Thomas Coughlan: National Party flocks to Christchurch for Christopher Luxon's leadership test with members

In the most recent poll, Christopher Luxon's unfavourable rating was 31 per cent, just behind Jacinda Ardern on 34 per cent. Photo / Mark Mitchell

ANALYSIS

National Party members gather in Christchurch this weekend for the party's annual conference and AGM.

It's expected to be a tightly-managed, optimistic affair at which leader Christopher Luxon will stamp his mark on the party. This is his first conference as leader, and a good opportunity to introduce himself to the party and establish a relationship with the grassroots - although much of the rank and file will have met him already.

There's a lot on the line. Members won't have been impressed by a bruising and distracting fortnight, dogged by Te Puke (dare we affix the suffix "-gate"?) and his party's on-off-on tax policy.

There are other clouds on the horizon too.

National is polling well, but Luxon's personal polling has plateaued, and just nine months into the leadership, he's nearly as disliked by the country as the person who has been running the country for five years.

Expect to see a more personal side to Luxon. His wife, Amanda Luxon is scheduled to speak. About 650 people are slated to attend, well above the 400-500 odd who would be expected to attend in a non-election year.

In the midst of the conference is the party AGM, which is the only area of controversy going into the conference - a significant improvement to the build-up to last year's conference when controversy seemed to trail the word National like a shadow.

Earlier this year, longstanding President Peter Goodfellow announced he will retire from the job this conference, meaning a successor will be elected from among his fellow board members at this AGM.

But there was a catch.

Goodfellow announced his resignation after nominations for the board closed, meaning no one from the party had the opportunity to put their hand up to be elected to the board and replace him.

The board itself will not even change at this AGM. The three board positions up for grabs will be filled by the three members who already hold them - all three are seeking re-election. Unlike the hyper-democratic Green Party, National delegates do not have the option to re-open nominations if they don't like the candidate on offer.

The Facebook post Christopher Luxon would rather forget. Photo / Facebook

Some senior National members have complained it stinks of a stitch-up, and the presidency will essentially be handed from one person to another without an open contest.

This taps into an anxiety growing among the more diehard National members that the party has become too centralised and too undemocratic since Steven Joyce corporatised the organisation of the party in the aftermath of the 2002 election loss.

Others look at the democratic chaos playing in the Green Party this week, and the awkward candidates National's fairly democratic selection process has spewed out, and think that corporatisation is exactly what's needed.

Either way, Sylvia Wood appears to be the favourite to be elected president. Goodfellow will remain on the board for a term to ease the transition (or exert continued control over the party - if you are to believe his detractors).

It says something about the Luxon-era National Party that the only real pre-conference controversy seems to have emerged from a desire to avoid controversy.

Keep an eye out for members wanting to vent frustration at their caucus. National keeps much of its conference open to media and members are able to express views frankly, either to the whole party on the conference floor during remit debates, or in breakout sessions devoted to specific policy details.

These tussles show members trying to lead their party's caucus back to the base - but equally they can show a party caucus trying to lead its base to a position of electability.

The last time the party held a Christchurch conference, Todd Muller had to rally the party base behind a more palatable position on climate change.

Members appear to warm to Luxon's popularity, but there are still questions over whether he's the person who will lead the party to victory. While the party's popularity still trails the Bridges era, Luxon's personal popularity is higher than any recent leader. However, it still trails John Key's, and Jacinda Ardern's.

More worrying too, is the fact that the number of people who dislike Luxon is very high for a new leader. These numbers are choppy, and the Taxpayers' Union-Curia Poll, which National Party members receive, has showed a slight improvement.

Nevertheless, in December last year, just after he took the leadership, 21.7 people viewed Luxon unfavourably (compared with 33.7 per cent for Jacinda Ardern). By March, that number had grown to 31.2 per cent (compared with 32.8 per cent for Ardern).

It has stayed stubbornly high since. In the most recent poll, Luxon's unfavourable rating was 31 per cent, just behind Ardern who was on 34 per cent. He's significantly behind in the favourability stakes, with 32 per cent of people viewing him favourably, well behind Arden's 48 per cent. This contributes to the stark gap between their net ratings +14 per cent for Ardern and +1 per cent for Luxon.

Party members can be confident that Luxon will probably lead them into the next election (something they haven't had in previous conferences), but is he the leader who can topple Ardern? Maybe, maybe not.

The last time the party met in Christchurch, its leader was Simon Bridges and it gathered in the newly reopened Town Hall (former Christchurch Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee joked he'd never step inside that building again, but he'd had to eat humble pie).

This time, the party is meeting in Te Pae, Christchurch's convention centre, which was a key "anchor project" the party backed when it was overseeing the quake recovery.

The conference is also hoped to be an improvement on last year's, which was beset by barely concealed infighting, including a public protest from members of the youth wing, upset over the caucus' defiance of a party position on banning conversion therapy.

This year will be different. Collins is no longer leader and the party is once again polling in the 30s. It's not a shoo-in for victory in 2023 in the way Key's National was the year before the 2008 election, but Luxon's National is definitely in the picture.