David Seymour says he knows what it's like to be a minority and has nothing to apologise for.
The ACT Party leader was asked by Magic Talk host Sean Plunket on Monday if he had anything he needed to get off his chest or say sorry for - like his height or the colour of his skin.
But Seymour, who is of Ngāpuhi descent, replied with a firm "no".
"Actually I got to tell you Sean, I know what it's like to be a minority. I am a minority. I've been a minority of one in Parliament for the last five years. Hopefully, that will change at some point," he said.
"I get attacked for my views believing in freedom and responsibility on an individual level every day. So if you want a confession there's one."
Seymour also took issue with Labour MP Andrew Little, who on Sunday told Black Lives Matter protesters there's "something wrong" with New Zealand’s justice system and "we've got to change".
"I think it's just pathetic and I think the inability to stand up for principle and say 'look, everyone's entitled to a view', it doesn't give you the right to be violent, it doesn't give you the right to rewrite history, it doesn't give you the right to believe that your views are more important than somebody else's," Seymour said.
"Those are the values that make a country great that he should be standing up for, not doing a David Cunliffe - look how that ended."
In 2014, the then-Labour leader said he's "sorry for being a man" because men commit the most family violence. Cunliffe then led Labour to a disastrous defeat in the general election.
And while on the subject of apologies, Seymour also said new National leader Todd Muller should not have apologised for the 1980s and 1990s economic reforms.
Speaking at his home community of Te Puna on Sunday, Muller criticised the speed these were carried out, saying they did "terrible harm to the institutions of our communities, and to far too many of our families".
But Seymour, who leads the party formed by the key reformers of that period, disagreed.
"One issue I would take issue with is apologising in his speech for the '80s and '90s. The facts are that we got the best policy settings in the world, we got out of near-bankruptcy in the '80s and grew strongly through the '90s. It was only when Helen Clark started taking us back to socialism that our productivity growth slowed," Seymour told Plunket.
"I don't see the point in being on the right [wing] if you're not going to stand up for free markets, low taxes, less regulation and all the things we know from evidence… makes people more prosperous.
"I think he needs to stop apologising for things that the Bolger Government he was involved in did well."
