Stuart Nash will return to Parliament as a New Zealand First candidate after confirming on 25 May 2026 that he will contest Napier for Winston Peters’ party at the general election, ending three years out of politics since being sacked from Labour’s Cabinet.
The 58 year old former minister told the New Zealand Herald that he accepts not every voter will look past the crude comment about women that ended his post politics career in late 2024, but said the only way to rebuild trust is to put in the work in his old electorate.
“I would be naive to think all New Zealanders will forgive me,” Nash said. “Some will think that these comments are who I am and the only way to prove them wrong is actually just to work really hard to prove that I’m actually a man who is respectful to everyone.”
Nash was first elected as a Labour list MP in 2008, lost his seat in 2011, and won the Napier electorate in 2014, holding it across three terms. He rose into Cabinet under Jacinda Ardern in 2017, when Labour governed in coalition with NZ First, and again in 2020 after Labour’s single party majority. His portfolios included police, revenue and fisheries.
His Cabinet career ended in March 2023 when then Prime Minister Chris Hipkins sacked him over a sequence of breaches of the Cabinet manual. RNZ reports the breaches included appearing to encourage the former Police Commissioner to appeal a judge’s sentencing, asking a senior official to look into an immigration matter for a Napier constituent, and revealing confidential Cabinet details in a 2020 email to two businessmen who had also donated to him.
After leaving Parliament, Nash joined recruitment firm Robert Walters, took a board seat on the Taxpayers’ Union and set up Nash Kelly Global, a business that helped wealthy migrants enter New Zealand. That second life unravelled in late 2024 when, asked on a podcast to define a woman, Nash gave a graphic anatomical answer that he later described as a “crude and disrespectful remark”. He resigned from Robert Walters and the Taxpayers’ Union board, and was dropped from a Government trade trip to the United States after being deemed a distraction.
Speaking from his home on Napier’s Marine Parade, Nash told the Herald his family had been more brutal than the public.
“Oh if I could take those back, I would do it in a heartbeat,” he said. “The disappointment articulated to me by my wife, my mother and my daughters, nothing will come close to the scolding I got from them.”
The path back to politics began with what Nash described as a chance encounter with Winston Peters in 2024, which led to a conversation about NZ First and an invitation to speak at the party’s annual convention in Palmerston North in September 2025. According to Newstalk ZB’s coverage of that conference, Nash told 280 delegates that NZ First was the only party still focused on the core issues facing New Zealanders, called Labour “woke” and accused Hipkins of stabbing him in the back. Peters told media at the time that Nash would be a “seamless” addition to the party.
Nash’s great grandfather was Sir Walter Nash, a former Labour leader and Prime Minister, and the family name has been associated with the Labour Party for generations. Nash told the Herald his old party would no longer be recognised by its own icons of the past, and that what was now needed was “a pragmatic party that does stand up for good, hard-working Kiwis”.
The decision lines Nash up against National’s Katie Nimon, who took Napier off Labour in 2023 and is considered a rising prospect within National. Napier is a swing seat with a long Labour history, and a serious three way contest between National, NZ First and a Labour candidate yet to be named will test how much of Nash’s personal vote survived his time out of politics and the events of late 2024.
The move also fits a pattern from NZ First over the past week. Peters announced veteran Whangārei mayor Vince Cocurullo as the party’s candidate for Whangārei on 24 May, and the party has been openly pitching itself to provincial voters who once leaned Labour. Adding a former Labour minister with deep roots in Hawke’s Bay extends that strategy into a region where the party currently has no electorate MP.
Peters told the Herald he sees Nash as a Cabinet minister in a future Government, a notably firm endorsement given Nash will still need to be selected by NZ First members and then win the seat.
For Labour, the defection of a former minister to a coalition rival in the same year as a general election is awkward whether or not Nash wins. Hipkins, who sacked him, remains party leader, and Nash’s public criticism of Labour as “woke” sharpens a fault line NZ First has been working for some time.
Nash has nine months to convince Napier voters that the man on the hustings is the police, revenue and fisheries minister of the late 2010s rather than the man on the podcast in 2024. On the available evidence, he is going to spend most of it walking the Marine Parade and knocking on doors.
If you are weighing up where the smaller parties sit before the 2026 vote, our 2026 voting tool lets you compare party positions side by side.
What do you make of Stuart Nash standing for NZ First in Napier? Tell us in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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