Current Hutt South MP Chris Bishop. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Labour and National candidates in Hutt South are fighting for every vote with the race set to be one of the closest of all the electorates in the Wellington region.
Current MP Chris Bishop snatched the seat in the 2017 election with a margin of 1530 votes.
His victory marked the first time the electorate has been held by a National MP since the seat was formed under MMP in 1996.
Trevor Mallard held onto it for that entire time but ran list only in the last election with the intention of becoming Speaker of the House.
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.
With National in opposition, Bishop has had the opportunity to go on the attack.
He has rallied around issues like the Melling interchange when NZTA announced the road would not be considered until 2029.
But he has also come up against the enduring "nine years of neglect" rebuttal.
As Labour list MP and Hutt South candidate Ginny Andersen points out, National never allocated funding for the interchange project when it was in power.
Bishop still got a lot of airtime slamming the Government after the road was pushed into the "never never".
But it was Andersen who got to swoop in and front headlines on the u-turn to fund the interchange at a cost of $258 million.
As a result, they both see the green light for Melling as a significant achievement in their respective track records.
Listen to Newstalk ZB Wellington from 7.40am on weekdays leading up to the election or on iHeartRadio to hear from candidates across the region's electorates and commentary on the biggest issues facing the capital.
But with Melling sorted, Bishop has set his sights on another road as part of National's massive spend-up on transport infrastructure in the Wellington region.
The party announced $900m to construct the Petone to Grenada Link Rd if it's elected into Government.
Andersen says she has seen advice from technical experts that the road would be challenging and expensive to build from a geotechnical perspective.
She's also wary of National promising "ghost roads".
In 2018, NZTA re-evaluated the road and found issues with resilience after the Kaikōura Earthquake.
According to its website, funding is not available right now to progress work on the project.
Bishop says it's more than just a road, because it will unlock the Lincolnshire Farm area to build thousands of homes.
Housing is another huge issue for the electorate.
A big part of that is being driven from people wanting to escape the sky-high house prices in Wellington City by looking further afield.
It means those who are most vulnerable are being priced out of the local market.
Bishop says housing supply is not keeping up with population growth.
"I've put my hand up and said housing supply didn't grow quickly enough in the last three years of the last National Government when I was a list MP in the area, but equally I would argue it hasn't grown quickly enough under the past three years either."
Bishop wants to unlock land in rural parts of Wainuiomata for building as well as Lincolnshire Farm.
Andersen says the Labour-led Government has delivered more in Hutt South on housing in one term than in the previous decade, pointing to the 260 homes Kāinga Ora is building in the Hutt Valley.
But she acknowledges that's not enough.
"I will continue to advocate for more housing opportunities and to look at more ways of working in partnership, whether it be with Hutt City Council or other ways of increasing the number of available homes."
On the 2017 campaign trail, former Labour leader Andrew Little announced plans for a mix of 400 KiwiBuild homes and state houses in Lower Hutt.
But to date no KiwiBuild homes have been built in the area, nor are any forecast to be built by the end of the year.
The announcement came after the National Government demolished earthquake-prone social housing in Naenae and Epuni without replacing it.
Back on the 2020 campaign trail, Andersen doesn't hesitate to point out how "incredibly close" the race will be between her and Bishop.
She says she hasn't stopped campaigning since becoming a list MP based in the electorate.
"I've been working like this every single day for three years, I guess I've been in campaign mode for a while. It motivates me more if anything when you know it's possible you can win."
Andersen says her advocacy helped secure a $9.4m refurbishment of Hutt Hospital's maternity services after she held a public meeting to hear from midwives who said they'd had enough.
Bishop says he's "cautiously optimistic" about winning even though it's historically a Labour seat.
"But it's also, I think, a seat that rewards people who do the hard yards, put the effort in, and achieve results for the community.
"I think that's what Trevor Mallard was able to demonstrate over a period of time and hopefully something that I've been able to demonstrate as well."
He describes Andersen as a worthy opponent.
"Ultimately people in the Hutt will have to make a decision on who is the most effective advocate for the Hutt."
Bishop says his achievements include helping to secure a cellphone tower in the Catchpool Valley and organising the Hutt City Youth Awards.
He says he gets the most satisfaction from small wins like securing a smoke machine for a dairy in Alicetown that was robbed three times in a few months.
Act candidate Andy Parkins grew up in Stokes Valley and went on to work in the recycling and waste minimisation sector overseas.
He says the biggest problem in Hutt South is housing and how much of people's incomes are being spent on it.
Parkins says the RMA needs to be scrapped and people allowed to keep more of what they earn.
The Opportunities Party candidate Ben Wylie-van Eerd has a PhD in physics, which has taken him around the world to conduct scientific research.
He lives in the Korokoro Valley and agrees the biggest issue in Hutt South is housing because of a sharp increase in population growth.
On transport, Wylie-van Eerd says it's important to make decisions based on business cases and climate impacts.
Outdoors Party candidate Wilf Bearman-Riedel says he got to understand the benefits of a clean environment for all New Zealanders after spending a lot of time hunting and fishing in his life.
He says Hutt South has major water infrastructure problems, which Central Government needs to invest in for a state of the art water supply and sewerage plants.
Green candidate Richard McIntosh has a background in farm and conservation work.
He lives in Karori and ran in the 2019 local body elections for the Onslow-Western ward but is seeking the party vote for the Greens in Hutt South this time around.
McIntosh says there's a severe housing shortage in the Hutt and the party's Poverty Action Plan will help address financial stresses.
New Conservative candidate Roger Earp lives in Waterloo with his family and has spent most of his career with the army, including three overseas tours.
He says the party's policy is to put a hold on immigration, which will help build up housing stock and give priority to those living in New Zealand.
Vision NZ is standing Paris Winiata in the electorate, who works as a firefighter and runs a personal training business with his wife.
He says many complex issues like housing and child poverty stem from a breakdown within the family unit.
He found himself out on his own at the age of 15.
"People are more important than politics, and I will stand for all those people who don't have a voice, the forgottens, those who have been marginalised by this and previous Governments, everyday hard-working Kiwis like me."
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