PoO recalls suggesting – in an article about the passage of the English Language Bill – that National MP Vanessa Weenink should think about raising her profile.
Too late to keep her Banks Peninsula seat, she has been raising it this week.
She has been airing her concerns that people hate the National Party and that its voters have been disaffected by its support of coalition partners on Treaty-related issues, such as the English Language Act.
She also expressed her relief that she no longer is a member of the National-ACT-New Zealand First coalition after losing Banks Peninsula to Labour’s Tracey McLellan by some 2000 votes. The party vote in that electorate went to Labour, but National wasn’t far behind.
The Herald reports:
Outgoing MP Vanessa Weenink, who lost her Banks Peninsula seat to Labour after winning it in 2023, aired frank criticism of her party as she arrived at Parliament ahead of National’s caucus meeting today.
“A lot of people in that electorate were telling me, literally, that they hate us, they really got to that point,” she said.
“Then other people would say ’You guys have lost your way, you used to be much more reasonable and you’re listening far too much to other people in your coalition’.”
Weenink described herself to The Spinoff in June as a “left kind of voter” who, as a medical school student, had been a Labour Party member who had worked with Labour’s Duncan Webb on his 2017 campaign.
Perhaps that leftist tint explains why she said yesterday she wouldn’t publicly agree with those she heard criticising the Nats, but “I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with them either”.
Having described herself as a “squishy centrist”, she expressed concerns the National Party would become more conservative by losing senior liberal MPs this election and through its coalition with Act and New Zealand First.
“I would worry for the party that they don’t have enough squishy centrists or woke liberals like Chris Bishop, all those people that [Paul Goldsmith] would call woke.
“The risk is that the party might be pulled too far to the right, the risk is that they’ll feel like they really have to consolidate with their base.”
Nevertheless, she said she remained supportive of Christopher Luxon as party leader – she felt he had managed the “rabble that is the National Party” well amid caucus and coalition pressures.
She was not so generous in an RNZ Midday Repoirt interview in which she said the compromises the National leader made around Treaty issues to his coalition partners had cost the party and hurt the country.
Vanessa Weenink told RNZ some of the rhetoric and discussion around the Māori language and around the Treaty has been “some of the most damaging things” that happened in the last term.
“And frankly, that is not the National Party. That is our coalition partners, and particularly ACT, and I’ve had a gutsful of it,” Weenink said, adding she was relieved to no longer be part of the coalition.
And:
Speaking to Midday Report, Weenink said voters had told her the National Party “wasn’t like this,” and that its coalition partners had “pulled us too far to the right.”
She said people thought National was doing things that weren’t in line with its values. Weenink said she had joined the National Party because she thought its values were most in line with her own, particularly around the Treaty.
She believed that being able understand and pronounce Māori words would be a huge advantage in any career she undertook in New Zealand.
And she thought there would be “a lot of deep reflection” around Treaty issues.
“Part of me is really relieved to not be in that coalition.”
She described how difficult it had been to learn Christopher Luxon had conceded the Treaty Principles Bill
“That was a compromise position that the Prime Minister chose to make and I respect him for the decisions that he has to make and having to make those tough calls is what leadership is about but my God it cost us and my God it hurt us as a country.
“I don’t know if the National Party will be truly forgiven for that and I think we’ve got to spend the next term and probably the next 10 terms making up for that, because quite frankly, it’s hurt.”
But did it?
A RNZ-Reid Research poll in January found more voters thought the Treaty of Waitangi had too much influence on government decisions rather than too little,
A thousand respondents were asked “thinking about the influence the Treaty of Waitangi has over government decision making, do you think it is too much, about the right amount, or too little?”
The most popular response was “too much,” with 38.1 percent, but “about right” was close behind on 34.1 percent.
Just under 17 percent thought the Treaty had “too little” influence, while 11 percent did not know.
She also expressed her relief that she no longer is a member of the National-ACT-New Zealand First coalition after losing Banks Peninsula to Labour’s Tracey McLellan by some 2000 votes. The party vote in that electorate went to Labour, but National wasn’t far behind.
The Herald reports:
Outgoing MP Vanessa Weenink, who lost her Banks Peninsula seat to Labour after winning it in 2023, aired frank criticism of her party as she arrived at Parliament ahead of National’s caucus meeting today.
“A lot of people in that electorate were telling me, literally, that they hate us, they really got to that point,” she said.
“Then other people would say ’You guys have lost your way, you used to be much more reasonable and you’re listening far too much to other people in your coalition’.”
Weenink described herself to The Spinoff in June as a “left kind of voter” who, as a medical school student, had been a Labour Party member who had worked with Labour’s Duncan Webb on his 2017 campaign.
Perhaps that leftist tint explains why she said yesterday she wouldn’t publicly agree with those she heard criticising the Nats, but “I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with them either”.
Having described herself as a “squishy centrist”, she expressed concerns the National Party would become more conservative by losing senior liberal MPs this election and through its coalition with Act and New Zealand First.
“I would worry for the party that they don’t have enough squishy centrists or woke liberals like Chris Bishop, all those people that [Paul Goldsmith] would call woke.
“The risk is that the party might be pulled too far to the right, the risk is that they’ll feel like they really have to consolidate with their base.”
Nevertheless, she said she remained supportive of Christopher Luxon as party leader – she felt he had managed the “rabble that is the National Party” well amid caucus and coalition pressures.
She was not so generous in an RNZ Midday Repoirt interview in which she said the compromises the National leader made around Treaty issues to his coalition partners had cost the party and hurt the country.
Vanessa Weenink told RNZ some of the rhetoric and discussion around the Māori language and around the Treaty has been “some of the most damaging things” that happened in the last term.
“And frankly, that is not the National Party. That is our coalition partners, and particularly ACT, and I’ve had a gutsful of it,” Weenink said, adding she was relieved to no longer be part of the coalition.
And:
Speaking to Midday Report, Weenink said voters had told her the National Party “wasn’t like this,” and that its coalition partners had “pulled us too far to the right.”
She said people thought National was doing things that weren’t in line with its values. Weenink said she had joined the National Party because she thought its values were most in line with her own, particularly around the Treaty.
She believed that being able understand and pronounce Māori words would be a huge advantage in any career she undertook in New Zealand.
And she thought there would be “a lot of deep reflection” around Treaty issues.
“Part of me is really relieved to not be in that coalition.”
She described how difficult it had been to learn Christopher Luxon had conceded the Treaty Principles Bill
“That was a compromise position that the Prime Minister chose to make and I respect him for the decisions that he has to make and having to make those tough calls is what leadership is about but my God it cost us and my God it hurt us as a country.
“I don’t know if the National Party will be truly forgiven for that and I think we’ve got to spend the next term and probably the next 10 terms making up for that, because quite frankly, it’s hurt.”
But did it?
A RNZ-Reid Research poll in January found more voters thought the Treaty of Waitangi had too much influence on government decisions rather than too little,
A thousand respondents were asked “thinking about the influence the Treaty of Waitangi has over government decision making, do you think it is too much, about the right amount, or too little?”
The most popular response was “too much,” with 38.1 percent, but “about right” was close behind on 34.1 percent.
Just under 17 percent thought the Treaty had “too little” influence, while 11 percent did not know.
Broken down by party lines, just under half of Labour supporters thought it was “about right,” while 54.7 per cent of National voters thought the influence was “too much”.
One more thing for Weenink to consider: why did New Zealand First and ACT increase their combined share of the vote on the right from 14% in 2023, to 21% in 2026 — presumably at the expense of National.
Weenink (we think) might ponder how much support was lost because National supporters were frustrated by Luxon’s prevarication on Treaty-related issued and Maorification.
Bob Edlin is a veteran journalist and editor for the Point of Order blog HERE.
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