# David Seymour becomes New Zealand deputy prime minister as coalition reshuffle takes effect
Event date: 2025-05-31
David Seymour has been sworn in as New Zealand’s deputy prime minister, taking over from Winston Peters in a transition set out by the coalition arrangement between the governing parties.
The ceremony took place at Government House in Epsom, Auckland at noon, with Seymour joined by family members as well as Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Governor-General Dame Cindy Kiro. According to the report, Kiro congratulated Seymour while Luxon described the appointment as a great privilege.
The shift gives the ACT Party a highly visible role inside the coalition cabinet and marks a symbolic milestone for a party that began as a one-MP caucus in 2014 and now holds multiple cabinet positions. Seymour is the 19th person to hold New Zealand’s deputy prime ministership.
Winston Peters has held the role three times, and the post has often been associated with senior figures who later rose to the top job. The report notes that several former deputy prime ministers went on to become prime minister, including Keith Holyoake, Jack Marshall, Robert Muldoon, Geoffrey Palmer, Helen Clark and Bill English.
Seymour’s elevation comes at a moment when he remains one of the government’s most prominent and controversial ministers. He currently holds the regulation portfolio and serves as associate minister of health, finance, education and justice.
His most disputed recent initiative has been the Treaty Principles Bill, which ACT has framed as a promise of equal rights but which opponents have treated as an attack on Māori rights. The bill’s first reading drew a hīkoi to Parliament, with up to tens of thousands of people protesting, and it attracted more than 300,000 public submissions.
The report says the bill was always expected to fail because coalition partners intended to vote it down, but the backlash still underscored how divisive Seymour’s politics remain. His rise to the deputy prime ministership therefore does not signal a broad change in policy direction so much as a formal adjustment inside the coalition structure.
ACT also used the occasion to underline its own growth. The party said the appointment represented a historic milestone and pointed to its expansion from a single-caucus party to a 2025 governing partner with 11 MPs and cabinet seats.
The event is important for what it says about the coalition’s internal balance. Peters is stepping aside not because of a public rupture but because of a scheduled handover. That makes the transition orderly, even if it does not reduce the political tension around Seymour’s public profile.
The report also captures a light moment from the government’s senior ranks. Nicola Willis remarked on radio that the day was not marked on her calendar as an enormous love heart, suggesting the reshuffle may matter symbolically more than operationally.
Seymour himself told the Front Page this week that the role was one of those things a person might not expect to happen in life. However it is described, the appointment places him at the center of a coalition government that continues to balance ideological sharp edges with the practical demands of governing.
For New Zealand, the handover is notable less for policy change than for political symbolism: the country now has a new deputy prime minister, and it is the ACT leader who has stepped into the role.
*Source: Newstalk ZB 5365*
