Democracy Briefing: National discovers the women’s vote courtesy of Stuart Nash

The National Party has spent much of this term trying to understand why so many women dislike the Government. This week Stuart Nash gave it an answer it could work with.

Nash deserved the trouble he created. His private attack on National MP Katie Nimon was inaccurate, reckless and politically inept. But his downfall quickly became about more than the contents of one text. National turned it into a campaign for women voters and a rare chance for Christopher Luxon to impose himself on New Zealand First.

The striking question is not only why Nash went. It is why this offence proved fatal when Shane Jones has survived so many others.

The text and the facts

Nash sent his fatal text message to Chris Finlayson on 14 July, after the former National Attorney-General suggested on the “Cross Party Lines” podcast that Nash could not win Napier off Nimon. Finlayson read it out on air on Wednesday: “Comments like yours motivate me and drive me harder. Katie took nine months off on full pay, went back for a week, then took another month off. Laziest MP I have ever come across. Nice woman, but ill-suited to the rigours of being an electorate MP.”

The facts were wrong. Nimon, who had her first child in May last year, says she took ten weeks completely away from work, returned part-time to electorate duties, and remained away from Parliament in Wellington for six months. “Things don’t hurt as much when they’re not true,” she said afterwards. She suggested that she had “achieved more with National for Hawke’s Bay in three years with a baby than he has in nine years”.

Nash had put a false claim about a rival candidate in writing and sent it to someone with every reason to expose him. His first response made matters worse. Instead of directly apologising, he defended his record and complained that National had twice opposed Labour’s extension of paid parental leave.

National finds a women’s issue

National’s condemnation was instant and remarkably well coordinated. Luxon called the comments “sexist” and accused Nash of “channelling the manosphere”. Chris Bishop said they were “disgusting and he should know better. Stuart Nash needs to get into the 21st century”, before upgrading to “sexist dickhead” on Facebook and eventually “good riddance”.

Jenna Lynch at Stuff noted that “the sheer number of posts from National MPs digging into their camera rolls to find a photo with Katie Nimon to be part of the conversation was impressive, if a little much”. Simeon Brown posted a sarcastic apology for having taken parental leave himself. Erica Stanford declared that “Christopher Luxon is such a champion of women”.

None of this was spontaneous sympathy for Katie Nimon. Lynch wrote that National saw Nash’s transgression as “a rare political gift. They’ve not been fortunate enough to receive many this term.”

The anger may well have been genuine. Nimon is popular with her colleagues and National MPs plainly thought Nash had traduced her. The way the party mobilised that anger was also unmistakably political.

Heather du Plessis-Allan offered the sharpest interpretation: “It must be remembered that it is ultimately National that orchestrated Nash’s demise.” National, she wrote, “went ballistic”, rolling out its senior politicians one after another. Kerre Woodham wondered whether the barrage amounted to “a party-wide instruction to shriek your outrage across every media outlet because we’re polling badly with women and we want to show women that we love them really”.

And in case anyone doubted the machinery behind it, Matthew Hooton reported in the Sunday Star-Times today that “both National and NZ First strategists are briefing furiously to try to take the credit for Nash’s fall”.

The numbers explain National’s enthusiasm. Andrea Vance cites Post/Freshwater Strategy polling showing the Government comfortably ahead among men but collapsing into the low thirties among women aged 35 to 54. National alone is below 20% with that group, while Labour is in the mid-forties.

Writing for Newsroom, sociologist Carol Harrington argues that Nash’s comments “handed National an opportunity to pose on the side of women’s rights despite the party’s track record on equal pay and domestic violence”. Harrington sees this as hypocritical on National’s party: “The record of the past three years shows they stand up for women when it doesn’t cost them anything.” She points to the Equal Pay Amendment Act 2025 halting 33 pay-equity claims and argues that National stands up for women when doing so costs nothing.

Also, on Nash invoking his “strong, independent daughters” in his resignation statement, she added a parenthesis: “I can’t be a misogynist, I have daughters!”

Harrington’s emphasis on costless symbolism underplays the value of senior politicians defending Nimon and rejecting the suggestion that motherhood makes an MP lazy. That response mattered. Her larger challenge is harder to dismiss. Women do not vote only on whether politicians use offensive language. They vote on health services, pay, childcare, housing and the cost of living.

Luxon gets in first

Nash also presented Luxon with an unusual opportunity to look like the person in charge of the coalition. Peters and Jones have spent much of the term attacking National’s policies and leadership while continuing to serve as ministers. Luxon has had few useful ways to discipline them.

Nash appears to have tendered his resignation earlier on Wednesday evening, but Peters had not made that public. At 9.24pm, Luxon announced that Nash would never serve as a minister in a government he led. New Zealand First was not warned. Peters confirmed at 10.47pm that the resignation had been accepted.

Lynch describes Luxon’s move as an effective “pre-sacking”. Strictly speaking, Nash was already on his way out. But Luxon got in first publicly and presented himself as the politician drawing the line.

The move imposed a cost on a coalition rival without risking the coalition. The Herald’s Audrey Young saw a wider shift: “Luxon is starting to treat New Zealand First with the same disrespect he himself is being treated with.” He could not sack Shane Jones. But, to borrow Lynch’s phrase, he could publicly “pre-sack” Stuart Nash.

Why New Zealand First folded

New Zealand First has built much of its recent identity around refusing to bend to outrage. Peters routinely denounces the mainstream media, political correctness and “snivelling wokesters”. Du Plessis-Allan therefore found the speed of Nash’s removal strange. “It is weird that NZ First sacked Stuart Nash this week,” she wrote. “So, let’s call it for what it really is. It’s a sacking.”

The obvious response from an anti-woke party, du Plessis-Allan argues, would have been to tell the critics to get lost and defend Nash’s right to speak. Instead, he was reportedly given a resign-or-be-fired ultimatum at about 7pm on Wednesday.

Du Plessis-Allan’s explanation is brutally electoral: “The mathematics didn’t stack up for Nash. There are many times more women voters than Indian voters in NZ.” The comparison was with Jones’ “butter chicken tsunami” comments, which Peters had defended. Nash had offended a much larger and more electorally dangerous constituency. And with Michael Laws and Jones positioned as the party’s heirs-apparent, Nash was “at best surplus to requirements and at worst a threat that allowed itself to be eliminated”.

Jo Moir at RNZ gets closer to Peters’ internal logic. New Zealand First needed to “cauterise the wound that was Stuart Nash”. Peters, she wrote, has no patience for anyone in his party handing opponents an easy victory. Jones’ provocations are normally deliberate, on-message and aimed at an audience the party wants to excite. Nash’s mistakes were uncontrolled and created trouble without advancing any obvious strategy.

As well as all this, Moir points out that for a party that “talks ad nauseam about family values”, trashing a young mother was about as far off-message as it gets. The Post’s Henry Cooke said it felt like “punching down”: a former senior minister attacking a first-term MP and millennial mother. Thomas Coughlan reported that Nash’s fate was sealed after an internal push from women in New Zealand First, including board member Dot Jones.

Nash’s previous record counted against him too. His ministerial career had ended after a succession of judgment failures, culminating in the disclosure of confidential Cabinet information to donors. He then failed to apologise promptly for the Nimon message.

Most of all, Nash was expendable. He was a candidate rather than an MP or minister. Removing him did not threaten the Government, cost the party a parliamentary vote or force Peters into a confrontation with Luxon.

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