Brooke van Velden’s Tāmaki electorate shoe-filler was once poised to be a future attorney general for the National Party. What’s the story of James Christmas?

On the surface, he’s not your typical libertarian. The vegetarian, arts-loving, Treaty-versed lawyer James Christmas was once tipped to be a future National minister, but now looks likely to be waving the Act flag in parliament. He swears he’s not a “secret wokester” in a Trojan horse, so who exactly is Act’s new candidate for Tāmaki?

First of all, you’d be forgiven for thinking Christmas had already been confirmed as Act MP Brooke van Velden’s electorate successor. The 40-year-old was only just selected on Sunday, by what the party described as a “strong mandate from a clear majority” of local members and the party’s board. He was one of eight nominees vying for the candidacy, but was given a lift-up by David Seymour’s appraisal of him as a “high quality candidate” on April 11. Christmas even described himself as an Act candidate in an interview with The Platform on April 14 while the party was communicating it was still searching through a “torrent of talent”.

Christmas is up against National’s Mahesh Muralidhar, who failed to take Auckland Central off Greens co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick in  2023, and Labour’s Max Harris, author of the New Zealand Project and someone to the left of the left of the party. Expect the race for Tāmaki to be one to watch.

National by nature

This election season has seen its fair share of party hoppers, but Christmas tips the scales completely. Christmas was selected as a list candidate for the National Party in 2023, and only narrowly missed out on making it into parliament. At the time, he was a favourite within the party to take on the role of attorney general and Treaty negotiations minister if elected.

Christmas has always been a National Party guy. As a teenager, he wore handmade “re-elect Jenny Shipley” badges at Christchurch’s Burnside College (which also happens to count John Key as alumni). Despite growing up in a non-political family, Christmas had “always been that way inclined,” he told the NZ Herald in 2023. 

He was just out of high school when he first met his future mentor, then-freshly elected National MP Chris Finlayson. A player of the french horn, tuba and piano, Christmas stopped Finlayson at a Christchurch Symphony Orchestra concert in 2005 to compliment him on his maiden speech. Six years later, after receiving a Bachelor of Laws and Masters of Arts from Victoria University, Christmas went to work in Finlayson’s ministerial office. 

Christmas’s time as an advisor to Finlayson covered his Treaty negotiations and national security and intelligence portfolios. The pair would eventually co-author He Kupu Taurangi, a history of Treaty settlements in New Zealand which offers insight into the Crown processes behind settlements.

In 2016, Christmas moved on to prime minister John Key’s office, just a few weeks out from Key’s retirement. He continued to work under Bill English for a year, before practicing as a barrister sole from 2019 and joining the Britomart Chambers in 2023. Christmas was also appointed to the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra board by arts and culture minister Paul Goldsmith in 2024.

‘Act was the obvious choice for me’

National and Act often view each other across ideological gulfs. Where Act is the radical reformist, National is the cautious incrementalist. Where Act pushes for shrinkage, National calls for restructure. Act behaves as the hand keeping National’s dial to the right.

So, why make the switch? While acknowledging his change of allegiance would be “disappointing” to some in the National Party, Christmas swears he leaves the party with no bad blood – it’s all ideological. “I had to stand back and look at where I could make a contribution in line with my values, and where I’d have the best chance to speak out on what I believe in,” he told RNZ. “In the end, Act was the obvious choice for me.”

Behind the scenes, Christmas has had a number of brushes with Act leadership – new and old – over the last term. He worked alongside party leader David Seymour on the Regulatory Standards Bill, and also serves in a ministerial advisory group on Treaty clauses. From there he got to know former leader Richard Prebble, and landed a yum cha lunch with party co-founder Roger Douglas.

Now, he’s an Act candidate who hasn’t yet made it into parliament but already has party leadership rumours swirling around him. And while his CV doesn’t read as obviously Act, his descriptions of himself and his work do. Christmas is “not a co-governance guy,” but a “treaty settlements guy”. He’s a “very big fan of charter schools”, a “big property rights guy” and reckons there’s unfinished business in proposals made by Seymour’s controversial Treaty principles bill. “It’s time for parliament to sort itself out and do its job properly,” Christmas told RNZ.

Christmas seems to be focused on serving the Tāmaki electorate. He reckons he’s “old-fashioned” in the sense that he has a “traditional view” of what a local MP should do for its constituents. Nevertheless, he could be key in taking the party’s hopes of a Treaty principle bill 2.0 to the next level.

A handy side effect

Christmas has given clear reasons for his “ideological” shift to Act. But for someone who has wanted to be in parliament since at least 2023, Act may prove to be his best shot. Based on current polling, even National’s most senior ministers would struggle to make it back into parliament on the party list. Before she announced her retirement, van Velden was expected to retain Tāmaki for the party. In replacing van Velden, Christmas has set himself up to see a present under the tree.