Botany Nats choose ex-Air NZ chief as their candidate
Former Air New Zealand boss Christopher Luxon has won the National Party nomination to contest the Botany seat in next year’s election.
Luxon went head-to-head last night in a candidate selection meeting against four other candidates. He beat them all on the first ballot.
The other contenders were list MP Agnes Loheni, local board chair Katrina Bungard, cancer drug campaigner Troy Elliott and tech businessman Jake Bezzant.
At the meeting, which took less than two hours, each candidate presented their credentials to a crowd of 160, including 60 voting delegates.
All five candidates gave strong, highly motivated speeches, but Luxon’s stood out for its polished assurance. His quick election was greeted with acclaim.
Luxon said he was “incredibly humbled” to be chosen. “Botany is a part of who I am.” Botany has a large party membership, so those members, and not head office, chose the voting delegates.
Former Prime Minister Sir John Key publicly endorsed Luxon last month, calling him a “worldclass candidate”.
Party leader Simon Bridges was careful before the selection not to express a preference.
Botany is normally seen as a safe National seat, which should mean Luxon will become an MP for as long as he wants the job.
But the presence of Jami-Lee Ross complicates that. Ross is the current MP for Botany, a job he has held since 2011, and has declared his intention to stand again in 2020. He’s an independent now, having been expelled from the National caucus and quitting the party in October last year.
He held the seat in 2017 with a comfortable majority of 12,839, winning 62 per cent of the total votes cast.
He fell from grace with National in an overlapping series of scandals.
Luxon, new to politics, does not live in the electorate but he did grow up and go to school there. He was Air NZ’s chief executive for seven years, and is an evangelical Christian with socially conservative views.