Who will be the saviour of Mana?

Matt McCarten. Photo / Martin Sykes

In the battleground of the Sandbar pub last night on Back Benches, TVNZ 7's live pub-political show, the Mana by-election debate revealed two stark choices to solve all the ills of Mana: some forceful words, or the status quo.

Neither seems a very practical solution.

As talk ranged from transport to the economy to employment, everyone agreed that much needed to be done, but nobody was particularly convincing in their sales-pitches of how they would do it.

Labour's Kris Faafoi, perhaps in a bid to show that he wants to be as useful as the United Nations, said he would solve Mana's problems by giving a very strongly-worded speech in Parliament. The people were struggling, he said. He must tell their stories to make everything good again.

"My maiden speech will be about the cost of living. I'll stick up for them."

National's Hekia Parata crowed about John Key and what a wonderful job he was doing, and what a wonderful job she had been doing for the electorate in the past three years. How wonderful they were both doing. The implication, unfortunately, was that if she won the by-election, she would go on being wonderful, as would John Key, and Mana would be in exactly the same position as it is now.

When asked what her weakness was, she looked skywards for an answer, but the roof told her she was flawless.

Aside from some words and more of the same, then, what else was on offer?

Act candidate Colin du Plessis brandished a three-pronged yellow fork in his introductory comments, which he likened to Act's three strikes legislation that will save the planet and bring goodwill toward men. He later made a good point: he lived in the electorate, and he invited the other candidates to do the same.

The Green Party's Jan Logie already lives in the electorate, however. She may have won some smiles by saying she was from "a party that runs on love, not money", but love only gets you so far, and money is much better at putting food on the table.

Independent Matt McCarten didn't pretend he had local credentials. It didn't matter, he said, because he would move to Mana if he won. What he wanted to talk about - surprisingly - was policy. Nobody else did, he said. Faafoi and Parata were strait-jacketed by their parties' policies and could only regurgitate.

McCarten wants to abolish GST and replace it with a 1 per cent financial transaction tax. It would mean the Government would clip $1 from a $100 grocery bill, and a more sizable chunk out of someone shifting large sums of money around. Another policy - a $15 minimum wage - would cost about $90m to implement, roughly what the Government gifted Warner Bros, though it would have less of a chance of bringing in $500m of overseas money.

"This country is in the shite," McCarten said, to simplify the economic outlook.

Julian Crawford, from the Legalise Cannabis Party, had a better and totally unpredictable idea to stimulate the economy: legalise cannabis. There would even be a GST revenue stream coming off legal cannabis sales. The economy would grow exponentially. It was a simple view, and one that drew uproarious laughter from the masses that packed the pub, which he may have taken as a stamp of approval.

Just in case his message might be misconstrued, he added: "We're out to legalise cannabis."

It's an ambitious plan for an electorate where unemployment is 50 per cent higher than the national average. At least as ambitious as a strong speech or the status quo.