OPINION:
On Tuesday evening, when the new National leader sits down at their desk on the third floor of Parliament House they'll begin the unenviable task of seeing to one of the most overflowing and unpleasant in-trays in New Zealand.
The Prime Minister, I suppose, has the more difficult task - her in-tray is quite literally the stuff of life and death, but it comes with a measure of job security (until 2023 at least).
The new leader of the Opposition has a handful of key decisions to make in their first days and months on the job.
The first are the obvious ones: a caucus reshuffle is in order. The rankings need to reward MPs who stuck their necks out for the new leader, but not reward them so much that it puts the losing team (or teams) offside. The leader must give the caucus reason to lick their wounds over summer and come back to Parliament with at least a semblance of unity and common-ish purpose.
The most difficult question here is what to do with former leader Judith Collins. Last Thursday's no-confidence vote was unprecedented for National - a signal the caucus thought her late-night press release was quite seriously out of line.
But Collins herself clearly doesn't think so - in fact, she's vowed to stay on in Parliament, including after the next election.
The new leader faces the tough decision of embarrassing the caucus by rewarding bad behaviour with a good ranking and prominent portfolios, or jilting Collins with a demotion only to see her foment a backbench revolt.
There are also two complicated policy questions coming down the pipes - one, fairly imminently.
Collins and housing spokeswoman Nicola Willis signed National up to a housing accord with Labour. The agreement will allow as many as 100,000 additional dwellings in our larger cities by allowing more subdivision and taller buildings.
But it's come under strong attack from councils, residents associations and the Act party, which appears to have abandoned its libertarian principles to court the formerly blue suburban vote
Some National Auckland MPs are furious, and are struggling to address the concerns raised by their constituents. Tamaki MP Simon O'Connor even spoke openly about his concerns on Newstalk ZB the morning of Collins' ouster.
National could yet break from the accord.
The bill is due back from select committee next week, and National could quite easily turn around and vote against it at second and third reading (the bill would, of course, still pass with Labour votes alone).
This could stop some of the bleeding to Act.
Though National MPs have discovered a passion for rolling the most unpopular thing they can see, rolling over on this issue might be a problem. Labour will find much mirth in watching National and Act tie themselves together in the very red tape they promised to cut.
Labour does have something to lose if National breaks from the accord, which was meant to allow both big parties to push for unpopular densification by neutering Nimbyism as a political issue.
But the upside for Labour is that if National backs away unconvincingly, it can claim the party isn't truly committed to its one big solution to the housing crisis: supply.
Another option is for National to try and put forward a compromise halfway between Labour and Act in the report published when the bill returns from select committee, proposing amendments that kowtow to suburban sensibilities and effectively neuter the bill without actually saying so.
Those changes will likely be ignored by Labour, and National would then have the choice of holding its nose and voting for a bill it could claim to have tried to fix in good faith, or walking from the project entirely and leaving Labour to get to it, knowing they're no closer to rebuilding their reputation on housing than they were four years ago.
Either way, we'll know the answer in the coming days.
The second big policy issue is the ban on conversion therapy. Some kind of conversion therapy ban is supported by National, but the party bloc voted against the bill to ban it earlier this year out of concerns it would criminalise some parents.
National would officially vote for the bill if there was some carve-out to prevent parents being criminalised under the legislation.
Supporters of the bill argue that National's proviso was a spurious one - considering many children who undergo conversion therapy do so at the behest of their parents, a bill that excludes them isn't really a conversion therapy ban worthy of the name.
National's position caused an explosion in caucus, where liberal members pushed for at least a conscience vote on the issue.
Instead, the party bloc voted against the bill at first reading, the only party to do so.
It lead to an embarrassing spectacle at the party conference days later when MPs, MPs spouses, and young Nats donned rainbow ribbons to show their displeasure.
National is a conservative party, and unlikely to ever be at the vanguard of LGBT rights (although former Justice Minister Amy Adams will be remembered for quashing historic gay sex convictions), however it is also a party that functions well when its liberal and conservative wings are balanced.
On same sex marriage, National MPs were given a personal vote, allowing the conservative majority to vote against, but the liberal minority - including then-prime minister John Key - to vote in favour.
Liberal MPs will want the ability to have a personal vote on the second reading of that bill, which will occur after it returns from select committee in early February next year. It will be one of the first pieces of Parliamentary business after the summer break, and the new leader will not want to start the year with a meltdown.
The issue is a complicated one for the two leadership frontrunners. Christopher Luxon is a Christian who carries his faith quite deeply, but in his maiden speech made it clear he also believes strongly in the separation of church and state. If he's leader in February, the second reading vote will be a test of the truth of that.
It's even more complicated for Bridges, who as justice spokesman under Collins, pushed for the bloc vote on the first reading of the bill. He probably won't want to start 2022 with a backflip, but he might have promised liberal MPs a personal vote in exchange for their backing of his leadership.
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