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Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and ACT Party leader David Seymour are at loggerheads over a letter Seymour wrote to police in support of retired eye surgeon Philip Polkinghorne, who was charged with the murder of his wife Pauline Hanna in 2022.
The New Zealand Herald newspaper broke the story about Seymour’s April, 2022, letter to police on the weekend.
It was written prior to the 2023 general election when Seymour, the MP for Epsom, and the ACT Party were in Opposition.
The NZ Herald reported Seymour sent the letter to a senior police officer and complained in it that Polkinghorne felt he had been treated like a suspect rather than a traumatised member of the public following his wife’s death.
The letter is said to have accused police of inappropriate practice, an invasion of privacy, and alleging Polkinghorne and a second eye doctor at Polkinghorne’s business were involved in money laundering.
Seymour’s letter was sent four months before Polkinghorne was charged with Hanna’s murder.
Polkinghorne was found not guilty of Hanna’s murder following a high-profile trial at the Auckland High Court last year.
Since the letter has come to light, Seymour has defended his actions in writing it, saying he did so on behalf of a constituent in his Epsom electorate and stood by it.
But he’s been publicly reprimanded by Luxon, who has said writing the letter was “ill-advised” as police were investigating Hanna’s death at the time.
Seymour then returned fire to Luxon in a radio interview, saying it was “ill-advised” for Luxon to comment on the situation without having all the facts.
Luxon was grilled by Opposition MPs on the matter during question time in Parliament on today, February 11.
Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins asked Luxon if he stood by a previous statement he’d made that Ministers should not involve themselves in police matters.
“Well, as I said yesterday, I made my position clear: he [Seymour] wrote the letter before he was actually a Government Minister and before the Government was formed,” Luxon replied.
Hipkins asked Luxon if he’d ever asked Seymour if he’d received political donations from Polkinghorne.
Luxon, the MP for Botany, said he had not “and I have nothing else to say on it”.
Luxon reiterated his earlier point that Seymour was not a Government Minister when he wrote the letter in support of Polkinghorne.
“He was an MP outside the Government and not a Minister – it’s very simple.”
Hipkins then asked Luxon why he hasn’t demanded a resignation letter from Seymour, “particularly given that David Seymour himself said in 2023 that Ministers interfering in judicial decisions should be ‘prepared to resign the post if the Prime Minister thinks that’s in the best interests of New Zealand’?”
Luxon responded: “I don’t know how to make it any clearer to the member, but what I’ve said before, which is the Minister wrote the letter while he was an MP, before he was a Minister, before he was in this Government.”
