Speaker Tolley

The Herald reports:

Deputy Speaker and National MP Anne Tolley has announced she won’t be running for her long-held East Coast electorate next year and will instead rely on coming into Parliament the party’s list.

This, according to Tolley, is because she wants to be the Speaker of the House if National wins next year’s election.

“The role of Speaker would require full-time attention. Given that, it wouldn’t be fair to continue to be an electorate MP.”

Anne would be a great Speaker, so this decision makes sense for her.

She has an 4,807 majority in East Coast. Labour’s Kiri Allan has a lot of profile so National will need to select a good candidate to be confident of retaining the seat with Anne going list-only.