TRANSKRIPT 🔗
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Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it seems it's the season to line up and take shots at the National Party, particularly if you are a past or current member. The latest after Vanessa and Gerry and Don and Simon is Sue Wood, who is a former National Party president. She's written an open letter to MPs published in The Post in Wellington this morning, calling on them essentially to revolt behind closed doors against party powers. She tells them that for the first ever time under MMP, they are not in their jobs because of Chris Luxon and the National Party board, because none of them are list MPs. List MPs, as you know, get dragged in by the leader's popularity. But electorate MPs have won their seats themselves. That's broadly her argument. And for that reason, they have more power and can dictate terms. And they need to argue with the likes of Chris Luxon and the board and the kitchen cabinet around Luxon and drag the party off in a different direction. Now, she doesn't say what that direction is, but if you read between the lines, it sounds like she wants to move to the centre. Easier said than done, obviously, because the coalition parties will drag them right back to the right. And also context that you need for this, which is that Sue Wood is the mother-in-law of Matthew Houghton and has published this letter in his newspaper. And he is well known to love causing trouble for the National Party. So Sue will have a little bit of guilt by association to wear hair. Now, I mean, she probably has best of intentions, but I would say this is going to come to nothing because have a look at the National Party caucus that has left now. Too many of the MPs who are senior enough to push back against Luxon and the group around him, like Simeon Brown, have been kicked out of Parliament. And too many of the ones who are left there are so new, they don't know any version of national other than this central control version. Some of them will be so overwhelmed just by making it into Parliament. Some of them will be overwhelmed by... just by the fact that the party managed to stay out of opposition possibly. And many of them will just be trying to use their energy right now to start new jobs and new portfolios. The election is over, which means the threat to them is over. So I expect chances are things will go back to status quo in the National Party rather than revolt.