National Party leader Judith Collins's next gig: Thriller writer

Judith Collins plans to write a thriller this summer. Photo / Mark Mitchell

National Party leader Judith Collins says she plans to write a thriller this summer.

Collins has told Heather Du Plessis-Allan on NewstalkZB that she enjoyed writing her autobiography last summer so much that she is now planning the thriller.

Asked what she was going to do this summer, she said: "I'm going to say this publicly so I feel absolutely obliged to do it - I'm going to be plotting out a bit of a plot for a thriller."

"I love to write, it's actually very relaxing for me," she said.

"I wrote my last book entirely over the Christmas break. I just found it a very relaxing time."

Her autobiography, Pull No Punches - Memoir of a Political Survivor, was published in June, just a month before she became National Party leader after Todd Muller resigned in July.

Judith Collins's book, Pull No Punches - Memoir of a Political Survivor, was published in June. Photo / Mark Mitchell

She led National to its second-biggest defeat in recent history, which slashed its caucus from 55 MPs to 33.

But she bristled when Du Plessis-Allan asked her if thriller-writing would now be her life "after politics".

"During politics, thank you very much! A holiday job. This place [Parliament] is full of story lines," she said.

"It's a summer gig".

Collins, a former lawyer, completed a Graduate Diploma in Occupational Health and Safety at Massey University from 2015 to 2019 while serving as a minister and then a senior Opposition MP.

She said she hadn't started writing the thriller yet but was just thinking about it.

"I won't have it ready for quite some time because I just want to actually plot it out," she said.

But when pressed, she said it could be ready "potentially for next Christmas".

Earlier, she told Du Plessis-Allan that her first reaction was not to take the National Party leadership when she was asked to step up after Muller's surprise resignation.

"I said no. I said some other things that I'm not going to repeat," she said.

"And I slept on it. I woke up and felt, well, having told my colleagues I'd be good at the job, the last thing I should do is to run away from what is going to be a really difficult time."

She also told Du Plessis-Allan that National would support a motion of no confidence in Parliament's Speaker Trevor Mallard after he apologised this week for accusing a parliamentary staffer of rape.

"Our party would support that [motion] while this matter has not been properly resolved to the satisfaction of Parliament," she said.

She also called for a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the deaths of 22 people in the Whakaari/White Island eruption a year ago today.