Associate Education Minister and Act leader David Seymour describing free school lunches as “wasteful” public spending and arguing that the Government should cut them.

“Is this a government or a death cult?” Kidman wrote.

Seymour replied on X: “Some interesting views from a Jacinda Ardern and Labour appointee”.

Kidman has since made her X account private.

It is the second social media spat involving Seymour after earlier this week, he and Health Coalition Aotearoa co-chair Professor Lisa Te Morenga exchanged personal barbs over the Government’s free school lunches programme.

Speaking to the Herald, Seymour said it was “really strange” for Kidman’s comments to come from an organisation funded to bring people together.

“If people want to have arguments about the merits of the school lunch programme or the Government’s boot camps for prisoners, there’s lots of arguments they can make if they’d like to without getting into these kinds of personal attacks. Once you start doing that you’re actually promoting division and extremism,” he said.

He said he believed in freedom of speech and the Government “should never lock someone up for their opinion”, but if someone entered a private contract, they took on obligations in terms of behaviour.

He said people who took government funding were allowed to criticise the Government.

Kidman has not responded to multiple requests for comment from the Herald.