Act leader David Seymour said New Zealand risks turning its back on centuries of enlightenment values like reason and universal human rights.

In his first big speech of the year, Seymour said that “we live under new doctrines that look like life pre-enlightenment”.

“It is more important to follow the new doctrines of privacy, health and safety, and the principles of the Treaty than it is to apply your own judgement and take responsibility for a situation,” he said.

Seymour alleged the current Government judged people by skin colour and background.

 “What matters most is your skin colour or background.

“They think we are not all thinking and valuing beings. We are not all equal. We don’t have the same rights and duties. We are either the oppressors or the oppressed… And we should simply feel shame for our heritage, rather than learn from it,” Seymour said.

The remarks were made in Seymour’s Road to Real Change speech to a crowd of supporters at Princes Wharf in Auckland (a previous venue sold out in just six hours).

Politicians of many stripes will be making “State of the Nation” speeches in the coming weeks, in which they attempt to set out their framing for the year ahead.

Seymour’s speech is the first in the series and could be controversial. Coming one day after Waitangi Day, Seymour spoke extensively about the path that Labour had chosen when it came to honouring the Treaty.

He chose to locate his speech in the European Enlightenment, which is popularly remembered as a time when ideas of universal human rights were developed and many Europeans emerged from repressive absolute monarchies to somewhat less repressive political systems.

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Indigenous populations, like those of New Zealand and Australia, which were explored for the first time during the Enlightenment are sometimes critical of this mostly positive way it is remembered, highlighting that it was also an era of repressive colonisation.

Seymour drew on the positives, however, noting that the Enlightenment gave ordinary people rights and the power to challenge repressive, aristocratic regimes that treated people differently depending on the nobility of their birth and their gender.

“Once upon a time rulers placed little or no value in a person… People were simply fodder for the doctrine of the church, or the King who got his powers from God. It was best if they couldn’t read and didn’t ask too many questions.

National MP Shane Reti, leader Christopher Luxon and Act Party leader David Seymour at Waitangi today. Photo / Tania Whyte

“Putin still believes something like that… So does the government in Iran if you’re female.

“The Enlightenment changed all that,” Seymour said.

He made a dig at the Government, and the former prime minister, comparing her with the power-hungry Church of pre-Enlightenment times”.

“Galileo looked through his telescope and saw Jupiter’s moons.

“The Church could threaten him all they liked, they might have thought he was an arrogant prick, but their word of God collided with reality, sounds like someone else I know,” he quipped of the former prime minister.

Seymour said the at the Treaty of Waitangi, written after the Enlightenment, was a document that guaranteed Enlightenment values, including the promise of limited government that would not oppress its citizens and the promise of equal citizenship.

For that reason, Seymour said he believes the chiefs that signed the Treaty, “would sign up to ACT today”.

Seymour said these universal values had been thrown out and replaced by values which judged people by race and background.

He repeated his call for a referendum on how the Treaty was interpreted by the Government, dubbed a co-governance referendum. This has been ruled-out by National leader Christopher Luxon, but could become difficult for him should Act’s strong polling keep the issue on the agenda.

Luxon and National were also in Seymour’s firing line. He said in Government National would only paint a shade of “blue” over Labours’ “red” reforms.

“Five times National has vigorously opposed Labour’s policies from opposition and five times it has come to office and bedded them in.

“That’s part of the reason we’re in this mess - National governments don’t actually oppose Labour policies… They just want to manage them, and they always find big Government feels better from the back of a Ministerial limo,” Seymour said.