National Deputy Leader Nicola Willis has been appointed the party's Finance spokesperson, following Simon Bridges on Tuesday announcing his resignation.
Willis has previously been an active member of Parliament's Finance and Expenditure Committee, held management roles at Fonterra, and worked for Bill English when she was fresh out of university. She is known for being a hard worker.
Like Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Willis lives in central Wellington.
As Housing spokesperson, Willis recently worked with the Government on its policy to tweak the Resource Management Act to allow for more housing intensification in the country's main centres.
She is part of the more liberal wing of the party, and along with Chris Bishop, backed Todd Muller and Nikki Kaye when they rolled Bridges and Paula Bennett in a leadership contest in 2020.
Her Housing portfolio has been given to Bishop, who will be moved up the rankings to number three on the list. He will also get Infrastructure and hold onto his Covid-19 Response portfolio.
Shane Reti has been promoted to number four and Paul Goldsmith to number five.
Quizzed by media on Wednesday morning on her position on various financial matters, Willis held the party line, calling for more prudent government expenditure, adjusting income tax brackets, considering whether the Reserve Bank's Monetary Policy Committee should only target inflation and not employment, etc.
National Leader Christopher Luxon said, “Kiwis are going backwards under Labour, and Nicola will take the Government to task over the cost of living crisis and their wasteful spending decisions.
“Nicola has an incredible intellect, prodigious work ethic and proven ability to hold the Government to account as we’ve seen her do on housing. She will build on National’s track record as the best economic managers to help Kiwis get ahead."
Bridges said he decided to quit politics to pursue commercial opportunities and spend more time with his young family. He has been in politics for 14 years, during which time he was a Cabinet minister, was Leader of the party, was rolled, put his hat in the ring for the position again, and then rose up the party's ranks again to get the Finance role.
49 Comments
Aye. There it is. Can’t argue with that myself. Still National has opportunity to get it’s A into G and start introducing candidates of calibre & standing before the next election. Starting with the by election soon in Tauranga in fact. If National has not learnt by now, how some of the shenanigans of some of their low level mps, has cost them drastically in the last years, then they don’t deserve to exist. As well, some of the relics & deadwood need to disappear too and be replaced with some energy & modern thinking.
What good are high-calibre candidates if the leadership doesn't want to actually reform our economy and instead feed off the same old low-hanging fruits of low-wage migration and housing inflation?
Shane Reti's political talents aside, his PhD in medical sciences from Harvard comes of no use to NZ if National wishes to carry on with Key's fiscal conservatism of starving health and education to pay down public debt.
Yes agreed. But it can happen. The Lange Douglas government, whether you like them or not, arrived with a dynamic & radical agenda, which I suspect most New Zealanders including me, had very little inkling of. Hard to know though isn’t it, but at least if there is some talent in the swamp there is a chance it might percolate up and make a difference. But really, from all sides of the house, there have been identities that have had neither the integrity nor capability, to fulfil the serious requirements of serving in parliament and have to say, their influence has been both negative and shameful. So, at the risk of being a hopeless optimist, a better talent pool might reverse that?
Advisor,
Who the hell can I vote for then? I briefly thought that i might be able to vote National, but as soon as Luxon went down the tax cutting route, I knew that wasn't on.
The serial incompetence of this lot isn't my main issue with them. Sadly, I don't expect the government to be all that efficient, but Ardern's government has become ever less transparent, secretive and wants to centralise everything. The 3 waters reform as proposed is anti-democratic and a cost/benefit analysis of the amended light rail project is appalling. The last figure I saw was $29 billion.
I suppose the technical credibility of portfolio ministers is out of question when political ideology and the party leader's public image have dictated policy decisions in NZ for the better part of 2 decades.
Wouldn't be wrong to say that the general public and our country come in further down in the list of priorities for MPs; who see serving the interest of their party, the leadership and loyal voter bases as primary ways to stay in power, not necessarily in that order.
As a key sponsor of the new mandated density rules (pretty much at least 3 storey development almost everywhere), she's not going to be very popular in Auckland in about 4-5 weeks when the council consults on the proposed changes.
Mind you, it was an agreement with Labour so perhaps won't hurt her / National too much.
and, as the article above says: "held management roles at Fonterra, and worked for Bill English when she was fresh out of university." Let's see, that is English Literature degree, journalist degree and then Bill English and then Fonterra. It would be interesting to hear any details on her roles and accomplishments at Fonterra.
Her LinkedIn profile says she did a few years in government relations at Fonterra then had a few 12 mth commercial roles.
Four roles in four years.... yeah nah
What is of note is her former time at the NZ Initiative. That lobbying company that passes itself off as an association.
An aside note from my records.
Muller (the 30day? leader) started his role at Fonterra as Manager of Local Government and Regional Relations from February 2011 through to May 2012. He then became Group Director of Co-operative Affairs from May 2012 until June 2014, when he left the dairy company in order to focus on campaigning for the 2014 general election after being selected as the National Party candidate for the Bay of Plenty electorate
Surprise surprise Nicola Willis started at Fonterra in 2012
Kind of feel like Housing needs an Auckland MP fronting on it. The issues are many times worse here than in other parts of the country, ditto for the infrastructure shortfall relative to population.
Bishop is an effective MP and speaks well, but he hasn't seemed that imaginative when it comes to Auckland issues and no one in National seems to appreciate the urgency around dealing with things like congestion in Auckland, which will turn back into a hell-hole post-Omicron as things open up. Bus lanes in ten years' time won't cut it, nor will endlessly holding out for self-driving cars/buses which are always just five years away.
Many white collar workers will be facing declining house values underwritten with big mortgages and less and less time with family, and may decide it's time to see whether the grass is greener on the other side of the ditch.
That varies wildly across Auckland. Throughout L4, SH16 was one of the busiest in the country. It didn't take long for us to get back to hour long commutes at Level 1. West Auckland is poorly served by assumptions that it commutes like the rest of the city because generally it doesn't and the people who live there often don't have a choice about their hours or where they work.
Hopefully the half price public transport fares become permanent, and we can start seeing more apartment development near train stations / major bus interchanges.
Especially if petrol keeps rising, $25-$30 pw return from say New Lynn (for example) to the CBD, with the new CRL in place and quicker travel time, starts to look quite appealing.
hopefully not - a third of the rate money goes to subsidise an ineffectual and virtually unusable system unless you are actual on a main link and work in the central city - for the vast majority of the Auckland region its completely useless -- Central government will not continue -- and it will be back to ratepayers again -- yet another " targeted rate " = along with Water, fuel, waste added to rates but still allowing the mayor to say he did not put rates up by more than 5% -- been going on for years now and will likely continue given that the greens have endorsed the Labour candidate - and National seem unwilling to really contest the position. so the only choice is complete lunatic fringe candidates
The CRL is solving the exact issue of trains only going to the CBD and stopping at a dead end in Britomart, which means they can keep moving through the network and people should see far more trains per hour. It's the difference between the kind of turn up and go system other places have and our network, that you wouldn't use if you really have to be somewhere, and it will make cross town journeys possible without waiting around for your connecting train - because there'll always be one.
Agreed though, it's not doing a lot for people who don't already have access to rail.
Same old crap:
- Cut Govt spending (apart from tax cuts for your voters);
- Keep a healthy bufferstock of desperate people unemployed to keep wages low (whilst pretending to be focused on jobs and providing opportunity for all);
- Encourage private landlords to build housing for extortionate rent and profit (and directly subsidise it)
- Throw in a few apprenticeship schemes for the poors (whilst attracting skilled people from overseas that you don't have to pay to educate)
- Go hard on law and order (but not on corporates)
My wife heard a radio comment that Luxon said there are an extra 14,00 civil servants since Labour became govt. Now generally National cut the civil service to the bone so I would expect an increase of 3 or 4 thousand when Labour get in and Covid has added 3-4000? extra contract workers. Can anyone verify these numbers?
I keep wanting National to inspire me. Show me they are ready to govern. We have chosen a English and journalism graduate to be our finance leader. Commercial roles - Stakeholder Management and Government lobbying at Fonterra. So no background in economic understanding. Why do we accept this level of mediocrity from both parties.
We not only have a crisis of leaving costs.
We have a crisis of talent across all the political parties.
It is imperative our public system and government have smart, innovative, moral people joining them if we want to progress. A question would be, how do we reform politics to encourage this?
Maybe it is for this reason (lack of economic understanding) that national seams to believe government spending is driving inflation. Not that fact that the reserve bank financed that spending. Or the even larger elephant - the federal reserve has driven inflation of nearly every asset class globally with their money printing.
It is imperative our public system and government have smart, innovative, moral people joining them if we want to progress. A question would be, how do we reform politics to encourage this?
Follow the Singapore model - well-compensated for well-qualified with well-accountable... Ministers are paid half a million a pop (PM is a million $, I believe). No excuses of "I have to pay my poor sick mother's medical bills". If you are involved in corruption, you have no excuses and you're not only out, but thrown in jail.
Public servants are trained in hard sciences as well as public, national and international affairs. Someone is not considered qualified if they do not have a relevant background, e.g. Finance minister used to be economist, banker, analyst, etc. Again, well-compensated.
Cronyism is frowned on and dealt with harshly. An old legend is that Lee Kuan Yew (former and founding PM of Singapore) found out about a minister who'd taken bribes and was about to have the minister prosecuted. The minister came to Lee and confessed, pleading for mercy, that he'd return the money, resign his post and to please spare his family the shame. Lee said absolutely not and had the full force of the law throw the guilty minister in jail.
People will know I'm 'centre-left', but I would actually respect and potentially vote for a National Party that was actually clever and strategic in it's vision around our economy.
I don't see this at all with Luxon et al. It's just more of the same stuff which has led us to the problems we now face.
I'm have no real position ranging from left all the way to right. I support green policies, act policies, labour and national policies. But I support little of what I'm hearing from national of late. Despite Luxons original statements that he would focus on Rising productivity and focusing on education, all we get is tax cuts for the wealthy and asset rich. Yay tax cuts - everythings solved now!
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