Damien O'Connor - a Coaster through and through

By VERNON SMALL

Ask him about the West Coast and MP Damien O'Connor sells you the tourist vision: rugged coasts, rugged Coasters, clear water, lush bush and a unique history.

Talk to him about himself and he still tries to sell you the Coast.

He is like a one-man promotional video for the huge West Coast-Tasman electorate, which sprawls from the northern edge of Fiordland to the outskirts of Nelson and on to Farewell Spit.

But his pitch is not foot-in-the-door retail-babble. Instead, it has a laconic enthusiasm punctuated with some restrained hand-waving.

Never once during our 40-minute interview does he move in his chair or change posture. Stable. Predictable. Solid. An air of self-reliance mixed with sadness. Or is it shyness? A nice bloke, his colleagues around Parliament say.

For all his love of the Coast, he acknowledges that it has a "branding" problem.

"There are a lot of misconceptions about what goes on down there. Whether it be the rain, or the lack of opportunity," he says, sitting in his parliamentary office surrounded by mementoes of eight years battling for the region's struggling economy.

Now things are on the up, with the province recording top-flight growth rates in recent surveys. A low dollar and good export markets are lifting tourism and dairying, two of the biggest earners.

Yet only a PR man for the Coast could describe its furious downpours and persistent drizzle as "a regular, reliable supply of rainfall" which Mr O'Connor says dairy farmers elsewhere would kill for.

His view of the City of Sails is less flattering: "Look, it's a nice place to visit - God knows why anyone would want to live there."

He says his strongest impression of the Coast is the smell - that unique combination of the honey and lemon-scented bush, mixed with the background smell of vegetation and water - the water he ran his own tourism venture on before he paddled into politics.

The man who downed his pint of public attention this week, thanks to his stand against the closure of the Monteith's Brewery in Greymouth, is an economic dry sitting in the right-hand pews of Labour's "broad church" - his phrase.

As chairman of the primary production select committee, he aspires to a cabinet seat, perhaps in trade, agriculture or tourism.

At the moment, he is just behind the front-runners for promotion and is aligned with the "right blokes" who once backed Mike Moore and now cluster around Foreign Minister Phil Goff - Police Minister George Hawkins, Dover Samuels and Agriculture Minister Jim Sutton among them.

It is, he agrees, a matter of timing before he can hope for higher office. In the meantime he judges the Clark-Anderton regime "a great Government."

It was Mr Sutton who gave him the strongest backing during his unsuccessful war against Labour's plan to end logging in Timberlands' native West Coast forests.

Last week's fight against DB's plans to close Monteith's Greymouth brewery was signally more successful.

Mr O'Connor - not known for his flights of rhetoric around the House - contributed the most memorable line, pondering if DB stood for "dumb bastards."

When DB took a strategic step backwards,he was quick to change the joke. Now they were "decent blokes."

Did he cry "cheers" too soon? His critics say DB still plans to move most of its production to Auckland, leaving merely a token tourist trap-cum-museum ... underlining the Coast's slide into theme-park status.

But Mr O'Connor disagrees with those who call DB's retreat a cynical PR ploy. He sees real opportunities to expand the brewery and build on its tourist potential, and that means jobs. But he concedes that he has had his critics in the past when hehas made similar compromises.

A case in point is the $120 million package handed to the Coast last year to help boost development and ease the pain of an end to logging.

He still has the bumper sticker on his office wall: "Stick your package - our jobs are not for sale."

But now he is an enthusiastic advocate of the opportunities the cash injection offers. He says the trust money has huge potential to help the region, but Coasters must not bicker over where new ventures should go. Rivalries going back 150 years between Westport, Hokitika and Greymouth must be set aside.

He estimates he drives up to 60,000 km a year covering the bases in his electorate, and his colleagues describe him as a superb local MP.

But the sheer size of the electorate, stretching the equivalent of Whangarei to Wellington, and what one colleague described as his"mad driving" can bring problems.

Last year he lost his licence for three months after clocking three speeding fines. He took his punishment without excuse: "It's just a fair cop and we [MPs] live by the law the same as everyone else."

As a youngster he went to St Bede's Catholic boys' school in Christchurch, and then Lincoln University. He is back in Christchurch now to be near his 2-year-old daughter, the youngest of four, who is being treated for cancer there.

But his home town is Westport, where he was born.

In his 43 years he has been a farmer, machinery operator, salesman and owner-operator of Buller Adventure Tours, which he sold three years ago.

He represented Buller at athletics, still takes keen pleasure in whitewater rafting and jetboating, and is a regular in Parliament's rugby team.

Stints working in Australia, the United States and Europe gave him an international perspective, but he has always come back to the Coast, where he has dug deep into the local business scene as past president of the Buller Promotion Association and his work on a raft of promotion and business development organisations.

His stint as an MP began in 1993 when he won the traditional Labour seat back after it dallied with National in the wake of the disappointments of the 1984-1990 Labour Government.

His selection was not harmed by his father's reputation as a staunch Labourite, but his fight over Timberlands' logging has cemented his hold on the seat.

Despite some calls for him to abandon Labour at the time of the logging row, he says his own political principles - based around social equity and equality of opportunity - are Labour's.

Besides, he notes, independents are usually ineffectual.

That does not stop him advancing an independent voice for the Coast, adding to its long tradition of battlers.

"They haven't always won, but they have fought. I hope I have been able to show I am passionate and staunch."

He says constituents in the main streets will front up to him and speak their minds about things - including politicians' perks and behaviour which are so much in the news now.

That's just the way he likes it.

"In some other areas of New Zealand they may be more polite," he concedes ... with just a hint of scorn.