Feature
Street party central
by Jane Clifton
With 14 enthusiastic candidates, the campaign for Wellington Central is providing plenty of entertainment.
It’s what they call a trap for new players. National’s Wellington Central candidate Stephen Franks (who’s not a beginner) was door-knocking in leafy Wadestown, but had mislaid his data sheets, which tell campaigners who lives in which house, and whether they are friendly.
He’d been winging it successfully, till he knocked on a door, only to see it opened by Heather Simpson, the legendarily powerful aide to Prime Minister Helen Clark.
She wasn’t particularly impressed. “I apologised and explained I didn’t have my call sheets, and she said something like, ‘Well, you won’t get far like that, will you?’” Franks recalls.
Which may well be true. Although
Wellington Central’s contest is perennially hard to pick, Labour’s Grant Robertson is the favourite to win the seat, despite exhaustive campaigning by Franks – and the rival pitches from 12 other candidates, which make this the country’s most-contested seat.
That Wellington Central is a prized seat, always attracting high-profile candidates, is not just down to the fact that winning it allows the local member to walk to work.
Being “inside the beltway”, it is a politically sophisticated seat, pervaded by people who make their living from politics and government. Even the uninterested have politics thrust at them. You’re apt to spot a minister in the supermarket, or Winston in your nightclub. Unsurprisingly, Wellington Central has the highest voter turnout – 86.58% last election.
It’s also a seat of bewildering contradictions. Non-Wellingtonians might think of it simply as the seat containing the most bureaucrats. But it’s also a big student hangout. It has the highest number of childless voters in the country, and the highest number of voters in rental accommodation. It’s also a surprisingly young electorate, with one of the highest counts of 18 to 29-year-olds.
And although it has some of the wealthiest citizens and highest-priced houses – it’s the country’s second-wealthiest seat, behind Epsom – the more affluent areas are where you’re likely to find the most avidly left- or green-leaning voters. This is partly because, if you’re as wealthy as this, hip-pocket issues don’t concern you so much. Matters like foreign policy and the environment – which cash-strapped battlers in Wilton or Karori don’t have the luxury to worry about – are more likely to move you in Khandallah and Oriental Bay.
This is, for instance, the Green’s strongest electorate, in terms of party vote. Last election it got nearly 17% of the vote, and won some booths. This election it can confidently expect its vote share to increase.
A peculiarity is the lingering impact of the Robert Muldoon era on voting among public service and professional groups. He coined the phrase “Wadestown liberals”, after his autocratic ways prompted a surge of the well-paid, including the traditionally neutral public servants, openly to join Labour’s local organisations. Labour’s election-night supporters’ party in Wadestown even became a stop on TV’s live election-coverage schedule. These long-intermingling social circles seem to have passed down a strong liberal voting tradition in the electorate. Last election, Labour (46%) and the Greens combined took 60% of the party vote, and Marian Hobbs scored nearly 50% of the candidate vote.
Former diplomat Grant Robertson, although a new face, could hardly be more steeped in Labour policy, since he helped write much of it. As a Clark policy aide, sometimes called H3 – Helen is H1 and Heather H2 – he is fluent in the Labour message, and he is well-appernticed locally under long tutelage from Hobbs, for whom he also worked in the Beehive. He has a warm, confident manner – and, it is understood, a secret weapon in the marshalling of votes from New Zealanders living overseas.
Franks, a prominent corporate lawyer and already an effective and respected politician, lacks quite such a comfy party springboard. As a former Act MP (1999-2005), he was always going to struggle for a strong National Party list placement, but there was general shock when he was ranked 60th. Franks says he wasn’t particularly surprised, as he expected resistance to a ship-jumper from a rival party. He professes ignorance of any other possible reason, but it’s an open secret his determinedly independent campaigning style has offended the party.
Franks is in the counter-intuitive position – for a former Act scion – of arguing for a strong public service. Although National is vowing to put the body of state on a diet, Franks says it’s vital to have the most able and talented bureaucratic force we can marshal. He is also a well-practised advocate of tougher law and order measures.
Franks and Robertson have a simmering dispute over whether Franks, who professes himself a liberal, really is, as he voted against the civil unions and prostitution decriminalisation legislation when he was in Parliament. Franks also discomposed some in his party by speaking in favour of building a nuclear power plant.
The Greens are again fielding Sue Kedgley, but say they are really only concentrating on the party vote, and Act has put up its sitting MP Heather Roy. These are two high-profile women, and again reinforce what a prized showcase seat this is.
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