Tragedy, triumph and tough lessons

terrorist attack.

Leaders from George W Bush to Norway’s Jens Stoltenberg responded to terrorist attacks with various degrees of sabre-rattling and fingerpointing. Ardern’s response was different. She did not deign to name the terrorist, instead focusing on the victims. Terrorism has destabilised politics in nearly every country it has touched. As yet, March’s attack shows little sign of altering politics for the worse here, in large part thanks to Ardern’s response.

As March became April, the increased attention on Ardern deprived the National Party and its leader Simon Bridges of political oxygen. Two polls from that month had Labour’s numbers nudging 50 per cent, while National hovered just above the crucial threshold of 40 per cent. Parliament was enjoying a rare two-week recess in the middle of April. But the rumour mill churned: Judith Collins would mount a leadership bid when Parliament returned. On the day of the next caucus meeting, Newshub was even reporting former prime minister John Key was weighing in, although Key himself would not confirm it. Some months later the Sunday Star-Times spoke to National Party members who were in the room. Caucus meetings are strictly confidential and detailed leaks are rare.

Accounts differ. One account said the leadership made it clear to caucus that Collins ‘‘never had remotely anything approaching the numbers’’, and asked her to pull her head into line.

Another account said MPs Anne Tolley and Maggie Barry called up to ‘‘attack’’ Collins for her alleged disloyalty. A visibly elated Bridges faced media just before Question Time. He was still the leader of the National Party.

Things only looked up for Bridges. National took the wind out of the Government’s longawaited Wellbeing Budget by scraping key details from Treasury’s website. His party released 10 policy discussion documents which captured public attention through trolling (see Strike Force Raptor and a crackdown on wayward cyclists), but offered some serious debate on things like transport and education

Bridges seems to have found his feet too. He’s more comfortable with himself, leaning into obvious gaffes like his description of Boris Johnson as ‘‘buffoon-like’’, or his painful repetition of PR attack lines like the Government going soft on ‘‘crims, gangs and extremists’’.

National is having its cake and eating it too. It signed up to the Zero Carbon Act, pledging to reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2050, although it wants to let the Climate Change Commission relook at agricultural emissions if it wins in 2020.

At the same time, the party turned fire on most of the Government’s climate change initiatives, including its ‘‘feebate’’ scheme designed to radically cut the cost of electric vehicles. This was despite National’s own environment discussion document saying transport was ‘‘the most significant opportunity in the medium term… but electric cars are still relatively expensive for the

The Government front bench rallied, ending the year on such a high that the press gallery unofficially labelled December ‘‘the month of delivery’’.