Maurice Williamson: former National Minister on Luxon surviving leadership challenge after leadership vote

Chris Luxon's held on as Prime Minister and National leader, but there's likely to be fallout from the party's recent turmoil.

Luxon's leadership was put to a vote during a near three-hour caucus meeting in Wellington this morning. 

It followed murmurings about a potential coup - with some MPs signalling they wanted Luxon out of the top job. 

Former National Minister Maurice Williamson says these events were still 'damaging' for the current Government. 

"This was just the worst possible thing to be happening to National at this time...he couldn't have left it as business as usual."

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good afternoon. Chris Luxon has survived the second challenge to
his leadership in four months. After a three hour caucus
meeting this morning, the National Party leader emerged the victor
and insisted that he had the full confidence of the
National Party caucus former National Minister Morris Williams and is
with us now, How.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Morris go ahead?

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Morris? Is this the worst case scenario that they face
right now, which is that they have a public challenge
that fails, so they have all the damage without anything
to show for it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Look, I've always likened a leadership challenge to running into
a machine gun pill box on a hill. If you're
going to come out of the trenches and run at it,
you do it once. You either make it and debilitate it,
or they get you when you die. But you can't
keep doing it. You can't go back to the trench
control to try again tomorrow. And because they're just damaging,

(00:46):
they're debilitating all the hard work that caucus members are
out there trying to do every day, it just gets
taken away under their feet. So that this was just
the worst possible thing to be happening to National at
this time.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
Has he done the right thing. I mean, there are
just so much with this is so bad. I don't
even know where to start. Morris has he done the
right thing though, at least in demoting Chris pink Well.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
He couldn't have left it his business as usual. You
just could the last time he left it his business
as usual, and it just looked really bad. You can't
have people plotting and hopeful of making change and taking
you out and then just move on as if nothing's happened.
You flew every one of your caucus back to Wellington
with all the costs involved at the affairs and staff,
with ministers traveling and so on, for what to have

(01:34):
a vote that says that we're the same as we started.
You can't just leave it there. And I think he
had to do something. I give him credit for having
taken some action.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
How damaged does he personally by this?

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Oh? Look these things the line I was run as
that cumulative, You know they don't just one thing is
not a particular incident. It just cumulates. Every time you
do the rod to U a Chamber of Commerce type mistake,
or you run the MMP a referendum on newstalksa'd B,
or you every one of them is just a cumulative

(02:06):
and they just keep adding and adding, and like when
you're adding little weights to a bat set of balance scales.
One day you add a weight on a little weight
and the whole thing tips and goes the other way.
So I don't know how close the tipping point they are,
but it's got to be just accumulating badly.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
What's the most likely outcome for National here? Is it
that they get damaged by this and they bleed to
the other center right parties or are we talking about
a potential I mean, is the election at risk here?

Speaker 2 (02:33):
No? No, I think anything to do with parties up, Sorry,
voters are deserting the current party. National would more than
likely go either side, either to New Zealand First or
to ACT. I don't see any one of them bleeding
across the aisle to the extreme Green Tea Party, Maori
Possible Opportunity and Labor Coalition. So I don't think the

(02:54):
coalition government is impacted in terms of total number of MPs,
but I think the National's tower might be quite a
bit lower and the other side towers come up a
bit on either side.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Do you want to take a punt at what happened here?
What actually went on behind those closed doors in the
lead up to that meeting?

Speaker 2 (03:12):
And in that menser, Well, I've been through several leadership
challenges and I being the caucus for them, and the
leader basically stumps up and says, you know, there is
talk that you guys are plotting and planning. I want
to know now, do I enjoy your support? Often it's
done in advance. When Jenny Shipley rolled Bulger, she called
each and every one of us the day before on
a Sunday, and said would you support my challenge? And

(03:33):
when I said yes, I don't know about others. She
then said to each of the ones that had said yes,
can you send a facts with thy support Jenny Shipley
and signature? So I filled it up bit of paper,
signed it and shoved it through the fact machine. That's
how long ago we.

Speaker 1 (03:48):
Well, maybe that's what went wrong this time. We didn't
have a fax machine.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
But they knew the numbers before they approached Bulger. They
just went to them at the airport. Doug Graham said,
we know, we've got the numbers. So that was rolling
a sitting prime minister. But the numbers were done advance.
None of you in the public or the media even
knew it was happening until it was over. But this
is just debilitating. It's just like a car crash on
the motorway. The car is just so badly damaged every
time takes a pounding and is sometimes not going to

(04:13):
be even driveable if they carry on. So how do
you guarantee this doesn't happen again? Because this is the
second time. Who's to guarantee it won't happen again in
three weeks time or four weeks time? I know. And
it's just shambalic, And it does nobody any good because
people are interested in the country.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
The loss has got to be at Morris like nobody's
stupid enough to do it now again, are they? Well?

Speaker 2 (04:36):
The thing I want everyone to understand is that when
a party is doing really well, you never hear this.
And I've seen that with Labor were as tight as
a drum for the whole first of their eight and
a half years of their nine years under Helen Clark
john Key government was tight as a drum skin during
the john Keyes time has led. People don't get totchy
and fidgety and so on. If everything's going well in

(04:58):
the pole are looking good. But honestly, Heither nothing focuses
the mind like the side of the guillotine. And for
many of these people they're panic that they're going, especially
the listies, because the thing about this election, more so
than any other election, is Nationals likely to hold about
thirty eight of its constituencies and be only entitled to
about thirty two from its party vote, which means not

(05:21):
a single listing, not a single list He gets over,
and you may even have a two set Overhang, well,
that means you know, that means Nichola Willis, and that
means Jerry Brownly, and that means Paul Goldsmith. It even
probably means Chris Bishop, because I doubt he will hold
Hut South.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
All right, Morris, and thanks very much to appreciate your insight.
That's Morris Williamson, former National Party minister.

Speaker 2 (05:40):
For more from Hither Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to
news Talks.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
It'd be from four pm weekdays, or follow the podcast
on iHeartRadio.