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National's Auckland regional conference is underway this weekend with the embarrassed party awkwardly trying to put a bitter internal row behind it, and desperate to find anything to distract the media from the Serious Fraud Office investigation into the party's funds.
The news that the SFO is investigating the party's finances - specifically the mysterious amounts donated by merchant bankers Fay Richwhite in 1996 - had recently prompted the party to call for SFO head David Bradshaw's resignation after he informed the Prime Minister's office that he was investigating National.
The party's president Michelle Boag - former head of public relations at Fay Richwhite - had threatened former president John Slater with expulsion, if it was found that he was the source of the leak about the party's 1996 funding to the SFO.
At the conference, those expecting blood on the floor were disappointed - it was hard enough to find red meat on the table.
Boag's threat to expel her predecessor, John Slater, came to nothing.
"I'd like to think that was something that was said in the heat of the moment," says Slater.
Publicly, at least the smiles and not the knives were out - though Slater couldn't resist the odd jab.
"You need to handle these things in a quiet, pleasant and judicious way," he told ONE News.
"But what's happened has happened, it's unfortunate, and the message I'm getting is it hasn't been helpful."
For her part Michelle Boag was quick to put up a blitz of PR-speak.
"Why I said something like that is completely up to me. The fact is those events of the week are now behind us, they happened, and we are moving on to fighting an election campaign."
But despite a week of hunting, National still doesn't know whose complaint prompted the SFO investigation into party donations from Fay Richwhite.
"Some have tried to put us off our stride, it will not work," Boag says.
One delegate claimed that no-one in the party would report it for alleged mishandling funds, and at the conference just one question was officially raised about the matter, but it was not pursued.
The party is evidently uninterested in airing its dirty laundry in public.
"It's a storm in a tea cup and I'm sure it will come out in National's favour," claims another delegate.
It is one year since Michelle Boag won the bitter battle for the presidency over John Slater, but the party's parliamentary leader, and leader of the opposition Bill English, says that he does not believe the row is a matter of old scores being settled.
"There's no sense in the 300 people here of camps or division at all, there's a strong sense of focus on the election," says English.
There is no indication when the Serious Fraud Office investigation will be completed, but with speculation of an early election rising National will want to put this behind them as soon as possible.
Their national conference will be held in July.
© ONE News
