The candidates:
One thing can be predicted with certainty about Whanganui’s next MP. She will be a woman. With four-term National Party MP Chester Borrows retiring from politics, the electorate that encompasses the southern section of Taranaki, from the outskirts of Opunake, including Hawera and Stratford and Whanganui, will have a new representative.
It will either be National’s Harete Hipango, or Labour’s Steph Lewis.
Horizons regional councillor Nicola Patrick is also in the mix, waving the flag for party votes for the Greens, but not campaigning for the electorate vote.
ACT has Alan Davidson and NZ First has Reginald Skipworth, likely to finish well behind the women.
While Borrows passed on a comfortable 4500-vote majority from 2014, Hipango can in no way assume his popularity will switch automatically to her.
While National was more than 7000 votes ahead in the party vote, even that cannot be taken for granted, as National holding the electorate for 12 years is in itself something of a historical anomaly.
Never before has a National candidate held the seat for more than just one term.
Messages asking for an interview with Hipango have so far drawn no response, an indication, perhaps, that she is campaigning so hard that there has been no time for those who will not be voting in Whanganui.
National leader Bill English raced through the electorate on September 9, encouraging supporters to reel in undecided voters, and sweetening the plea with a $6 million promise to pay for half of the roof over the velodrome.
Hipango was raised and lives in Whanganui, and has affiliations to Te Atihaunui a Pa¯ pa¯ rangi, Nga¯ ti Apa and Nga¯ Rauru.
A lawyer, she has worked for more than 25 years in both public and private practice in areas including family, ❚ National – Harete Hipango ❚ Labour – Steph Lewis ❚ Green – Nicola Patrick ❚ ACT – Alan Davidson ❚ NZ First – Reginald Skipworth
mental health, youth justice, child welfare, criminal, Ma¯ ori land and mediation, and has served on the Whanganui District Health Board. Labour’s candidate, aged 29 years and clearly buoyed by new Labour leader Jacinda Adern’s impact on the party’s polling, sees Whanganui as winnable.
The party’s own polling shows Lewis less than a couple of percentage points behind Hipango, while an earlier, lessscientific media poll had her ahead.
Lewis is clearly engaging with youth, and is determined that young voices should be heard in Parliament, playing a part in the decisions that affect their future.
Whanganui’s demographics, however, are weighted more toward the elderly end of the scale.
Lewis said many superannuitants were struggling, with a waiting list for social housing driven by those who could no longer afford to pay market rentals.
Access to health services, she said, was the big issue coming through from more than 6000 contacts with voters throughout the campaign.
There was no GP to be found between Whanganui and Hawera, an area home to some 2500 people, and the need to travel for health services was adding to patients’ stress and anxiety.
Patrick has been in the thick of the campaign action.
Her prediction is that it is going to be a close finish between Labour and National.
‘‘It is absolutely not a done deal for National to retain it,’’ she said.
Borrows standing down and a mood for change had drawn strong attendances at election meetings, and she believed the three female candidates had performed with a sense of mutual respect that provided space to put policies first.
She saw her own future as representing the environment at the Horizons council table, but her campaign message was for those who wanted to change the Government to give their party vote to the Greens.
‘‘Labour cannot do it alone.’’