Time for a Loving Intervention (With a Bullhorn)

(Full personal disclosure: I did once—during the boozy IBM years—walk out without paying a large bar tab at the GP (the bar!) - I went back and paid the next day, and I did once lie down in the gutter outside Logan Brown after my 30th birthday party. I also once made out with someone in the rare books room of a famous world library in my youth, sorry Karl Marx.)

Let’s be real: everyone veers off the rails now and then. That’s part of being human. You say something weird at a work meeting, you spiral about the dishwasher, you write a Regulatory Standards Bill. It happens.

Earlier this year, someone I admire — a person deeply involved in making the world better — reached out to offer me some pointed, unsolicited advice. It was brutally honest, but it wasn’t personal. Just facts. No ego, no drama. And because of that, I took it completely on board. My advocacy work has got better for it.

So in the spirit of constructive feedback — and because we care — we’re offering a gentle, loving, possibly televised public intervention to the following individuals, each of whom has absolutely gone off the deep end this week.

David Seymour: When You’ve Got a Hammer, Everything Looks Like a Bureaucrat

David Seymour is angry again. This time, it’s because people had the audacity to critique his pet Regulatory Standards Bill — a piece of legislation so ideologically rigid it makes Milton Friedman look like a hippie.

Seymour’s newest enemy? LINZ. Yes, Land Information New Zealand, the department that makes maps. Apparently, Seymour believes they’re now part of a vast anti-rights conspiracy. According to him, public servants like those at LINZ treat New Zealanders’ rights as “an inconvenience.”

An inconvenience? Mate, your bill would give legal weight to every lobbyist’s fever dream, stall infrastructure, and kneecap Treaty settlements. It’s not a rights charter — it’s a Molotov cocktail in a Ermenegildo Zegna super 120's suit. LINZ is just saying, “Hey, maybe don’t burn the country down in the name of regulatory elegance.”

David. Put the hammer down. Have a juice box, snuggle your blanky. Talk to someone who doesn’t own property in Remuera.

Dr Parmar: If You’re Going to Be Racist, At Least Own It

ACT MP Dr Parmar is having a busy week trying to explain why banning race-based scholarships is actually a form of equality. Her bill would kneecap targeted programmes that help Māori and Pasifika students into higher education. But instead of just fronting it, she’s now accusing her critics of racism — for calling her racist.

This is the kind of gaslighting that makes the whole room flicker.

Let’s be clear: there’s nothing brave about punching down on marginalised communities and then playing the victim when people call you out. You’re not Rosa Parks because someone said your bill is racist. You’re just a lawmaker trying to make the country more hostile to its Indigenous people.

Someone take the draft legislation out of her hands and give her a copy of the Treaty instead.

Jan Rivers: President of the Passive-Aggressive Panic Society

Jan Rivers, the head of Genspect NZ, is not just off the rails — she’s launched into orbit and is broadcasting from the dark side of the moon. She even went on Reality Check Radio this week - so we can now also say she is white supremacist adjacent.

Jan is doing her best to rebrand anti-trans bigotry as “concerned enquiry.” She’s the local ambassador for Genspect, the international group that brands itself as “gender critical” but functions more like a polite conversion therapy front with better fonts. She hates trans people more than Jeff Bezos hates workers' rights.

She spends her days warning the public about the “dangers” of affirming trans youth, claiming that New Zealand’s ban on conversion practices is “a wolf in wolf’s clothing” — which is a bit rich coming from someone who’s spent the last few years dressing prejudice up in sheep’s wool and calling it “cautious discussion.”

If you’ve ever wondered what happens when someone reads one poorly understood journal article and decides they know more than every major medical association on Earth — Jan is your answer. She’s basically a Reddit thread in human form, but with more press releases.

Jan: You’re not the lone voice of reason. You’re not Galileo, or Einstein, or Peter Higgs. You’re just very, very wrong — loudly. Go enjoy your retirement.

Ray Chung: Wellington’s Self-Immolation Artist

Ah, Ray Chung. The councillor who decided that Wellington wasn’t chaotic enough, so he chucked in a flaming dumpster of his own making.

This week, a truly unhinged email resurfaced — one Ray wrote back in 2022, spreading wild and defamatory rumours about Mayor Tory Whanau. The kind of gossip that would get you kicked out of a teenage group chat.

Ray now says he “regrets” the email. You’d regret it too if your inbox was suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree by every journalist in town. Nicola Willis called it “the most stupid, silly email” she’d ever seen. And that’s from someone who’s seen ACT’s whole policy platform.

Ray needs an intervention so large it should qualify for central government funding. We’re talking cross-party, interfaith, therapist-supervised emergency support — possibly involving a séance, a grief doula, and a shovel to dig his reputation out from under the wreckage.

Ray: you’re not a maverick outsider. You’re just a guy who confused “public service” with “Reply All.”

In Conclusion: Do Better, All of You

We say this with love — and a faint twitch in our left eye. Everyone gets it wrong sometimes. But there’s a difference between a bad take and becoming a recurring character in the national breakdown.

To all those mentioned: this isn’t personal. Just facts. And just like that person who once pulled me aside with the truth, we’re offering you a lifeline. Take it. Before you make next week’s list, too.