By-election promises just normal part of business

 

I was right about the sit-com I referred to in the last issue.

While there is the seriousness of compe-tition brought about by the NZ First repre-sentative going head-to-head in a hitherto safe National seat, there is certainly an un-usual degree of levity attached to the cam-paign. Despite there being 11 candidates, this by-election has from the outset been little more than a two-horse race between Winston and National. And though I have heard a number of people impressed by the Labour candidate, similarly several have pledged allegiance to ‘Winston’ but when questioned some could not recall the name of his party.

Signs of serious opposition have in-duced National to dig a bit deeper in their efforts to retain the Northland seat so we now get promises of faster broadband in the north – an encouraging response on that, especially from business people who are generally National supporters. Then also the commitment to remedy the dan-gerous and outdated one-way bridges that pervade the area. No problem with that ei-ther, only with the timing which makes it appear as a bribe, but does that really mat-ter? The public has been campaigning for years to sort the bridges. The government has now committed to doing so.

This has, of course, induced cries of ‘pork-barrel’ politics, a term that refers to spending which is intended to benefit con-stituents of a politician in return for their support, and though it’s considered ‘dirty pool’ they all do it. Nothing new about that from every party pre any election. The ends generally justify the means.

But do we really care which government gets the job done? Bribes, inducements, discounts, ‘two for the price of one’, these carrots are all part of everyday life from ‘specials’ at your local grocery store to the top of big business. As I have said before, all of life involves compromise and nego-tiation.

Candidates meetings confirm Winston is slick and, as the master of one-liners he draws more laughs than anyone else but he also draws more hecklers. New boy, Na-tional’s Mark Osbourne, has firstly to intro-duce himself to the public then proceed to win them over so has a big task. Labour’s Willow-Jean Prime, the only other candi-date with much of a profile is well-versed in party policy which she delivers confidently and eloquently. While the PM has come in for some criticism for ‘babysitting’ his can-didate, the media still refers to him gener-ally as ‘Honest John’. I notice no such tag has ever been attached to Winston.

NZ First has over ten years of not caring about Northland yet all of a sudden Win-ston has developed an affinity for the place. Sure, he may own property in Dargaville, but I doubt he would ever be prepared to move from plush St Mary’s Bay in Auck-land to live there. I believe his competitive streak says he would like to win Northland but I question whether he would really commit to Northland – there’s is a differ-ence. The prospect of the standard issue BMW is probably an inducement.

Northland is long, wide and geographi-cally disjointed and is much greater than just Kaipara, so it is difficult for any repre-sentative to cover the area sufficiently well to be all things to all parts. None of the can-didates are particularly well-known locally so regardless of who represents us, ‘we’ in Mangawhai are unlikely to receive the at-tention we have had in the past.

The message, though, is loud and clear that this safe seat may not always be so. One could quote a number of adages regarding pride and complacency but ringing alarm bells of dissatisfaction from time to time and showing a little public muscle cannot be a bad thing whatever the outcome.

- Rob