New Zealand First is turning into a second home for politicians who once wore other parties’ colours, and the latest to make the move is former National MP Harete Hipango-Brownlie, who has won the party’s candidacy for Whanganui ahead of the 7 November general election.
Hipango-Brownlie secured the nomination on Wednesday with no one else putting their name forward, RNZ reported. She is a lawyer with more than 30 years in practice, and she is no stranger to the seat. She held Whanganui for National from 2017 to 2020, returned to Parliament on the National list in May 2021 after Nick Smith resigned, then left the House following the 2023 election, when she stood in the Māori electorate of Te Tai Hauāuru and finished third behind Te Pāti Māori’s Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Labour’s Soraya Peke-Mason.
Now she will run for Winston Peters’ party in the electorate she used to represent. In explaining the switch, she pointed to the Covid-19 period as the moment her comfort with National began to fade. “It really was during that time that things started to resonate with me that this wasn’t sitting comfortably,” she told RNZ. She said she had seen “leadership on the ground there with Winston Peters getting out amongst the people”, and felt “National’s Party traditional core values they once held had left many of us”.
She was blunt about how the relationship with her old party had ended. “I didn’t feel that I had any sense of obligation to the National Party … they didn’t have any towards me after the election outcome results,” she said.
What makes her candidacy more than a local story is the pattern behind it. Hipango-Brownlie is only the newest of several former MPs who have surfaced on New Zealand First’s list for this election. Former Labour minister Stuart Nash, former National MP Alfred Ngaro, and broadcaster and former MP Michael Laws have all put their hands up for the party in recent months, drawn from both sides of the old National and Labour divide. For a party that has spent much of its life on the political margins, that is a notable haul of experience and name recognition heading into a tight campaign.
Her nomination came as part of a fresh batch of candidates the party announced this week. Alongside Hipango-Brownlie in Whanganui, New Zealand First named Te Kira Lawrence in East Cape, Tracey Coxhead in Mount Maunganui, Kym McDonald-King in Dunedin and Billy Brown in Rotorua. A party spokesperson called Hipango-Brownlie “another great addition” and said she “brings a lot of experience as a former MP having previously held the Whanganui seat, in addition to her extensive experience across law, health, governance, and public policy”.
There is an obvious tension in the arrangement. New Zealand First sits in government with National and ACT, yet Hipango-Brownlie will now campaign in Whanganui against the party she once served, in a seat National currently holds. That is the nature of the mixed-member system, where coalition partners still fight each other for electorate votes even as they share a Cabinet table. It also underlines how the three governing parties will spend the coming months trying to peel support from one another as much as from the opposition.
For Winston Peters, recruiting recognisable former MPs is a familiar strategy. Candidates who have already served in Parliament arrive with media contacts, local networks and a track record voters can weigh up, which matters for a party that lives close to the 5 percent threshold every election. It also lets New Zealand First present itself as a landing place for people who feel the larger parties have drifted from their roots, a message Hipango-Brownlie echoed almost word for word when she described National’s traditional values as having “left many of us”.
Her arrival was not universally welcomed. Some coverage has revisited her outspoken profile during the pandemic years, when she was a vocal figure on the National benches. 1News described her as a controversial former MP in its report on the move. Her supporters point instead to her legal background and her Whanganui roots, and Te Ao Māori News noted her long connection to the district and to Māori legal work.
Whether the strategy pays off will not be clear until election night. Standing in a seat National holds is a hard ask, and much of New Zealand First’s fortunes will ride on its party vote rather than any single electorate. But the steady flow of former MPs towards Peters’ party is one of the quieter stories of this campaign, and a sign of how fluid party loyalties have become as the 7 November vote draws closer.
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What do you make of New Zealand First becoming a home for former National and Labour MPs? Is it a sign of a party on the rise or of politicians chasing a safe berth? Share your thoughts 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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