National Party leader Judith Collins attacks Green decision to remove a painting of Winston Churchill but the prime minister says it does not matter.

National Party leader Judith Collins seized on a request from the Green Party to take down a painting of Winston Churchill outside its corridor in Parliament on Wednesday.
But the Greens appeared unwilling to get into a culture war debate on the issue, simply saying the party wanted a painting by a New Zealander in the space.
And the prime minister said she did not care at all whose paintings were hung in Parliament.
Collins tweeted a photo of the painting being removed from the second floor parliamentary lobby area on Wednesday morning, saying the Greens were removing a painting of the greatest anti-fascist leader of the 20th century because they did not like him.
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The area is open to the public on the way to the galleries that surround the debating chamber and leads to the corridor where the Green Partys MPs are based.
I just think it is outrageous, I mean it is so disrespectful, Collins said.
It is not on their wall. It is on the public path to Parliament; people go past on their way to the public gallery. It is just offensive, their behaviour.
The spot the Winston Churchill painting was in until Tuesday. This photo has been edited to obscure parliamentary security equipment.
Collins said National had intervened and offered to hang the portrait, part of Parliaments gigantic art collection, in the public area outside the National Party offices.
She said she assumed the Green Party had issues with Churchills well-documented racist views but said many great people from the past had foibles pointing to Labour prime minister Michael Joseph Savage and Mahatma Gandhi.
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Asked what she thought Churchills decision to send allied troops to Gallipoli in World War I a decision that led to thousands of Kiwis being killed with little effect on the war Collins conceded this had been a mistake.
Green Party co-leader James Shaw insisted that their issue was not with Churchill as a man but with having a painting of a foreign leader instead of a painting by a New Zealander of a New Zealander.
It was not a great fit for the Green Party kaupapa. But [National MP] Chris Bishop wanted it so it got moved. That is the end of the story, Shaw said.
We wanted a painting outside the Green Party offices that was more representative of the values that we stand for, so an artist that is indigenous to New Zealand is more appropriate than a picture of a British prime minister.
We are hanging a painting somewhere in a building. That is the entire story.
Fellow co-leader Marama Davidson said she was surprised Collins was criticising the Greens.
I thought Judith Collins wanted to focus on the issues that New Zealanders really care about. We are trying to demand the debate round climate change, we are trying to prevent family violence she wants to talk about why we moved a piece of art.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was similarly dismissive, saying she cared more about what Parliament did than what was hung on its walls.
I care about what we do in this place we have got a responsibility to look after New Zealand in the massive crisis that we are facing, frankly, who hangs on the wall at the time we do it? I don’t care.
Deputy Prime Minister Grant Robertson went on to mock the National Party at length over the painting complaint in the general debate.
The spat is somewhat reminiscent of a years-long controversy over a loaned bust of Churchill in the Oval Office of the White House, which was featured by United States president George W Bush but not kept in the office by his successor, Barack Obama, who had a separate bust of Churchill in another room.
This prompted British Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the time a columnist to accuse Obama of having an ancestral dislike of the British empire.
Churchills legacy, strong after his leadership of Britain through World War II, has come under increasing scrutiny in recent decades.
A study in 2019 found his government’s policies contributed to a famine in India during the war.