My 100th National Party conference

Tomorrow is the start of National’s 72nd annual conference. I’ll be in attendance blogging from it from Friday to Sunday.

By coincidence it is also my 100th National Party conference. I suspect I have attended more National Party conferences than almost anyone else, apart from Sir George Chapman!

The reason for this is that most people attend at most two conferences a year – their local regional one, and maybe the national conference. However during my years in Parliament I often accompanied the Leader to all five regional conference plus the national conference. It was actually quite exhausting working five weekends in a row for the regional conferences – basically you work for 40 days in a row without a day off. The only four people who tended to attend all five were the Leader, President, General Manager and myself and God were we glad when they were over. During those eight years we had four leaders, four presidents and four general managers so I was the one constant!

Since 1986 I have attended 9 Northern Region conferences, 9 Central NI Conferences, 19 Lower NI conferences, 9 Canterbury/Westland conferences, 13 Southern conferences and 17 Young Nationals conferences. Plus including this one about to start, 24 National conferences, which makes the total exactly 100.

I reckon that deserves a cake or something!