Nickie Muir: Hard to choose when candidate in absentia

Northern Advocate columnist Nicky Muir.

Call search and rescue.

He really should have left a note. He's a doctor; he can look after himself lost and alone in the hostile wilds of Whangarei, but still.

National Party local office offered up Phil Heatley as a substitute but no one really knew what he did when he held the seat let alone why he should speak as a regional leader now he's not. It's all very worrying.

Where are the National Party holding Shane Reti?

I'm scared there will be internet footage of him in an orange suit somewhere out on Desert Rd - with Judith Collins standing behind him saying, "Give me my portfolios back or I'll send Shane to some vile swamp to dig in Gulag Oravida."

At the economic development forum his absence was noisily noted. He was under National Party instructions to not attend, apparently.

Assessing the line up of MP pageant hopefuls brought the realisation I'm a hopeless vote-swinging hussy and the depressing conclusion that the opposition vote's so split as to make it unnecessary for the National Party candidate to bother showing up.

For those of us who are concerned 90 per cent of the professionals we entrust our kids to every day have voted no confidence in this government's direction, who think toxic mining won't work for this region and, who worry when John Key says average salaries are 48K, when in Northland 43.6 per cent of those aged 15 and over have an income of 20K or less and who wonder why our imprisonment rates are so high; our options are anything minus the status quo.

Yet we could end up with the status quo by default.

The Green Party candidate Paul Doherty helped by asking the audience NOT to give him the local vote. Refreshingly apolitical of him but perhaps not a strength in a politician. Russel Norman and Julie Anne Genter convinced me our roading situation is a direct result of the trucking lobby's influence on roads of significance to the National Party. Those highways account for 2 per cent of Northlanders' road use whereas 98 per cent of the time we're driving on our local broken ones. And I like Julie Anne - sometimes I think she backhands supplementary questions to Gerry Brownlee just to give him some exercise. Everyone was railing for rail. Except Act. And National, presumably.

David Currin made sense; although he's the equivalent of a railway engineer in about 1830. No one really gets it yet.

Kelly Ellis was feisty.

It feels like when a friend was surfing the net in search of eternal love. Coming out of a routinely appalling marriage she decided to shop around online.

"Are you nuts?" I asked. "They could all be smiling psycho-killers, keep poodles and secretly think women are hussies." "They can't all be Colin Craig," she said. "Anyway, look what I've had! How bad can these guys be?"

I know how she feels. Nearly 40 years of National in this town and I'm just not convinced it's a relationship that's working.

I just wish Mr Reti was there to tell me I've got it all wrong.