ACT’s leader David Seymour is now swooping in on a wounded National after flying high during the election, as the two parties appear to be in a turf war to be the main opposition voice.
“There are clearly examples where ACT has led the way and made the running,” Seymour said.
Judith Collins denies National is being dominated but the ACT party caucus is giving the Nats a run for its money.
Take the tug-of-war over the controversial He Puapua report, ACT revealed it, National ran with it.
“Voters are smart and they can see who needs to be credited for making the running. On cases like He Puapua that's ACT,” Seymour said.
Collins also denied stealing ACT’s thunder on the report, saying “I think what we do is we just prosecute issues better than some people”.
Then there are last month’s press releases with headlines that are almost word-for-word.
Including ACT saying "police should be warning gangs, not the public" followed an hour later by National’s "police must warn gangs, not the public".
Or another example where National put out a release headlined “gangs need consequences, not cups of tea” a day after ACT had said police “should be arresting gang members, not having cups of tea".
National’s corrections and police spokesperson Simeon Brown denied being a copycat.
“Not at all. What we're doing is we're highlighting similar issues."
It does go both ways, with ACT regularly jumping in on National's questions in the House.
“And vice versa you only get so many questions,” Seymour said.
“If you see an opportunity where perhaps the other person hasn't quite fully capitalised on the moment then I'm very happy to jump up and fill the spot.”
These examples could almost be seen as comedic but for the fact this is serious.
National and ACT need each other to form an alternative government.
Meaning they can't keep scrapping over the same bones.
“It's a problem for National in the sense that although they need coalition partners, they do need support parties. They also need to look like a credible major party, they need to look like they can win an election,” political commentator Ben Thomas said.
Collins was adamant her party was the main voice of opposition.
“We are the opposition party and we're very happy to have other people working with us,” Collins said.
Whether National and ACT are working with or against each other is up for debate.
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