The PM didn't like it - "jeepers" - but Judith Collins confirmed today she'd have no problem appointing David Seymour as Deputy Prime Minister should a National-Act alliance hit the 51 per cent party-vote mark on election day.
And the National Party leader confirmed to Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking this morning her "big call" policy during last night's TV leaders' debate to introduce a new law to reclaim the wage subsidy from some companies if they were found to have misused it during the first Covid lockdown.
"It is important to find out... Jacinda Ardern said last night that these companies played by the rules. The trouble is, the rules were pathetic and they just let people go waltzing through them.
"But there is a moral right, a moral duty of people if they've taken all that money... if they don't need it, they should have paid it back."
Asked how she could introduce a law when companies followed rules, she said first off she would make phone calls to companies.
"Have a look at the system... did anyone break those rules? In some cases they kept the jobs for the term of the wage subsidy and then sacked them."
She admitted the policy for a new law was a "big call". "I reckon we could do it... but retrospective is never ideal."
Collins said she had no problem with Act leader Seymour in the Deputy Prime Minister role. "David Seymour is a principled person in my experience and he and I have worked together before. I'd rather have him any day than what Miss Ardern has had."
The gloves were off in the fiery, high-energy debate between Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Collins last night.
The robust bout started off with tense questions on the Covid-19 outbreak, the economy, if the health system is racist, child abuse and housing but the pair appeared to relax as the debate wore on.
It came with commitments from both to look into Pharmac's funding decisions and ensure every school had gender neutral bathrooms available.
And it came with memorable, heated exchanges with Ardern directly asking Collins what her plan was for climate change and Collins shooting back: "What for, dear?" Later Collins admitted she thought Seymour would make an "excellent" Deputy Prime Minister in her government which was met with a "jeepers" from Ardern.
And Ardern finally admitted to having smoked cannabis "a long time ago" but continued her refusal to reveal how she was going to vote on the referendum.
But in the final quick-fire round Ardern and Collins found a lot of common ground with both wanting schools to have non-gendered bathrooms, not taxing sugar, making period products freely available in schools and putting a statue of Kate Sheppard in Parliament.
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