Willis In West Auckland.

The Tangerine tour comes to Te Atatū.

“What’s your name?”, she said to me. In the sort of voice people who are not that used to children use when meeting them. Or perhaps if they think someone might not be quite right in the head.

It took me a moment to realise she meant me. “Nick”, I said, she replied with a large grin “our parents had good taste in names.”

I was really tempted to say “what you talkin bout Willis?”, but I didn’t. I just mumbled “indeed” and the man who had taken my phone took the photo.

There had been adverts for a meeting with local National candidate, Angee Nicholas, on our community Facebook page. Nicola Willis would be attending to hear the concerns of the community over the cost of living.

Te Atatū is a Labour seat, having only gone with a National candidate once (1990) since the seat was created in 1978 from the old Waitemata electorate. So many of the comments Angee received were somewhat skeptical of National making things better.

Which is a polite way of saying - they weren’t very polite. What struck me though was Angee’s politeness in response. It’s not easy, or pleasant, responding to negative comments. Or, I imagine, to put yourself forward as a candidate in an electorate you’re not likely to win. I figured maybe I’d go along and have a listen. See what they had to say, what they were like in person and not through the lens of the media.

I arrived early, walking past Nicola who was just standing in the entry way chatting. While most of us were dressed to survive the freezing evening Nicola was resplendent in the sort of brightly coloured pants suit you might expect at a high end consultancy, not a West Auckland school hall. One of the crowd asked later why she was dressed in red, but she declared it was in fact Tangerine, providing her own canned laughter.

Te Atatu is a pretty mixed community. But this was a very white crowd and I reckon I would’ve been one of the youngest people in the audience, possibly by a decade, which is not something I say too often these days. I took a seat in the second row.

People around me, who I assume were local party members, were complaining about being told to take their billboards down, “the whisper is that ACT are keeping theirs”, they were very weary of ACT moving in on their territory. “Watch them they’ll take your place if you take it down, apparently it’s the council”. They moved on to door knocking. One woman said she’d tried a bloke but he said he was on the Maori roll, she’d told him he was no bloody use to them. People laughed.

Proceedings started with local candidate Angee who told us she’d been born in the Cook Islands and moved to New Zealand 20 years ago. The problem with sitting up front was that Nicola Willis grabbed the seat after next, and we were the only people in the row. I have to confess that felt a little weird.

Angee Nicholas speaking at Rutherford College.

Angee had been a staffer for Nikki Kaye. Of all the people in the National Party she might have worked for Nikki wasn’t such a bad one. I felt sorry for Kaye, the way the whole Todd Muller debacle ended up in her lap, and how useless the party had been at supporting her. The irony was not lost on me that Nicola Willis is believed to have been one of the MPs responsible for rolling Bridges and replacing him with Muller.

Plus here I was sitting in the school hall where Simon Bridges had been head boy. The school of Oscar Kightley, Rawiri Waititi, and of three of my kids. One of whom still attends, when he’s not hip hopping in Arizona. As an aside they got back late last night :) And are all soundly sleeping as I write this, which makes me very happy.

Next up was Nicola, I have to say she pronounced Te Atatū perfectly. I’ll give her full marks for that, it’s more than some of the locals can manage. Actually I was impressed that every time she used a Māori word it was pronounced really well and it didn’t sound contrived. It might seem like a small thing, but I can’t imagine people like Christopher Luxon or David Seymour doing so.

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