ACT leader David Seymour is adamant one of his senior MPs no longer believes climate change is a hoax or that people who think the planet is warming are “nut jobs”.
Seymour insists Mark Cameron does not believe many of the things he used to regularly tweet about, shortly before entering Parliament.
Cameron, a dairy farmer turned politician, is one of ACT’s top MPs, ranked at number seven on the list for this year’s election.
Seymour wasn’t keen to talk about Cameron’s controversial Twitter takes from shortly before he joined ACT, like that climate change is a farce, and that only nut jobs believe the planet is warming.
“He doesn’t believe that and trying to drag that up now is really just B grade journalism.”
The latest 1News Verian poll showed ACT could be in a position to form a Government with National after the election, meaning Cameron could be a minister.
Seymour said Cameron doesn’t believe climate change is a hoax.
Cameron himself said he was not a climate change denier.
“People have potentially questioned whether I thought climate change was real or not, I maintain that it is and again I stress the point I represent the interests of rural New Zealand.”
The Labour MP for Wairarapa, Kieran McAnulty said Cameron’s comments about climate change and globalists were concerning.
“Yeah, I think we’re also starting to see why Chris Luxon is not ruling out Winston Peters right now, he’s looking at what some people are saying in the ACT Party and what they stand for.”
Cameron has also tweeted about political leaders being part of a globalist conspiracy, a term linked to anti-Jewish commentary.
“I don’t know what was going through my mind five years ago anymore than what was happening the year before last,” he said when asked about it.
“I made stupid remarks as an individual that I don’t believe to be true.”
Cameron has previously apologised for tweets where he described Dame Jacinda Ardern as being a “IQ light weight”, Julie Anne Genter as “dumb”, and implied Golriz Ghahraman was too.
“I apologised then and I’ll apologise again.”
Earlier this month ACT candidate Elaine Naidu Franz stepped down after 1News revealed online comments she had made where she likened vaccine mandates to Nazi concentration camps.
A second candidate, Darren Gilchrist - the ACT candidate for Waikato – also apologised for comments he made suggesting drowning victims had died because they’d received the Covid vaccine.
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