Chris Bishop says he’s not aware of anyone wanting to roll PM, but National needs to get vote up

Sunday, 19 April 2026

Senior National Minister Chris Bishop says he is not aware of anyone in his caucus who thinks Prime Minister Christopher Luxon should not be his party’s leader.

But he said the party must do better in the polls ‒ even exceeding the vote it got at the last election.

National has hovered about 29% in recent polls. In the 2023 election it won 37% of the vote.

Bishop was talking to TVNZ’s Q+A on Sunday following a new round of speculation in the media, prompted by a NZ Herald report on Friday that Luxon had effectively “ghosted” whip Stuart Smith several weeks ago, when Smith was looking to share news with him of caucus disquiet.

Read more:

• Luxon says he has caucus behind him, and would win an election if held today

• The numbers say Luxon wins well. They also say he’s in deep trouble

• National on brink of another 'Hunger Games' phase, staff unsettled - sources

Bishop is largely speculated to be Luxon’s most likely replacement.

But he spent several minutes telling Q+A’s Jack Tame he wasn’t angling for the leadership and to the best of his knowledge no one else was either.

Asked repeatedly if he knew of anyone in the National caucus who wanted Luxon replaced, Bishop said no.

Asked if the prime minister was dragging down the National Party’s performance, Bishop said no.

“Christopher Luxon, as I've just said a couple of times, is doing a good job in difficult circumstances, and I think deserves a lot of credit for the stability of the Government over the last two and a bit years, because a lot of people at the time said, this will all fall apart,” Bishop said.

“I think he deserves a lot of credit for that sense of stability and calmness under fire that the country, I think, has appreciated.”

Bishop said he had not heard about the incident with Smith until reading the NZ Herald article, but did not attempt to argue that it had not happened, saying it must have come from somewhere.

“Obviously some people have been talking out of school, that is not the right way to do things. That is unhelpful and untidy and indicates that the National Party is focused on ourselves rather than focused on the country, and that's what the public elect us to do, is to focus on them rather than on ourselves, and that's what we've got to do,” Bishop said.

Bishop said the whole party needed to work on getting its support up.

He said even if the party was still in Government after the election ‒ the polls generally indicate the coalition returning ‒ losing that much support would not be a good thing.

“It wouldn't be a good outcome at the election. There's no doubt about that. We would lose, as you've just indicated, a whole series of MPs,” Bishop said.

“Everyone is very focused on that, from the prime minister through Nicola [Willis], me, the rest of the senior team.”

Asked about the polling on Friday, Luxon simply noted the coalition would be returned on those numbers.

Bishop said he wanted the party to outdo its 2023 election result.

“This is a National Party who wants to be returned to Government and wants National to be returned in solid numbers, more of my colleagues to come back to power as well. I want to lift our vote above what we got at the last election.”

A new 1 News/Verian poll will be released on Sunday night.