On Tuesday morning the Government was under pressure over its dismal attention to a growing mental health crisis. By 10pm the National Party was having its own crisis, booting one of its former leaders out of caucus.
There are many questions remaining as to why the National Party caucus threatened Todd Muller with suspension if he didn’t walk, after admitting to bad-mouthing newly returned MP Harete Hipango.
If that is the new bar for resigning, then presumably National is on a witch hunt today for whichever MPs promptly fed the details of the late-night meeting to media.
The imagery of National MPs, who happily and regularly talk out of turn to journalists, sat in that meeting with their pitchforks crying “Shame, Shame, Shame’’ at Muller is irony at its absolute best.
Not to mention those who left the meeting and immediately hit ‘press gallery’ on their speed dial.
It’s been clear for some time that many in the National Party wanted Muller to leave when he gave up the leadership last year after just 53 days.
Of course, there’s no guarantee someone else could have won his Bay of Plenty seat at the October election, which could have meant National lost yet another true-blue seat.
In a Newsroom article critical of Hipango, which kick-started the bitter infighting, one National MP traversed the party’s diversity issue and was frank about why they thought it existed.
“The lack of diversity is a result of the Muller coup. He changed the list, rewarded his mates, and now we have a massive diversity issue.
“Paula resigned, Simon was demoted, people like Alfred, Harete, Agnes and Bakshi were pushed down the list to promote more ambitious white members of the caucus,’’ the MP said.
The result of Tuesday night’s crisis meeting is now having an MP who has zero loyalty left to his leader, but remains in the thick of the party.
There’s clearly a group of MPs within the caucus who are still feeling very raw about the rolling of former leader Simon Bridges.
No party, not even Labour with its majority, could function with one group still so angry with another so long after the fact.
Here the National Party is, one year on from the Muller coup, and in worse shape than it was then.
The result of Tuesday night’s crisis meeting is now having an MP who has zero loyalty left to his leader, but remains in the thick of the party.
In other words, a forced waka-jumper who still has a seat in the waka.
Former chief whip Barbara Kuriger has been outed as dobbing Muller in to the leader.
The pair have known each other for more than a decade, before either of them entered politics.
That in itself just shows there’s no such thing as trust and friendships in Parliament - it truly is a dog-eats-dog political world.
Muller now finds himself in a caucus that has 100 percent turned on him.
He may well find a new gig and leave before the 2023 election, prompting a by-election in his seat.
Until then, Collins has on the one hand shown her strength as a leader in getting the caucus to unite behind her, but on the other she’s lit a bomb that could potentially go off at any point.
The amount of information that has made it into the public domain since Tuesday night shows the party’s learnt nothing from past mistakes.
With so many MPs holding individual agendas in that caucus, it might just take a mass exodus to wipe the slate clean and start again.
