Despite losing his electorate of Whangārei, Dr Shane Reti has been made the deputy leader of the National Party, a role he says is beyond a dream.
Reti replaces Gerry Brownlee, and will help lead the party under Judith Collins, who was confirmed as leader at National's caucus meeting on Tuesday.
He told Checkpoint: "It's a privilege and a dream beyond which I thought I could dream but today I've been really honored to have the support of my colleagues and asked to step up to this role."
"My first task is to be the best MP that I possibly can be for Whangārei. Anything beyond that is a dream."
He said he worked well with his leader.
"Judith is very straight. You'll never die wondering what Judith is thinking, and I found her to be very honest ... and I think that's what caucus could see as well. We have a working relationship that is well founded, well grounded, and we can work together as an excellent team. I think it was very appealing to caucus."
As for their dynamic, he would answer to her as the boss, but they would be a "partnership and... a collaboration".
"We'll be setting big strategy in collaboration with caucus, setting party direction, setting out how we might get back the Treasury benches in 2023.
Reti says National's path forward would be guided by its internal review.
"That will help us shape and redevelop our relevance and credibility out in the community, which it would seem to be has been a consequence of this recent election result."
He said he would not "pre-empt" the review with his own perspective on what went wrong.
Asked if the tone of the National Party had been "slightly off" in a time when the country needed unity, Reti said: "I think there are many examples where our tone was maybe right on. We were really encouraging of closing the borders when it was appropriate and we've always tried to collaborate as best we can, in our position as opposition, to critique the government.
"And then, of course, wish is to critique and has been to collaborate to raise our collective bar. That's how I frame it. So I think there were examples of we we've actually done quite well. And we had met the need to to lift our collective bar.
"Look, I think there could always be times we've got the tone wrong and there may be times coming forward in the future and we're going to try our very best to mitigate that. So, looking backwards, maybe there are things that we would do differently."
What happened in Whangārei?
Reti held a solid margin in his electorate from the 2017 election when he won the seat by 11,000 votes, but lost in October's election to Labour's Emily Henderson by 500 votes after the specials were counted.
"I think we've acknowledged and needed to acknowledge is that maybe we shot ourselves in the foot with some of the things we said or some of the things we did. And this of course is what the internal review is looking at and that had an impact on my electorate as well, just like it did with other electorates."
Gerry Brownlee was not the sacrificial lamb for the internal failings of the party, Reti said.
"Not at all, Gerry of his own volition relinquished the deputy leadership role."
Despite losing his seat in Whangārei, Reti said he was still receiving constituent inquiries.
