Stanford\u2019s statement said Luxon \u201ccontinues to have my full support, as he always has\u201d. <\/p>\n
She left the conference through a back door, meaning she did not speak to waiting media. <\/p>\n
The Herald asked on behalf of itself and other media whether she could return at some time during the day to speak, but was told she was busy in education-related meetings the rest of the day. <\/p>\n
She briefly spoke to Bishop and other National MPs before leaving through a back door. <\/p>\n
Luxon explained Stanford\u2019s absence was due to her speaking on a panel at the same time. <\/p>\n
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, flanked by National ministers, speaking after his formal address at the conference. Photo \/ Anna Heath<\/p>\n
Speaking to media, Luxon would not answer questions about whether Penk acted alone.<\/p>\n
Luxon said he and Stanford had spoken since Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have [spoken], yes, but I just say to you we came out of Wednesday, we\u2019ve talked about that the last two days, I haven\u2019t got much more to add,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He was asked three times whether he believed Penk acted alone. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s great you\u2019re out of the bubble today mate,\u201d Luxon said to the press, one of whom had travelled from Wellington. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just saying to you, we have discussed that ad nauseam over the last 48 hours, I get it was a bit of a frustrating period for everybody.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we came out of that caucus united, focused and I\u2019m very proud of my team that are there to take New Zealand forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked again, Luxon said, \u201cI\u2019m not getting into that. We\u2019ve talked about that before. I don\u2019t know how to be any clearer with you, I appreciate you might want to continue to niggle away on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThats lovely but that\u2019s not what we\u2019re interested in.\u201d <\/p>\n
On Thursday, Luxon answered \u201cyes\u201d when asked whether he believed Penk acted alone but has refused to take further questions on the matter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stanford\u2019s statement said Luxon \u201ccontinues to have my full support, as he always has\u201d. She left the conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1443,74,806,430,3276,16426,4766,279774,1403,136739,4527,84,156,5031,2740,1333,692,16718,296,1743,1043,16427,1073,6722,3556,111,139,69,4762,98905,415,17146,36097,3048,5659,20863,5032,36672,61,13920,4524,1316,14905,102,14443],"class_list":["post-568391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-about","tag-after","tag-as","tag-celebrities","tag-chris","tag-christopher","tag-conference","tag-coordinating","tag-defence","tag-dodges","tag-doesnt","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-erica","tag-former","tag-get","tag-he","tag-him","tag-into","tag-launched","tag-leadership","tag-luxon","tag-media","tag-minister","tag-national","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-party","tag-penk","tag-prime","tag-questions","tag-roll","tag-said","tag-say","tag-she","tag-stanford","tag-thinks","tag-to","tag-tried","tag-want","tag-when","tag-whether","tag-with","tag-wont"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568391","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=568391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}