Editorial: Well done, now let's get down to work

Hone Harawira on election night. Photo / Peter Jackson

If Hone Harawira wants to know what happened, a Te Tai Tokerau voter who switched from voting Hone to ticking Kelvin Davis' Labour box probably summed it up pretty succinctly.

"Credibility".

The proud Maori activist tucking up in bed with the giant German Kim Dotcom was just too much to take for this voter.

Which is a shame because Hone provided a unique dynamic in Parliament that is now missing.

I reckon Hone knows what happened though - Dotcom was a gamble he had to take because he could see the writing on the wall for Mana.

It didn't pay off and he'll move on to the next thing.

Speaking of which, social issues are on the radar for Whangarei's new MP, which makes a change.

MPs don't like social issues - too bloody hard. Employment helps gloss over them, but it doesn't stop youth suicide - any suicide for that matter, Third-World child disease, and street violence and bullying that we seem to be growing increasingly tolerant of.

This paper asked some questions recently about what has become endemic graffiti, and instead of cleaning it up, what could we do to address the root cause?

Local government doesn't consider it a core performance KPI that its ratepayers or voters measure.

I wonder then whether our central government MPs do?

Certainly, Dr Reti has burst out of the starter's box with bold predictions around jobs - 1000 a year for the next three years.

That's a mighty rabbit to pull out of the hat - let's hope he knows a good milliner.

Because Northland does need jobs, and it needs individuals and a cross-party caucus that will stand up and fight for their electorates, for their region, and take on the hard stuff too.

In the short term, congratulations to the MPs that have been elected - we're looking forward to writing positive stories about those jobs, and the chipping away at those social issues that can be hard to address, but also, have become hard to ignore.