Brian Rudman: Election victory for Clark's team a win-win situation for Auckland

Saturday night's win for Labour - well I'm going to be optimistic and declare it all over bar the jostling for Crown limousines - was also a victory for Auckland.

First, the long-agonised-over roading and transport package, finalised in recent months by Auckland and central Government politicians, can proceed apace, safe from the paralysis a change of Government had threatened to inflict.

On Friday, I had agonised over the thought of Auckland leaders having to educate Don Brash and Maurice Williamson and a whole new crew of central politicians to the intricacies of Auckland's problems. Now they won't have to. Of course it would be nice if they did show a little interest, but for the moment it's not so pressingly important.

Second, Auckland will be able to gently remind Helen Clark and her team from time to time that but for the loyalty of voters in the big metropolitan cities on Saturday, they'd have been moping around drinking tap and orange cordial yesterday, instead of popping champagne corks.

While their fair-weather supporters deserted them in provincial towns such as Timaru, Invercargill and Hastings, Aucklanders stayed staunch, and in particular that goes for the Pacific Islanders and Maori of South Auckland, where party officials say the turnout was not only heavier than usual but also predominantly in favour of Labour.

It was the votes in these high-turnout seats, reported in late, that nudged Labour into the lead on Saturday night.

We Aucklanders also showed it's time to dismiss once and for all claims that the MMP system is confusing. Not only is it not, but also voters are just as adept at manipulating its permutations as they are at filling in a Lotto ticket.

Take the Maori seat of Tamaki Makaurau. Here, the voters punished Labour for its panicked response to the foreshore and seabed dilemma by comprehensively dumping high-profile incumbent John Tamihere.

But with the National Party threatening to abolish Maori seats if it gained office, the voters of Tamaki Makaurau took the "my enemy's enemy must be my ally" approach, and cast their party vote overwhelmingly for Labour (9206), not Maori (4484).

It got even more complicated in Epsom, where Labour's candidate, Stuart Nash, voted for his National rival and recommended his followers do the same in order to keep Act leader Rodney Hide out.

But this tactic was thwarted by many National voters who backed Mr Hide in the hope he might win and drag another Act MP or two in on his coat tails to provide a much needed ally for National in the House.

Mr Hide was the surprise winner in that little game of Stop The Music. Just what impact the Friday letter drop from the Exclusive Brethren recommending a vote for National incumbent Richard Worth I have no idea. Hopefully none.

The wacko branch of the Brethren church's ill-fated entry into the political process highlighted to me the most disturbing aspect of Don Brash's labelling his supporters "mainstream" and the rest of us outlanders. The Brethren were, presumably, mainstream, while Helen Clark and Labour voters were not.

At my polling booth I was greeted at the school hall door by a smiling maitre d' from, at a guess, the Indian subcontinent, who welcomed me to his voting station. He thanked me for coming as I left. My voting clerk, going by her accent, was a blue-eyed blonde from middle-Europe. Were they mainstream? I suspect not.

Equally divisive was National's pledge to remove "race-based" everything from the statute books, Maori seats included.

Personally I suspect the Maori seats have had their day. But they're doing no harm and, as Maori continue the drift to the general seats, they will eventually wither away. For the leader of the alternative government party to declare war on them, particularly in the aftermath of Labour's pre-emptive strike on Maori foreshore hopes, was ugly and dangerously divisive.

Coming in the same breath as his separatist "mainstream" campaign, and New Zealand First's triennial anti-immigration posterings, the horizon as far as race relations was involved was looking bleak by polling day.

That cloud has now lifted. If there was a highlight to Saturday's result, perhaps that, in the long term, was it.