Vanessa Weenink criticizes Luxon’s Treaty compromise, Digi Mart USA News (New Zealand): Outgoing National MP Vanessa Weenink says the compromise National leader Christopher Luxon made on Treaty issues with his coalition partners cost the party and hurt the country. Speaking to RNZ, she said some of the rhetoric around the Māori language and the Treaty of Waitangi was among the most damaging things to happen 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 guts full of it,” Weenink said, adding she was relieved to no longer be part of the coalition.
She lost the Banks Peninsula seat to Labour’s Tracey McLellan at this election by slightly more than two thousand votes. The party vote went to Labour, but National was not far behind.
Speaking to RNZ’s 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 believed National was doing things that were not in line with its values, and that she had chosen the party because its values were most in line with her own, particularly on the Treaty.
She described how difficult it was to learn that 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.”
Weenink acknowledged she was not part of the coalition negotiations, so it would be unfair to judge whether Luxon gave too much away or whether ACT and New Zealand First were too strong for National to hold onto its values. “None of us know the difficulties of having to make that decision,” she said.
Despite this, she said Luxon had managed to keep the coalition together last term, “pull off a minor miracle,” and that the opposition had been disappointed the government made it through a full three-year term.
Weenink referenced an infantry motto, “onward,” acknowledging there was another battle coming. She said the National Party was the biggest party in Parliament for a reason, but was losing some of its greatest people, including senior National MPs who were out of Parliament.
She also spoke about the personal toll of public life. Weenink said she was slightly relieved to leave Parliament because of the constant hate she faced on social media and in person, including people yelling abuse from car windows, having her tyres drilled twice, her car egged, and her house protested outside by Palestinian supporters.
She acknowledged these experiences were partly due to being a politician, and specifically a female politician in the mid-2020s, and were tied to her description of people in the electorate saying they hated the National Party.
