Campaign trail gets bloody for Turia

Tariana Turia has had plenty of experience with home-kill of farm animals. Picture / Mark Mitchell

This is the bloody side of an election campaign, a tour of a slaughterhouse.

For Tariana Turia there was none of the usual visits to shopping malls and schools yesterday, instead she ventured into a meatworks - a place few other politicians' campaigns will take them.

Helen Clark may have visited a chicken factory in New Plymouth but that was a sanitised view of the meat industry - the Prime Ministerial eyes were protected from witnessing any killing and blood and guts was at a minimum.

In comparison Mrs Turia's visit to Levin Meats was a no-holds barred tour of a slaughterhouse in full action.

And the Maori Party co-leader seemed completely unperturbed by the blood gushing from freshly slit sheep throats; the stench of intestines being slashed out of carcasses and sight of cows being skinned.

Mrs Turia dodged swinging carcasses and offal holes, at times delicately holding up the frill of her skirt, and followed Maori Party Otaki candidate Richard Orzecki, a director at Levin Meats, around the plant. She even happily posed for photographs in a freezer between rows of sheep carcasses.

Mrs Turia later confessed that while it had been her first time in a meat works, she had plenty of experience with home-kill of farm animals over the years.

The Te Tai Hauauru MP said she had been keen to tour Levin Meats, in which Ngati Raukawa has a stake, because it gave her a better understanding of the industry which employed many of her constituents.

Operations manager Carey Lye said of the 170 people working at the plant around 60 per cent were Maori.

Many are part of the 204,000 people on the Maori roll and the 165,000 people on the general roll who identify as being of Maori descent.

These are the people Mrs Turia and her party are making a last-ditch effort to convince to vote for them. Over the next eight days the party is sending letters to its 21,000 members encouraging them to each convince 30 people to vote for the Maori Party.

Mrs Turia said that if the campaign worked the party would have a voting poll of 600,000 and would secure 26 seats.

"What it means is that the Maori Party will have a much more powerful voice at the table of power. If we don't trust ourselves, I'm telling you this is the last opportunity we are going to have, to have that powerful, independent voice in the halls of power."