Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has called an urgent in-person caucus meeting in Wellington, in the face of renewed chatter about the security of his leadership.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Luxon said it was “clear from various media reports and conversations there is increased speculation about my leadership”.
“It is my firm belief that division and disunity are a major distraction only 90 days out from the election. I also believe this distraction is unfair to the New Zealand people, and dedicated National Party candidates, supporters and volunteers, when there is so much at stake.”
Citing a need to resolve the issue quickly, the National Party leader said he had called an urgent, in-person caucus meeting in Wellington on Wednesday morning.
After calling and surviving a confidence vote in April, Luxon’s leadership has been under renewed scrutiny following a series of high-profile stumbles as well as coalition in-fighting.
On Monday evening, the NZ Herald reported National MPs were hitting the phones on a leadership change, with one caucus member telling the newspaper “there’s going to be change” in the top job and adding: “It’s just a question of who is going to be it.”
Luxon has come under pressure after remarks to a Rotorua business audience that suggested some New Zealand businesses had a “parent-child mentality” – remarks for which he apologised – along with a captain’s call to hold an MMP referendum that blindsided his caucus and his coalition partners.
The Prime Minister has also been criticised for failing to discipline Foreign Minister and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters over racist remarks directed towards Green MP Lawrence Xu-Nan.
Speaking to media at an Auckland transport announcement, senior National MP Chris Bishop – sporting a fresh haircut, and whose name is often thrown around as a potential leadership contender – confirmed the caucus would be holding a virtual meeting on Tuesday evening, but said it had been pre-arranged; that meeting now seems unlikely to take place, given Luxon has called for an in-person gathering.
“It’s not an emergency caucus meeting – it is a regular caucus meeting in the recess week, so that we can get together and talk about, you know, what we talk about in caucus.”
Asked whether Luxon’s leadership would be on the agenda, Bishop responded: “Well, we don’t talk about what happens in caucus, but the answer is no.”
Anonymous comments made by National MPs to the media were “unhelpful and not what caucus members should be doing”, he said.
“I’m not going to deny that … the Herald’s reported it – all I would say is that people shouldn’t be talking to media like that. We’ve been down this road before, it’s not helpful.”
Bishop said he had full confidence in Luxon as Prime Minister, noting he had apologised for his Rotorua remarks and clarified his “MMP call”.
Bishop: ‘Optimistic about the future of this Govt’
Asked whether he was worried about the party’s polling and what it could mean for the future of his colleagues, the senior minister offered a lengthy defence that may yet double as something of a stump speech.
“I am very optimistic about the future of this Government … I think we have a very ambitious and bold agenda for Auckland’s future and for New Zealand’s future.
“I think we have accomplished a lot in the last two and a half years in terms of fixing the basics, focusing on fiscal discipline, restoring law and order, starting the long process of improving education standards in this country after a 20- to 30-year experiment on our children, and what we’re about now is building the future over the next three years and seeking a mandate to do that with bold new policies, like making KiwiSaver compulsory and lifting paid parental leave, for example, big infrastructure investments fundamentally transforming the way we do infrastructure in New Zealand, sorting out the education system, scrapping NCEA.
“Whichever way you look at it, we have a very bold and forward-looking agenda for New Zealand’s future, and we’ll be seeking a mandate for that at the election. And we’ll be contrasting our positive, ambitious programme of change that will set New Zealand up for success in the 2030s against Labour’s backward-looking, reckless tax and spend agenda, that will just put us back to exactly the sort of mess that we inherited back in 2023 …
“Yeah, there’s been some bumps along the way. You’d expect that three different parties, three different points of view on lots of different issues, but a lot of people said it would never work.
“Actually, we’re coming out the end of the three years much stronger as a country than we were three years ago, and it’s all to play for in the 2030s. But we’ve got to make the right choices as a country, and that’s what this Government is doing.”
Erica Stanford, another name in the mix to replace Luxon should he be forced out of the role, ruled out a run for the leadership over the weekend. However, Stanford has been more outspoken than some colleagues on the Prime Minister’s missteps.
Last week, she said his comments about small businesses had “caused a lot of hurt and upset” and made an apology “necessary”, while on Monday she suggested he had “clearly … through the media made it clear that he apologises to us” for his handling of the MMP referendum policy; Luxon had told RNZ he “did feel sorry for [his] caucus colleagues” who had been surprised by media questions, although whether that amounted to an apology may be up for interpretation.
