Labour faces tough fight in Te Tai Hauauru

An old hand, a central government newbie and a young gun are lining up to contest one of the seven Maori electorate seats at this year’s general election.

Jack Mcdonald, of the Green Party and the Maori Party’s Howie Tamati are running against the incumbent Adrian Rurawhe, of Labour, in the race to win the Te Tai Hauauru seat on September 23.

Rurawhe won the seat in 2014, replacing Maori Party co-leader Dame Tariana Turia, who retired from politics.

It’s a seat he is now focused on retaining, he said.

After his 2014 win, he went about setting up electorate offices across the vast geographic area Te Tai Hauauru covered.

The Te Tai Hauauru electorate extends from Putaruru and Tokoroa in the north, to Porirua in the south, with a coastal boundary from just south of Mokau to the Porirua inlet.

Rurawhe said he now had offices in Porirua, Palmerston North, Tokoroa and New Plymouth which offered a place for people living in the electorate to go to if they had problems or needed help.

Trying to get to as many functions across the electorate had also been a priority for Rurawhe in the last 21⁄2 years.

‘‘That’s really about being available to the people,’’ he said.

As he prepared for his reelection campaign, Rurawhe said the two key issues he would be focusing on was housing and youth unemployment.

He said they were issues many people living across the electorate spoke to him about on a regular basis.

‘‘Education and health are always issues as well,’’ he said.

For Mcdonald, issues for young people or rangatahi was at the forefront of his campaign.

As the youngest candidate in the Te Tai Hauauru race, at 23, Mcdonald said he was ‘‘proud to be considered a role model for rangatahi Maori’’ in the political sphere.

‘‘When 70,000 young people aren’t in work or training, when homelessness is rampant in our communities, and when we are already facing the impacts of climate change, we need rangatahi Maori voices in politics more than ever,’’ he said.

Mcdonald said if he was elected, he would prioritise youth issues and try to encourage younger people to become more involved in the political process.

Getting people in the electorate out to vote is also a priority for Maori Party candidate Howie Tamati.

He said Maori were a ‘‘politically savvy’’ group but their participation in the political process didn’t always translate at the polls.

This was something Tamati wanted to see change.

‘‘The key thing is to try and get them to vote,’’ he said.

The Electoral Commission’s website states Te Tai Hauauru has 32,557 enrolled voters.

Tamati said in an effort to build his profile and connections with the Maori Party membership, he had spent four out of the past five weekends on the road, travelling across the electorate he described as ‘‘huge’’.

This is Tamati’s first foray into central government politics, after spending 15 years as a New Plymouth district councillor.

To date, Tamati said he had a ‘‘really positive’’ response.

While there were a range of needs and issues experienced across the electorate, environmental issues related to sea bed mining and water use were common, he said.