‘My view is it was too negative’: Gerry Brownlee on the National Party campaign

The veteran National MP and outgoing speaker on the election, the overhang, and three decades at parliament. 

National’s most experienced member of parliament, Gerry Brownlee, says the party’s campaign went too far on negativity. 

“My personal view is that it was too negative,” the speaker of the House told The Spinoff, after his 30-year career came to end on Saturday when National failed to win any list seats at the election.

In a new episode of the podcast At Large with Toby Manhire, he said: “On negative campaigning, there are those who say: ‘It works. It's great. It’s the ideal.’ I don't like it. I don't think it is the type of campaigning that really is out there to speak to either a record or an intention."

He said: "I think if the best you can do is, you know, put down your opponents in some particular way, then you're expressing a lack of confidence in your own political position.”

The National campaign faced criticisms for leaning heavily on characterisations of the opposition parties’ tax promises, a protracted targeting of Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick as a potential minister of finance, and an extended detour on gangs. 

Had Brownlee, as the most experienced National MP, argued the case around negativity to those running the campaign? “I made that point to people who are in our headquarters,” he said. “But, you know, as Speaker, you try not to get too involved in the mechanics of these things.”

How did they respond? “Just that, you know, they had various reasons for it. I don't really want to go into their responses. I think I've taken seriously the role of speaker as being parliament's man, so I haven't had any public commentary about candidates or others from any side of the house, and I don't think it's appropriate.”

Speaking to TVNZ show Q+A on Sunday morning, the National campaign manager Simeon Brown called the results “bittersweet”, given the loss of senior MPs including Brownlee, Nicola Willis, Paul Goldsmith and Chris Bishop. Asked if the campaign had been too negative, he said: “We made choices throughout the campaign. Yes, we have our positive plan about the future of our country, and we’ve got a lot of policies for the future of the country that we’ve put out there.”

He added: “We also made choices to create contrasts, because ultimately New Zealanders needed to know, yes, what they’re voting for with National’s positive plan… but at the same time the risks – and we made deliberate choices around tax, around the influence of the Greens, those were deliberate choices.” He acknowledged that “in the middle of the campaign we did spend quite a bit of time talking about gangs,” noting that it was a response to social media posts shared by opponents, and “that was also where the media went and were interested”.

Chris Bishop, a former staffer for Brownlee who went on to become a senior minister in the National-led government, was originally National's campaign manager. Christopher Luxon replaced him with Brown in April. Bishop said of his local campaign in a social media post conceding his Hutt South electorate: "I tried to run a positive and upbeat campaign. There's too much negativity out there, too much polarisation and there's too many great things happening in the Hutt.”

National’s strongest internal critic in recent days has been Vanessa Weenik. Having lost her Banks Peninsula seat, she told reporters that voters on the campaign trail were “telling us they literally hate us”.

Brownlee said he hadn’t encountered anything that emphatic. “I wouldn't go as strong as saying that there was widespread hatred of the National Party,” he said. “We wouldn't have 42 seats right now if that were the case. And I don't ever like using that word hatred in politics anyway, because I think if you're genuine about a contest of ideas, you've got to appreciate what other people are saying and have a tolerance for it. That's what democracy is about.”

Asked how it felt being back at parliament, knowing his long innings there was coming to a close, Brownlee cast his eye across the speaker’s office around him. “If you could see the state of the office,” he said. “It's cardboard boxes on the floor, cupboards wide open, all sorts of stuff spilling out of them. So you go through that whole pack-up stuff, which is a challenge in itself because you think, where the heck am I going to put all this stuff?”

Did that packing up trigger any sense of melancholy? “To be honest with you, I haven't felt that,” he said. “I know that some do. But I think the prospect of this being the result… has been there for a while, and so you've certainly got it in your head that this is how it could go, and it certainly unfolded that way on Saturday night, and wasn't particularly surprising in that event.”

Despite being dismayed by third parties’ promotion of an overhang strategy, he was “pleased with the number of constituencies the National Party won, because that in the end that is where the strength of parties lies, and from that point of view it wasn't a total disaster”.

In the episode of At Large, Brownlee also discusses:

• Getting the silver tray at the National caucus meeting yesterday and the way said trays have shrunk over the years.
• His rare attendances at caucus as speaker across the term, when votes were required.
• His first days in parliament following the first MMP election in 1996.
• What made Jim Bolger special as a leader.
• Whether politics has become more tribal.
• His friendship with former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman.
• Post-earthquake Christchurch as recovery minister, and the controversial “carping and moaning” comments. 
• Advice for incoming MPs in 2026.