"It’s affecting the areas in so many ways," Mr Seymour said in an interview with the Otago Daily Times.
"There are people I heard about in [Wānaka] Community Hub who find themselves in real poverty because wages for a lot of workers aren’t necessarily high. Rent sure is. There’s a daycare centre that had to close down because they couldn’t accommodate people."
Speaking prior to the event, Mr Seymour said the government needed to do more than "stepping in and zoning more land" to address the housing shortage.
"Just changing one thing from Wellington doesn’t necessarily solve the problem. It might just spread the development around in ways that are going to irritate people more."
He said an Act government would look at reforming the Resource Management Act, provide council’s with a share of GST from home builds to incentivise more consents, and reintroduce no-fault evictions.
When asked for his views on the proposed Tarras airport, Mr Seymour said he had no "strong view" on it, but expressed scepticism at Christchurch Airport’s suggestion that someone else would need to pay for the infrastructure to reach Tarras.
"Yeah good luck with that. You know, I think there has to be a clear justification that the people who pay are actually getting a benefit.
"So who’s going to pay for this road, and who gets the benefits from it? And if you don’t have a really good answer to that question it’s hard to justify."
On the subject of Te Pukenga, Mr Seymour said the institution was a "massive and expensive misadventure", and needed to be broken up.
"It has dragged tertiary institutions down to the lowest common denominator and I think what we need to get back to is independent, free-standing institutions that stand or fall based on the quality of service to students.
"Who, remember, are the whole point of the education system ultimately."
When asked about the implications of the ongoing Cryptosporidium outbreak in Queenstown, Mr Seymour said his government would focus on providing the Queenstown Lakes District Council and others with additional funding avenues to help protect their water resources.
"Our GST-sharing initiative would transfer tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars to the QLDC each year," he said.
"I think the other possible options — targeted rates, municipal bonds. I mean these are used all around the world. New Zealand’s quite odd in that we basically say if the government can’t, if the council can’t afford to borrow and buy this, it doesn’t happen. And that means we’re leaving a well of opportunities on the table."
