2020 vote: Judith Collins sends a warning to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern ahead of the leaders’ debate

National Party leader Judith Collins sent Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern a warning after comments she made about Collins’ past with the Serious Fraud Office.

Speaking to Kate Hawkesby of Newstalk ZB this morning, the opposition leader was asked if she thought Ardern might be “turning up the nerve” in the Newshub leaders debate tonight.

“Well I’ll tell you what, I better not do that,” Collins said.

“I asked him to go back from what he said and to obviously correct the record, because what he said yesterday was absolutely false.”

Collins was referring to comments made by the prime minister after National announced yesterday that, if elected, he would double the OFS budget from $ 12.7 million a year to $ 25 million.

Ardern criticized the move, referring to Collins’ resignation from a six-year ministerial post due to a commitment to the OFS.

Ardern said it was interesting to hear.

“It’s interesting to hear now … Obviously there is a bit of history there with the leader of the Opposition and the SFO – as a previous minister, her commitment to the SFO led to her losing her job,” the PM said.

Collins, once responsible minister for the OFS, resigned from that and other ministerial portfolios in the run-up to the 2014 elections, after an email surfaced that appeared to link her to a blogging campaign to undermine the former head of the OFS, Adam Feeley.

Then Prime Minister John Key launched an investigation, which found that while Collins had provided information about Feeley to WhaleOil blogger Cameron Slater, “there was nothing wrong with the provision of this information.”

Collins acknowledged today that she was unhappy with the comments and asked Ardern to retract.

“She is in a Prime Minister position, that’s really bad,” she told Hawkesby.

“So I hope she wants to distance herself from those comments today.”

Last night, Collins told Heather du Plessis-Allan that it was “a very low blow” and said an investigation had cleared her of any inappropriate action.

“I was upset by that answer of hers and clearly wrong.

“I just thought ‘My God, where did the goodness go now?’ I thought he wanted a clean campaign and that was pretty dirty. “

She said the prime minister was probably nervous about the MediaWorks debate tonight.

“God, the veil is definitely slipping right?”

Tonight’s Mediaworks Leaders debate will begin at 7.30pm.