ℕ𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝 ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕪 𝕚𝕤 𝕤𝕖𝕝𝕗-𝕕𝕖𝕤𝕥𝕣𝕦𝕔𝕥𝕚𝕟𝕘, 𝕗𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕣 𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 𝕤𝕒𝕪𝕤

𝔽𝕠𝕣𝕞𝕖𝕣 ℕ𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝 𝕞𝕚𝕟𝕚𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣 ℂ𝕙𝕣𝕚𝕤 𝔽𝕚𝕟𝕝𝕒𝕪𝕤𝕠𝕟 𝕙𝕒𝕤 𝕝𝕒𝕤𝕙𝕖𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕔𝕦𝕣𝕣𝕖𝕟𝕥 ℕ𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟𝕒𝕝 ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕪 𝕒𝕤 𝕒 𝕕𝕚𝕤𝕒𝕤𝕥𝕖𝕣, 𝕡𝕝𝕒𝕔𝕚𝕟𝕘 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕓𝕝𝕒𝕞𝕖 𝕤𝕢𝕦𝕒𝕣𝕖𝕝𝕪 𝕠𝕟 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕕𝕖𝕣𝕤𝕙𝕚𝕡 – 𝕓𝕠𝕥𝕙 𝕚𝕟 ℙ𝕒𝕣𝕝𝕚𝕒𝕞𝕖𝕟𝕥 𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕨𝕚𝕕𝕖𝕣 𝕡𝕒𝕣𝕥𝕪 𝕠𝕣𝕘𝕒𝕟𝕚𝕤𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟.

He says the party leadership “deserve everything that’s come to them” after self-inflicted “brand destruction” over the past couple of years.

The comments will put more pressure on party leader Judith Collins who is already facing internal scrutiny over the resignations of former MP Nick Smith, and the current MP for Bay of Plenty, short-lived party leader Todd Muller. They will also pile pressure on current party President Peter Goodfellow.

Finlayson, who served as a National Party MP from 2008 to 2019 and held a number of ministerial portfolios, was scathing in his assessment of the current party. Speaking from his law office in Auckland, he said that the party didn’t need a detractor as it was doing well enough destroying itself. 

“I don't think I've ever seen, in my life, brand destruction as devastating as that,” he said.

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“Now I know sometimes, you know, brands go off, but I've never seen brand destruction like I've seen in the National Party in the last year or two.”

Finlayson described the party’s current rhetoric as unimpressive and said it needed to get back to its roots of liberal conservatism if it wanted to claw its way out of the electoral doldrums. 

Finlayson also said he had no sympathy for the party's current situation.

“You're talking to the wrong person if you expect me to express any sympathy for the current plight of the National Party, they deserve everything that's come to them. 

“Put that in your article: they deserve everything they've got,” he said. 

“Political parties have to feel the cold blast of opposition before they acquire the humility to be in government again. But if you're asking me to express sympathy for them, forget it.”

In particular, Finlayson said that he was “irritated” by the litany of mistakes the party apparatus had clearly made during several candidate selections. He would not divulge the list of names he thought were unworthy, but made it clear that some should never have been nominated. 

His comments come after resignations of failed MPs over several years including Todd Barclay (secret tape recordings), Hamish Walker (leaking confidential patient data), Andrew Falloon (sending lewd images to women).

At the start of June Jake Bezzant, the National Party’s nominee for the previously safe seat of Upper Harbour, was also in the spotlight for his treatment of women and previously faced questions about the accuracy of his CV.

He called candidate selection one of National’s many failures.

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“[The National Party] is going through its agonies at the moment because of the failure of the president and the leadership, the board leadership of the party to address very simple questions about candidate vetting and candidate selection,” he said. 

Finlayson said the party’s failures were, in part, down to the fact they had stopped sufficiently acting on party reforms introduced after the 2002 drubbing where the party only gained 20 per cent of the vote.

“That's where the party's problems have been in the last 12 months. And when they learn to act on the reforms, which were enacted following the 2002 disaster, and get back to recognising that first, you need good candidates, and they need to be properly vetted financially and psychologically. 

“Once that's done, once you have a liberal-conservative party, which is not sort of radically conservative or rabidly liberal, but a mixture of both, you've got your recipe for success again.” 

A spokesperson for Judith Collins declined to comment.

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