He was suspended from caucus on 22 July 2003, after refusing to curtail his criticism of the National Party leader, Bill English, who he blamed for poor performance in the polls.

The Prime Minister was referring to a phone call Mr Williamson had made to the police enquiring about a charge they were laying against businessman and National Party donor Donghua Liu over domestic violence allegations.

[5] In 2015, Prime Minister John Key defended him as a "flamboyant" person with a "strong sense of humour" after Williamson was accused of making "sexist" remarks during another speech.

Despite his high list placing, Williamson was not selected for cabinet due in part to a series of gaffes during the election campaign relating to the party's policy on road tolls.

[11][12] Williamson was made the acting minister of Worth's portfolios of Internal Affairs, National Library and Archives New Zealand which were subsequently passed on to Nathan Guy.

Williamson retained his 2008 portfolios of Customs, Land Information and Building and Construction but lost the role of Minister for Small Business to John Banks as part of the new National-ACT Confidence and Supply deal.

[16] As the National Party's transport spokesperson in the 2008 general election, he prompted controversy for supporting significant road tolls to enable new motorway construction projects.

We had the most enormous big gay rainbow across my electorate.The speech was soon being referenced worldwide by news outlets and was chosen as 2013's quote of the year by Massey University.

[19][20] With Williamson's sarcastic and honest approach, the speech was viewed hundreds of thousands of times over the next few days, and featured on high-profile news sites like The Huffington Post and Gawker.

[28] Auckland mayor Wayne Brown appointed Williamson to the chair of the expenditure control and procurement committee, charged with identifying cost savings.