David Seymour defends calling Jacinda Ardern 'authoritarian"

[Lilith7]

Even for David Seymour this is well out of order & just shows how little he understands about small children & parenting.
As well as the former PM.

The government has announced changes to the early childhood education sector, which it says will make it easier for new centres to be set up.

ACT leader David Seymour has announced the moves at a Wellington ECE centre, where he read to children while sitting next to a book featuring Jacinda Ardern, before telling reporters the former prime minister was an authoritarian.

He has also signalled plans to introduce mandatory child abuse reporting, while noting the government has not yet made a firm decision on that fraught debate.

The changes will revoke legislative changes allowing the government to decide where early learning services should be, and requirements for ECE centres to have a highly-trained teacher in charge before being allowed to open.

The government is also cancelling a change that would have taken effect in August, requiring any ECE centre to have a more highly qualified teacher to be in charge to be permitted to open.
It would have meant at least one teacher with a Full Practising Certificate (category one or two) would need to be on site. Seymour said the current setting - requiring any registered teacher - would now remain.

"Theoretically you would have to close while that one person went to the bathroom, if that one person you might have was sick you would have to pay a very expensive reliever in order to open.


Ahead of his announcement at a centre in Wellington, Seymour read Oi Frog! to the children there. Another book,Taking the Lead: How Jacinda Ardern wowed the world had been placed prominently alongside him.

Seymour would "absolutely" have read the Jacinda Ardern book to the children, but said "Oi Frog! was a lot more entertaining and ironically Oi Frog! seemed to be a warning to children about authoritarian people that tell you what to do all the time.

"Maybe that's why they have the Jacinda book - for a similar purpose - who knows?"

He defended his characterisation of Ardern as authoritarian.

"I think the way that she used power through the Covid era was excessive, it didn't properly balance New Zealanders rights and their welfare and in some cases it actually was found to be illegal."

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, speaking to reporters in Singapore as part of his trip to Southeast Asia, said he did not agree with Seymour's characterisation.

https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/...LMH8o0RTss