In just a matter of weeks, Simon Bridges’ incredibly colourful time in Parliament will be consigned to the history books. Political editor Jo Moir looks at who will be left to fill his shoes
Simon Bridges’ nine years in government as a rising star and senior minister somehow managed to draw less attention than his five tumultuous years in opposition.
Many words have been dedicated to his rise to opposition leader after the departure of Sirs John Key and Bill English, only to be rolled in a spectacular knife-in-back public showdown with his own colleagues (perhaps a soap opera is next?).
Bridges is a scrapper, and he made the right call to stay on and rebuild himself while finding a new and remarkably Zen way to do politics.
He isn’t being big-headed when he says he played a significant role in getting the party back to the respected position it now finally finds itself in, even if he helped pull it down on occasion too.
Bridges insists there’s no hidden reason behind his abrupt resignation on Tuesday. He simply mulled it over in recent months and decided the time was right to take up other opportunities.
Those opportunities include commercial work and a possible media role or two - watch that space.
After losing the party leadership, effectively ending Judith Collins’ own reign of terror and then resurfacing as finance spokesman and right-hand man to new leader Christopher Luxon, plenty are asking: why go now?
But Bridges always maintained, in those moments when he could have easily decided enough was enough, that he had business to finish and a desire to stay.
He’s proven himself once more and leaves on a high – many who have found themselves in his position over the decades haven’t had the chance to do that, or the patience to see it through.
His departure does leave two big questions for the National Party.
What to do about his National safe seat of Tauranga, and who is best placed to take over his finance portfolio?
(Update: National's deputy leader Nicola Willis has been handed the finance portfolio while Chris Bishop has picked up housing from Willis and infrastructure from Simon Bridges.)
Neither have an obvious solution, but both have a most likely outcome.
Bridges has held the Tauranga seat since 2008 when he held off New Zealand First leader Winston Peters, who had lost it to Bob Clarkson in 2005.
Until Peters won Northland in the by-election in 2015 he never really forgave Bridges – arguably he still hasn’t – and would see it as settling the score to take it back off National now.
He has a problem in that the by-election is likely to fall in and around the trial of the New Zealand First Foundation, and while he isn’t directly implicated, the proceedings will hardly bring the veteran politician positive headlines.
But Peters knows if he has any chance of getting a look-in at the 2023 election he needs some traction; he’s not getting much from his occasional press releases via Whananaki ranting about whatever the Government has done most recently to annoy him.
A by-election is the next best platform after a general election campaign, and if he can get himself and party sorted fast enough to seriously compete, he’ll throw himself in the race.
This is the sixth opposition finance spokesperson Robertson has seen off since 2017 and Bridges is probably one of the ones to have made the minister’s job more difficult.
While Bridges had a majority of 11,252 at the 2017 election, making it an unlikely seat to easily win off National, that majority dropped to just 1856 votes in 2020.
That was mostly brought about by the huge swing to Labour that resulted in the first ever single-party majority under MMP.
Labour leader Jacinda Ardern knows safe seats are hard to win – Labour hasn’t held it since the 1930s and she was frank about that when asked whether the party would stand a candidate.
It would be unusual for Labour not to contest it though, which Ardern also pointed out on Tuesday following Bridges’ resignation.
Then it’s down to who National puts up.
Tania Tapsell ran in the nearby East Coast seat in 2020 after long-time MP and minister Anne Tolley retired from the electorate.
But the red tide of Labour saw Kiri Allan win the seat from Tapsell by almost 5000 votes.
Tapsell is a Rotorua Lakes District Councillor and is considered likely to run for the mayoralty, but could easily be persuaded to jump to neighbouring Tauranga to contest Bridges’ vacant seat.
She’s well respected within the party, popular, and would be tipped as an up-and-comer if she won her way into the National caucus.
There’s also an outside chance that Luxon’s arrival at the helm and a recent poll shining favourably on National could bring in new options who haven’t been seen on the party’s list before.
As for the finance portfolio – it’s the most sought after in any caucus but very few MPs are ever actually qualified to do it.
Frontbench MP and Covid response spokesman Chris Bishop is the obvious fit.
He’s senior, competent and has the smarts for the role – he’s also across the party’s policies and has a close working relationship with Luxon and deputy Nicola Willis.
The only other person remotely qualified for the job is Willis herself.
But Luxon won’t be wanting to disrupt things too much, especially when the party has some momentum.
Willis is effective in her housing portfolio, has the job of working out the party’s social investment strategy ahead of the election, and has to balance her deputy duties and stepping in for Luxon when he’s on the road.
Adding finance and Bridges’ infrastructure portfolio to Bishop would be too much on top of his existing work on Covid and as shadow leader of the house.
But with announcements on Wednesday about the border reopening to tourists, much of the Covid work has been done and in some ways it is already switching back into a more health-focused role.
An easy fix would be to fold Covid back into health, which is held by Shane Reti, or alternatively keep it separate and give it to Matt Doocey, whom Luxon rates and is a safe pair of hands.
Doocey is doing good work in his mental health portfolio and in many ways the Covid role would increasingly align with his mental health work into the future.
Luxon has been doing performance reviews with his caucus colleagues over the last week and he will already have firmed up in his mind who is best equipped to do what, which is why he’ll be quick in making his changes known on Wednesday.
After losing the party leadership, effectively ending Judith Collins’ own reign of terror and then resurfacing as finance spokesman and right-hand man to new leader Christopher Luxon, plenty are asking: why go now?
Bridges told media on Tuesday he hadn’t made the decision to leave lightly and had been mulling it over for some time.
It’s unclear whether he was already on the exit train when he accepted the finance role from Luxon late last year, but even if he was, he probably made the right decision accepting it.
It hasn’t impacted his performance at all.
He’s done an admirable job of going up against his counterpart Grant Robertson, and he’s brought the cost of living crisis to the forefront of political debate.
This is the sixth opposition finance spokesperson Robertson has seen off since 2017 and Bridges is probably one of the ones to have made the minister’s job more difficult.
Luxon doesn’t have many options, but he will be praying his next pick sticks.
