I've got a special place for Judith Collins: downstairs, on the western wall, just above the dining table.
That's where my giant portrait of Collins is hanging at the moment.
I bought it in 2015, the year after Sir John Key stripped Collins of her ministerial portfolios over theSFO allegations (later disproved). She was out of cabinet, out of favour, and out of the headlines.
A comeback was needed. To my imagination anyway, the portrait was part of the strategy. Why else would Collins let artist Jesse Peach paint bright colours on her eyelids, take her photo and display it?
Isn't it just the most delicious example of the depths politicians will go to for attention?
Isn't it also an example of the kind of cultural icon Collins was already becoming? She's one of those few politicians you can identify by their first names only: Jacinda, Winston, Crusher.
That's obviously handy if you're taking over as National party leader nine weeks out from the election. Collins won't have introduce herself to us. We already know her. But, that brings its own problems. How many of us have already made up our minds, and not in a good way?
This must have been one of the biggest - if not the single biggest - concerns National MPs had when they elected her leader on Tuesday. Just how polarising is she? How many voters will she repel?
New National Party leader Judith Collins. Photo / NZME
We know there is as much as 46 per cent of the vote available to the National Party. Those were the voters who were loyal enough to the Nats to stick with them for two-and-a-half years in Opposition, enduring even Simon Bridges' unpopularity.
How many of them can Collins bring back? She's clearly popular with the party base. You can see that in the surge in excitement over her leadership. But what about those soft voters who switched to Labour in the panic of Covid and have now got used to the idea? Can she lure them back?
What is the limit to Collins' popularity?
We'll have to wait for the first public opinion polls to really gauge how voters feel about Collins as a leader. But if her first few days in the job are anything to go by, prepare to be surprised on the upside.
Collins was always going to be competent at leadership, but just how competent has been a revelation. She was magnanimous in divvying out the shadow portfolios, she has been confident and relaxed in her media appearances and she's been unafraid of taking it straight to the PM, warning she won't let Ardern "get away with any nonsense".
Surprising too has been the extent to which she has owned media attention this past week. She has been all over the radio, TV and newspapers for days. In part, that's because she's been setting the news agenda with a reshuffle and infrastructure policy announcement, but also it's because she is - ironically for someone who's been around a long time - a breath of fresh air in her frankness, direct answers and humour.
The Government is going to have to rethink how much space it's giving her. Labour's imposed a policy ban on itself. A spokesperson for the PM said publicly the party won't be releasing any policy until its campaign launch on August 8. That's three weeks of allowing National to dominate the ideas space. Labour will surely have to abandon that. But that would then be admitting concern at how competently Collins has taken this campaign by the scruff of its neck.
So far, Collins is nailing every task put in front of her. The next one is her one-on-one with the PM. Question Time, Tuesday, 2pm. Put it in your diary.
