Penk won by 4435 votes in the \u201cred wave\u201d election of 2020, boosting that to 19,459 votes when National swept back into power in 2023.<\/p>\n
However, Labour candidate Jo Swinburn told RNZ today that, while winning the seat would be a challenge, Penk\u2019s resignation had changed the calculus.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I\u2019ve been speaking to people in the electorate, they\u2019re not particularly happy with where National\u2019s at, at the moment. And although they had a very popular MP, perhaps that\u2019s changed now.<\/p>\n
Chris Penk. Photo \/ RNZ, Cornelisen<\/p>\n
\u201cI am optimistic now \u2013 much more so given that Minister Penk has decided not to contest the seat, although, in saying that, it is a very blue seat, so there is a lot of work to do.\u201d<\/p>\n
The leadership contest could also have an effect, he said.<\/p>\n
He did not think Luxon had handled the challenge well.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, I\u2019m sure he has his reasons, but I was supposed to be at a meeting last night where Chris Penk was speaking, but obviously [Luxon] called all of his caucus members down to Wellington.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, it\u2019s a bit of a waste of everyone\u2019s time, really. Again, we just want them to be getting on with it. So calling everyone to Wellington, having this hoo-ha demoting Chris Penk, I don\u2019t know, it\u2019s just a distraction, so I don\u2019t think it\u2019s been handled particularly well. I think people are a bit over that.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he remembered Luxon calling Labour, the Greens and Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori the coalition of chaos, \u201cbut it\u2019s seemingly within the National Party itself, that\u2019s very chaotic at the moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cPerhaps it will depend on who National stand or put forward to run in the seat, but yeah, it\u2019s made things more interesting.\u201d<\/p>\n
Swinburn said this was his first foray into politics, having been parachuted into the candidacy in the past three weeks after Labour\u2019s previous candidate, Tracey-Lee Repia, stood down.<\/p>\n
Christopher Luxon speaking to the media after Wednesday’s confidence vote. Photo \/ RNZ<\/p>\n
\u201cI was thinking that I would be taught a lesson or two by an experienced Cabinet minister … but perhaps National will select someone that isn\u2019t as experienced, so there might be two of us political newbies going for the seat.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithout knowing how the internal mechanisms of the National Party operate, I\u2019d imagine they\u2019d want to get someone in pretty quick smart.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the electorate was facing several challenges \u2013 particularly with flooding, traffic congestion, and the fast-tracking of residential developments on greenfield sites, which would \u201cput a load or a stress on to the water systems and on to the transport systems\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere isn\u2019t the adequate infrastructure to cope with this, and the locals are not pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a political candidate, Swinburn is currently on leave from his role as a principal policy adviser for the new Ministry for Cities, Environment, Regions and Transport.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cChris Penk launched a leadership challenge this week, which resulted in today\u2019s confidence vote,\u201d the PM\u2019s Office said.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":567601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[74,19956,42,23157,105600,6721,118936,43,1118,57472,20157,279454,160608,11763,7248,40,38,41,39,18457],"class_list":["post-567600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-after","tag-candidate","tag-headlines","tag-kaipara","tag-ki","tag-labour","tag-mahurangi","tag-news","tag-of","tag-optimistic","tag-palmer","tag-penks","tag-resignations","tag-russell","tag-seat","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-winning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=567600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/567600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/567601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=567600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=567600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=567600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}