National Party leader Judith Collins' husband David Wong-Tung has received racist comments after sharing numerous anti-Jacinda Ardern memes on social media.
Wong-Tung has been re-posting memes from a Facebook page named National Party's Meme Working Group, including one where an image of the Prime Minister is tinted green and made to look like the Marvel comic character The Incredible Hulk.
Ardern is labelled "The Incredible SULK" in the meme, and it is captioned: "Don't make me angry. You won't like me when I'm angry."
Wong-Tung, who is Chinese-Samoan, shared another meme made to look like one of the Government's official 'Unite Against COVID-19' ads, except it reads: "United against CINDY-20."
The posts were described on Twitter as "aggressive misogyny" against Ardern.
But on Monday afternoon, Wong-Tung shared a Facebook post from the National Party's Meme Working Group of a screenshot of a comment that called him an "ape".
"Imagine this ape standing next to her at important government functions. What an embarrassment he would be to our country," the comment said.
Another comment the meme page took a screenshot of said: "If your wife is so low-class that she'll marry a shit-stain like you David, she's clearly not fit to be running the country, let alone a pre-school."
The meme page said on Twitter it can understand Labour supporters "wanting to attack" Wong-Tung for sharing posts they don't politically agree with, but these particular comments "are genuinely racist and should not be tolerated by anyone".
Collins has been contacted to respond to the comments.
A former senior adviser to the Labour Party, Neale Jones, said of the posts Wong-Tung shared: "Imagine if Clark [sic] Gayford published anything remotely this toxic and personal about Judith Collins."
Gayford is Ardern's fiancé.
Earlier on Monday, Collins said she isn't responsible for her husband's actions and what he shares on social media.
"We've been together for 41 years. I've never been able to get him to do anything I tell him to do so," Collins said. "I've just said to him, well it's not something I would do, but he's an adult and he makes his own decisions."
She added he "gets sick of people having a go at him and me", but it is his decision as to what he shares online.
"He's one of the least sexist people I know. He's married to me - how could he be sexist?
"He's an adult, he'll make his own decisions and you know, let's put it this way: I don't have to answer for him because I haven't been able to control him for 41 years.
"If you've got the secret to how you can control a man who's 64 years old, used to play a lot of rugby and was a policeman, good luck, let me know."
It's not the first time Collins' husband has been involved in controversy.
Collins was accused of a conflict of interest in 2014 after she attended a private dinner with senior executives of Oravida and a Chinese border official. Her husband was a director of the dairy exporting company.
The Opposition at the time argued the meeting was a conflict of interest because she was on an official ministerial visit to Shanghai.
Prime Minister John Key criticised the visit, causing Collins to apologise. However, she said the Chinese official - who she refused to name - was a "very close personal friend".
