An alleged white supremacist who was sacked by his employer last month has confronted ACT leader David Seymour with a rant about "freedom" and the controversial He Puapua report.
Seymour was confronted at one of his ACT Party public meetings in Ashburton on Thursday night by Lee Williams, a British-born Canterbury man who runs a YouTube channel that publishes far-right content.
Williams was fired in June from dairy company Synlait over allegations of white supremacist statements, following a widespread campaign pushing for him to be sacked.
"How can you defend that? You're supposed to be looking after freedom!" Williams says to Seymour at the public meeting, in a video circulating on social media.
"You need to ask yourself why that is," Seymour responds. "Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition, and banks have decided they don't want to deal with you..."
Williams, pointing to a sign about 'freedom', asks if people should have the freedom to "destroy" his life by getting him fired.
"We all make choices, you've made your choices," Seymour responds.
Williams then turns to the crowd and denounces Seymour.
"This man here is not defending freedom! He's a bloody fraud! He's a fake!"
Seymour walks off, calling Williams an idiot, and the crowd appears to agree, telling the YouTuber to sit down and leave the ACT leader alone.
But Williams wasn't finished. He launched into an attack on Seymour for not speaking out about the controversial He Puapua report, a paper commissioned by the Government which sets out a proposed roadmap for co-governance between Maori and the Crown.
"You've not mentioned He Puapua here. Do any of you know what He Puapua is? By 2040, Māori will own 50 percent of this country, and this man here won't even tell you about it! He's a fake and a fraud."
But it was in fact Seymour who first raised concerns about He Puapua.
"He's clearly not someone that you'd call an intellectual or pays close attention to events - but hey, what can you do?" Seymour told Newshub.
The ACT leader says he has never met Williams before.
"The guy is clearly an idiot but it takes all sorts to make a world. I don't think I've met him before but I mean, you get people like that coming along, and I think really, the crowd summed it up.
"I think if you listen clearly to the video, someone says he's a dickhead, and I'm not saying I agree with them, but I'm not saying I disagree, either."
Seymour says he won't take responsibility for people like Williams speaking out about He Puapua, now that discussion about it is in the public domain, which some commentators believe has emboldened racist views.
"I think you should probably blame the Government for commissioning it," Seymour says. "If it's my fault for questioning it, surely it's the Government's fault for creating it. I think it's ridiculous - I don't think me or the Government are responsible for what he says."
Seymour earlier this week defended keeping money from Mike Allen, a man who threatened to destroy mosques.
The video of the confrontation posted online is captioned: "It appears that while David Seymour will defend his decision to accept a donation from Mike Allen, he draws the line at backing Lee Williams."
But Seymour doesn't see the connection.
"There's some stupid people on Twitter," he told Newshub.
"I've said everything there is to say about Mike Allen. The guy made the comments after he'd given the donation, he suffered an enormous pile-on.
"Would I join that pile-on to somehow demonstrate my virtue? I just don't operate that way."
