Act like a winner is Juanita's motto

By DITA DE BONI

Mangere Act candidate Juanita Angell is so convinced she is on a winning ticket that she asked a woman to pass a swag of party newsletters to her husband, who happened, at the time, to be detained at Her Majesty's pleasure.

It is not clear exactly what reception a newsletter proclaiming "zero tolerance for crime" might have had in the grim halls of Mt Eden Prison, but 60-year-old Mrs Angell reckons inmates would be more than happy to hear the Act message.

Although in 1999 the Mangere Act candidate received a mere 458 votes out of a possible 23,590, and Labour's Taito Phillip Field has had an iron grip on the seat for six years, she thinks it is, if not winnable, at least penetrable.

Besides, she is not so interested in the candidate vote, but is determined to double the 520 party votes Act received last time.

"I say straight out to them: give your party vote to Act. That'll get them sitting in Parliament, keeping the others honest and getting things done."

Mrs Angell's lemon-coloured house in the heart of Papatoetoe is the nerve centre of her campaign.

She is a first-time candidate who has minimal political experience but plenty of local knowledge, having lived in Mangere for 22 years.

She pounds the pavements around the township on a regular basis - when the winter flu subsides - and says that in anelectorate where crime is a big issue she gets a healthy amount of interest.

"Mangere people are like any other people. They are very concerned about crime.

"They do not want to have crime done to them, they do not want their children to be criminals. They want tougher sentencing and deterrents," the mother of three and Mangere Pony Club life member insists.

Tax seems to be another popular point, she says.

"This is a working area, where some people are holding two and three jobs to give their children a better life than they had.

"They don't want lots of money going into bureaucracies that don't deliver to them."

Tax is something Mrs Angell has first-hand experience of. She was a debt collector for the Inland Revenue Department for 12 years, describing her old method of extracting payment as "fair".

But a dispute with her employer more recently brought her into contact with notorious IRD-baiter and Act party deputy leader Rodney Hide, and what she saw and heard impressed her. He got things done.

And Mrs Angell, a lifelong National voter, was converted.

Full news coverage:
nzherald.co.nz/election

Election links:
The parties, policies, voting information, and more

Ask a politician:
Send us a question, on any topic, addressed to any party leader. We'll choose the best questions to put to the leaders, and publish the answers in our election coverage.