ACT leader David Seymour says what he calls a “treatyist religion” has “colonised” parts of the public service, as his party campaigns to remove cultural and spiritual requirements it says have distracted government agencies from delivering for taxpayers.

Speaking to Chris Lynch Media ahead of ACT’s Christchurch campaign event, Seymour said public servants should be appointed and assessed on their ability to do the job rather than what he described as irrelevant cultural expectations.

“It seems to me that that wasn’t enough because we’re up against a form of treatyist religion that has colonised, ironically, colonised the public service.”

ACT is proposing to remove the separate “good employer” requirements from public service legislation and prohibit agencies from initiating or resourcing cultural or spiritual practices in the workplace. The party has also proposed removing cultural requirements from public service jobs unless they are genuinely relevant to the role.

Seymour said protections against discrimination already existed elsewhere in employment and human rights law and argued the public service provisions had enabled what he described as social engineering.

“The public service doesn’t need its own quote good employer section in the law. What it’s done with that is made it cover for a kind of social engineering project.”

Section 73 of the Public Service Act currently requires public service employers to operate policies providing for the fair and proper treatment of employees, including equal employment opportunities and provisions relating to Māori employment aspirations and requirements.

Seymour said ACT wanted government agencies focused more narrowly on performance and service delivery.

“People are frustrated. Money keeps going into the public service. They don’t feel like getting the results.”

He said cultural expectations could also influence recruitment for jobs where they had little relevance to the work being performed.

Seymour described the suggestion there could be a specifically Māori approach to some basic workplace tasks as “offensive”.

“There is a specific Māori way of cleaning. I mean, none of this should be necessary.”

The interview also turned to modern learning environments, which Seymour described as an expensive educational experiment that had taken too long to reverse.

He criticised National for introducing the model about 15 years ago and said some children, particularly those with learning difficulties, were poorly served by large and noisy teaching spaces.

“Why it’s taken the National Party 15 years to do a 180 degree turn and end up back where they started is a question for them.”

Seymour said ACT supported giving schools greater freedom over how they taught students and argued unsuccessful schools should ultimately risk losing funding.

ACT is also campaigning on a Working with Children Card, which Seymour said would provide continuous checking rather than relying largely on periodic vetting.

He said the proposed system would mean employers working with children could be alerted if relevant information subsequently appeared in police systems.

“What if I do something wrong and nobody finds out for three years?”

Seymour said ACT was looking to Queensland’s Blue Card system as an example of how continuous monitoring could operate.

He will be in Christchurch on Friday for ACT’s mainland campaign launch at the Christchurch Town Hall.

Seymour would not reveal the policy planned for the event but said it would be a significant announcement.

“We’re going to have a big policy announcement. We’re very excited about it.”

He said demand for the Christchurch event had been strong enough for organisers to arrange additional space.