Photo by Mark Mitchell: Wellington City and Harbour, viewed from Northland. #wellypix 31 August, 2022. New Zealand Herald photograph by Mark Mitchell
Wellington is a sea of red seats, but there are several battles brewing that could see electorates flip come October 14. Georgina Campbell looks at who’s who.
The glamour seat that is Wellington Central is wide open after Finance Minister Grant Robertson made the call to go list-only.
Inspired by Chlöe Swarbrick’s Auckland Central win in 2022, the Greens are making a serious play for it.
The party is also eyeing Rongotai - another uphill battle - as failed mayoral candidate and current local MP Paul Eagle exits Parliament.
National Party deputy leader Nicola Willis has set her sights on Ōhāriu, while old rivals Ginny Andersen and Chris Bishop are once again going head-to-head in Hutt South.
There have been a number of high-profile exits from Wellington Central recently.
Robertson and Willis are off, as is Greens co-leader James Shaw who has stepped aside for the next generation with “some regret, but no doubt”, as well as rising star Act deputy leader Brooke van Velden who is eyeing Tamaki.
It has been a turbulent few years for the city between burst water pipes, businesses struggling as people continue to work from home, the beleaguered Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) transport plan, and buildings abruptly closing due to earthquake risks.
As the city flounders at a crossroads, Robertson has understandably had his hands full dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Robertson has acknowledged that being the Finance Minister is a huge job and one that often drew him away from electorate responsibilities.
“Post-election I want to continue as Minister of Finance, and devote myself to that role, without feeling I am not giving my full attention to the people of Wellington Central.”
Labour list MP Ibrahim Omer is the party’s new candidate. He has admitted it’s a tough race and said he is not taking anything for granted.
His story is compelling – he arrived in New Zealand as a refugee and cleaned the same lecture theatres at Victoria University at night that he would study in during the day.
Wellington Central stretches across the central and inner suburbs of the city to Karori and Mākara.
It is known as one of the most highly educated electorates in the country. The 2018 census showed it also had the highest proportion of those aged between 20 and 24 years old as well as those who walk or jog to work.
It’s a safe Labour seat but the Greens are pouring resources into flipping it- fueled by their success in Auckland Central.
Green candidate Tamatha Paul is a young wāhine Māori and currently works as a Wellington City councillor representing the Lambton Ward.
Meanwhile, National’s candidate has been adamant it’s a three-horse race.
Scott Sheeran relocated to Wellington this year to contest the seat after spending the past three and a half years working as a lawyer for the United Arab Emirates Government in Abu Dhabi.
Between them, the candidates are a bunch of rookies compared to those who have previously stood for the seat.
The Mt Victoria tunnel- a congestion pinch point- is the gateway to Wellington’s eastern suburbs and a long-standing election issue for the Rongotai electorate.
National has promised to kill the beleaguered Let’s Get Wellington Moving (LGWM) transport plan if it gets into government and to start building the second Mt Victoria tunnel in its first term as a fully funded state highway project.
The party’s candidate Karuna Muthu is a self-employed lawyer and business strategist based in Strathmore Park.
The Greens are also running a strong grassroots campaign in Rongotai with former minister and current list MP of 11 years Julie-Anne Genter as the party’s candidate.
The party wants to prioritise light rail ahead of “expensive tunnelling” as a more climate-friendly solution that will decongest roads for those who need to use cars or trucks.
Under this Government’s preferred option for LGWM, there is a second Mt Victoria tunnel (but no additional lanes for cars) as well as light rail from the inner city to the south.
Rongotai had the highest percentage of renters of any general electorate in 2018. Almost a quarter of the people living there travelled to work by bus.
The electorate has always been held by Labour. Annette King was the member for Miramar in 1993 and won Rongotai when it was created for the first MMP election in 1996.
She held it until her retirement in 2017 and Eagle left his position as Wellington’s deputy mayor to become the new MP.
Now Eagle is leaving Parliament, although not the way he thought he would be.
Last year he was a top contender for Wellington’s mayoralty but failed to succeed against Green-endorsed Tory Whanau.
Whanau’s win has also boosted the Green Party’s hopes in Rongotai and Wellington Central.
Before Eagle’s crushing loss, it was long speculated that Wellington City councillor Fleur Fitzsimons and Eagle would do a switch of sorts.
He would go back to Wellington City Council and she would become the party’s candidate for Rongotai.
While that plan didn’t work out for Eagle, who is now off to be the chief executive of the Chatham Islands Council, Fitzsimons is Labour’s candidate for the electorate.
There is talk that the battle between Omer and Paul in Wellington Central and between Genter and Fitzsimons in Rongotai could possibly split the left vote to make way for National candidates in each electorate, but that’s a long shot.
Unlike other seats in Wellington, Ōhāriu does not have a history as a Labour stronghold.
Peter Dunne is the longest-serving MP to have held the electorate under its various names from 1984 to 2017.
He announced his shock resignation just weeks out from the 2017 general election.
That left National scrambling, having already directed its supporters to give their electorate vote to Dunne, a message its candidate Brett Hudson had written on his campaign leaflets.
Hudson then had to do a 180 and run a full two-ticks blue campaign at the last minute.
Reflecting on this in 2020, Hudson said four and a half weeks out from election day wasn’t enough time to win the seat.
“Had there been sufficiently more time for those National-leaning voters to have better got to understand me and what I was looking to achieve, then that result could well have been different and more in line with the party vote result.”
Labour’s Greg O’Connor snapped up the seat in 2017 with a 1051-strong majority over Hudson.
Voters were given more time to “understand” Hudson when he stood again in 2020 only for O’Connor to increase his majority to 11,961 in Labour’s red wave.
This election, National has a new candidate- its deputy leader Willis.
Willis has skyrocketed up the ranks after Steven Joyce’s retirement from politics opened the door for her to become an MP in 2018.
The seat will be hotly contested with Willis as a rival.
O’Connor is running electorate only meaning it’s all or nothing when it comes to a third term as the MP for Ōhāriu.
The electorate consists of Wellington’s western suburbs including Tawa, Johnsonville, Newlands, Khandallah, and Wadestown.
More than half of families living there were couples with children in 2018 and almost three-quarters of households owned their own home either through individual ownership or a trust.
Almost one-third of the population over the age of 15 had a personal income of $70,000 or more, which was the largest proportion among general electorates.
Hutt South was Labour through and through since the seat was formed under MMP in 1996 until Trevor Mallard ran list only in the 2017 election with the intention of becoming Speaker of the House.
With the race wide-open, National MP Chris Bishop won the seat with a margin of 1530 votes.
Current Hutt South MP Ginny Andersen was gutted but promised she’d be back to fight for the seat in 2020.
Not only did Andersen fight hard when 2020 came around, but she also had an extraordinary left swing on her side.
The gap between the two rivals kept closing and opening throughout that election night - nervous glances were exchanged and beer was spilt at the clutch of jittery fingers.
But that time the late-night surge came through for Andersen, not Bishop.
The rivals are back for round three in this election.
Hutt South comprises most of the city of Lower Hutt including the eastern communities of Wainuiomata and Eastbourne, and the western hill suburbs like Korokoro and Belmont.
Professionals and managers made up nearly half the Hutt South workforce in 2018 and one in seven people mainly travelled to work by train- the second-largest share among general electorates.
Bishop and Andersen are now seasoned politicians.
Andersen is both the Police and Justice Minister under the current Labour Government and Bishop is National’s campaign chairman and ranked third on the party’s list.
She has the advantage of being the incumbent but also faces a mood for change if recent national polling of the major parties is anything to go by.
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
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