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National Party leader Judith Collins urged her small group to resist “taking the bait” of the government and “learn to trust and respect each other.”
Collins will meet with his MPs and senior public officials at the party’s first meeting of the year at the Basin Reserve in Wellington.
He opened the two-day caucus “retreat” with a speech to his MPs imploring them to ignore the “distractions” thrown by the government and to focus on developing their own policies and the big problems New Zealand faces.
“Being in the Opposition, you can be very reactive to what is happening,” Collins said.
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“One of the problems with that is that we can lose track of our own line of work, what we’re doing, and we can end up getting distracted and distracted a lot by things that cross the line so that we can choose ready and go.”
DAVID BLANCO / THINGS
National Party leader Judith Collins said the party must resist the “bait” of the government.
“You may have seen some of those recently, coming from the government side, where clearly they are distractions thrown so we can take the bait and keep away the things that really matter to New Zealanders, for example the fact that they don’t seem to have any vaccines on. the country “.
He also emphasized the importance of teamwork. Collins has repeatedly blamed media leaks within the party for part of his devastating defeat in last year’s election, when he lost about half of his MPs.
Collins said the focus of the caucus would be on “high-performance teams” and featured outside consultants who would lead workshops on that topic.
Henry Cooke / Things
Judith Collins addresses her group.
He said 2021 would be an “interesting and challenging year” for National, but that it was an opportunity to rebuild.
“This is our chance to really rebuild. Work together. Enjoy the company of others and learn to trust and respect ourselves in everything we do, ”said Collins.
“The good thing is that we will not have the distraction as such of an election, and we can go ahead and do our own work, and at the same time hold the government to account.”
He noted that the Labor-led government had “nowhere else to hide” as they now ruled alone, so there were “no other parties to blame.”
Lord Ashcroft, a fellow UK Conservative and friend of Collins, would report to the party assembly from New York to discuss American policy.
Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg would also brief MPs via video conference.
This “caucus retreat” was planned for Whangārei, but was moved to Wellington by National after news broke of a Covid-19 case in the community near Whangārei in mid-January.
