National’s Northern Regional Conference
National had it’s Northern Regional Conference at the weekend. The Northern Region is the current powerhouse of the National Party. A few years ago there was only a handful of Auckland MPs, and few were seen as heavyweights.
Today no less than 12 Ministers come from the Northern Region, plus the Speaker (who had people non stop congratulating him on having made Question Time more meaningful – which is interesting as it is National Ministers he is forcing to answer questions). It has probably been a long time since Auckland was so forcefully represented in a National Government
As expected people were in good spirits, being the first conference in Government since 1999. The Richard Worth scandal wasn’t distracting people from the business, even though it was a source of considerable black humour from some people.
The main speech was of course from John Key. No big revelations in it, but there were two things I found significant. He talked about hard drugs, and especially P, quite passionately and said that it was arguably the most corrosive thing in NZ. I think there is going to be a very significant all of Government focus on P, led by him.
The other item of significance was he basically said that community bards in the Super City will be bulk funded and have their own budgets to spend. Also John Carter said that their powers will not be left to the new Auckland Council but be defined in statute, so it sounds like they are going to be quite souped up.
John got a lot of laughs when he revealed he had paid $20 for a raffle ticket with the prize being lunch with Bill English. He said that if he won, he would give Bill a season pass for the new cycleway.
John and Bill have a very effective double act, where rather than pretend there has not been a disagreement between them at some stage, they openly acknowledge they were saying different things, and then joke about it at every opportunity. It is a very very effective way of taking the sting out of it, and also sending a strong message that while they may disagree at times, they have a strong personal rapport and are comfortable hassling each other in a very Kiwi sense of humour way.