National Leader John Key says there are no plans to sell off Kiwibank.
He defended his deputy Bill English for saying at National's conference over the weekend that the party would sell off the state-owned bank in future.
"Well eventually but not now. It's working. Our supporters get a bit angsty but it's working," Mr English said on an audio recording on the Scoop website.
National Party policy is no state asset sales in its first term.
Mr Key said there was no contradiction between the policy and what Mr English said.
"National's made it clear we won't be selling assets in our first term. If there's any change to that position ... we will go and seek that mandate by going out and asking the voters of New Zealand whether they support a particular policy or not," he told Radio New Zealand this morning.
"There's never going to be a blanket change made by National without that support of the public when it comes to assets."
Asked if selling Kiwibank would be on the agenda for the following election, Mr Key said: "I don't think you can expect that to be on the agenda ... I wouldn't jump to any conclusions."
He said the last time the party discussed the idea was before the 2005 election and then decided to support it.
Mr English also said his comments were not inconsistent.
"There's no issues of public trust our position is quite clear."
In other comments on the recording Mr English talked about "Labour-plus voters" who wanted to keep what they had under Labour while "that nice Mr Key" would give them more. He said if National had been in Government "we would've had something like Working for Families but not the same. We would've given them quite a bit of cash in the hand."
He said when governments gave the public cash there was high marginal tax: "You can't get around it".
On the election campaign, he said families were facing financial pressures. "The last thing we want through the whole election campaign is families ... saying Mr Key took money off us. We can't do that. Later on we'll have to have a bit of a sort out."
In a statement last night Finance Minister Michael Cullen said Mr English's comments were a blow to his and Mr Key's credibility.
"This would be bad news for our economy and raises questions about what other public assets National may ready for the auction block if elected," he said.
"This is cynical, dirty politics and shows that while the face at the front of National may have changed, nothing else has."
Jim Anderton said in a statement today that “forty or fifty communities around New Zealand now have banking services that were closed down by the big Australian banks before Kiwibank came along."
He says "National knows that if they told people what they intend to do, no one would vote for them."
NZPA / 3 News