At the races, National Party leader Judith Colls. Photo / Ian Cooper
At the races, National Party leader Judith Colls. Photo / Ian Cooper
The two party leaders hoping to shift New Zealand's coalition Government to the right in the General Election each managed a bit of Saturday time on the hustings in Hawke's Bay at the weekend.
One went to the races. The other went to the pub.
It was a contrasting day,with National Party leader Collins killing time with a "walkabout" for an hour in Napier before the main point of the exercise - kicking-off the second day of Hawke's Bay's Spring Racing Carnival's second day in Hastings with a racing industry policy announcement, and her only actual investment, a $5 wager on a horse in the first.
At her side were home-town MP Lawrence Yule, party racing spokesman Ian McKelvie MP, agriculture spokesman David Bennett MP, and new Napier candidate Katie Nimon.
Taking the more traditional approach, Seymour's "Change Your Future" bus tour had him hitting the road – Eftpos-equipped with Paywave he would later tell his punters – for a town hall meeting in Takapau, his pub stint at the Thirsty Whale on Napier's West Quay, and a twilight meeting at the Havelock North Club.
Seymour was also part of a team of five, otherwise headed by party deputy leader Brooke van Velden, another of those candidate's Wikipedia tells us erroneously was elected at the (yet-to-be-held) General Election – and just as erroneously, but more likely, beaten in Wellington Central and getting into the Beehive as No 2 on the party list.
Others with them were Nicole McKee (defeated in Rongotai but also elected on the List, or so Wikipediants have been told, again erroneously), and Hawke's Bay candidates Jan Daffern (Tukituki) and Judy Kendall (Napier).
Act Party leader David Seymour speaks at West Quay, Napier, hostelry the Thirsty Whale. Photo / Ian Cooper
The differences otherwise were palpable, Collins being followed by an entourage of campaign trail media as she tells the committee bar room that racing, with its employment of more than 15,000 people and $1.6 billion-a-year contribution to the economy "will be an important part of rebuilding our economy".
There was no such focus for Seymour, who had almost no media, other than the representative from Hawke's Bay Today, and spoke to about 30 mainly-seated people in a back room of the establishment, the usual campaign meeting types, with a couple of Thirsty Whalers dropping-in for a listen.
A winner for Collins in the committee bar at the races was a commitment to conduct a review of the tax and depreciation rules for bloodstock and "make adjustments where we find they are acting as a barrier to investment", taken by one racegoer as support for bringing-in some world-quality breeding talent to get the game back up to its real level of international ranking.
There was also the commitment to "encourage" development of modern, fit-for-purpose facilities that provide scale and services to support a profitable industry with improved stakes.
Collins was there to talk racing, but at a media stand-up against the rail downstairs at the birdcage she's asked to chirp-on mainly about the regular matters on the trail, and the late-mail of the health of the President of the United States.
She does, however, get to the elephant in the bar a few moments earlier, and what to do about the impact on smaller areas which lost their big-day-out race meetings in an industry shake-up this year.
Asked what's the future of racing in such areas as Waipukurau, Wairoa and Gisborne, which have each lost their race days, she decided, with quick reference to the racing man McKelvie, to talk about "the hubs".
"It's pretty obvious that you're going to have some concentration into hubs, so that people can actually put better facilities on because, you know, most of our racecourses the facilities are pretty old, some of them have earthquake issues, and they need to be able to be real entertainment centres."
McKelvie said that with better utilisation of resources across the industry, to create racing and training centres, people would still want "a level of racing that is community orientated and very much in the towns you're talking about."
"There are options within that policy for a number of different levels of racing keeping in tune with different communities and what they decide to go forward with."
In Napier, Seymour stuck to the "party-vote Act" act, the flat tax rates, the five-point recovery plan etc, with questions on law and order, right-to–life, of course, and, with a direct response right-to-silence in criminal investigations and courts.
"If you want a party to give away 800 years of legal right, well we're not that party," he said.
