Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Wairarapa candidate Kieran McAnulty with Featherston School students. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Wairarapa candidate Kieran McAnulty with Featherston School students. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Labour list MP Kieran McAnulty's bright red ute doesn't have a back window which makes it a hard sell when you're trying to give the Prime Minister a ride - even in the freezing and pouring rain.
"Kieran messaged me this morning to say 'you might just want to prepare,the weather's a little bit different here today," Jacdina Ardern said shouting over the downpour at the opening of the Pahiatua Water Treatment Plant.
"I almost asked him whether he'd finally put a back window in his ute. If there's not, I'm not sure I'll be riding with you."
A few hours later though, the Wairarapa candidate had talked her round and Ardern rode shotgun down the main strip of Masterton with Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Meka Whaitiri in the backseat.
Ardern spent yesterday with McAnulty, currently a list MP, and Whaitiri on a tiki tour around the Wairarapa in an effort to turn the longstanding blue seat red.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern taking a ride in Wairaparapa candidate Kieran McAnulty's ute. Photo / Amelia Wade
The electorate will be neck-and-neck and Labour will be hoping for it to swing back to it if it wins the party vote.
National has held the seat with a large majority for five terms since Labour MP Georgina Beyer stood down in 2005. But in the 2017 election National's majority was halved and McAnulty lost by just under 3000 votes.
But the ex-bookie wasn't brave enough to give his odds of beating National candidate Mike Butterick.
Labour list MP Kieran McAnulty with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern in Masterton's Bear Flag Books and Retro. Photo / Amelia Wade
Yesterday's whistle-stop trip with Ardern got him at least one more vote, though.
Veterinary nurse Nicky Doyle couldn't believe it when she bumped into Ardern and her entourage at the local Eketahuna cafe.
Thirty seconds before happening upon the group, Doyle hadn't made up her mind about who she'd be voting for.
"It was actually meeting her, talking to her and looking into her eyes really persuaded me. And I really like Kieran, you see him everywhere in the Wairarapa."
Wairarapa candidate Kieran McAnulty admiring his socks with Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Ikaroa-Rāwhiti MP Meka Whaitiri in Eketahuna. Photo / Amelia Wade
Wairarapa constituents even got to see his brightly spotted socks, as McAnulty left his gumboots at the door of every business they stopped in on.
The next stop on the tiki tour was Bear Flag Books and Retro in Masterton where Ardern's eye was caught by some retro fish-shaped paper plate holders on the wall.
McAnulty's eye was never off the prize. When asked whether there was anything he liked the look of, he quipped: "The seat."
Once more in his socks, McAnulty later joined Ardern, Whaitiri, Finance Minister Grant Robertson and Economic Development Minister Phil Twyford to announce they would axe the Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) if re-elected.
Existing Provincial Growth Fund (PGF) projects would be progressed over the next term but the fund itself would be replaced. Instead they would create a $200 million Regional Strategic Partnership Fund to partner with provincial development units.
The Provincial Development Unit, the bureaucracy that sits over the PGF, will survive.
Deputy Prime Minister and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters accused Labour of abandoning the regions by discontinuing the PGF.
He said their proposed replacement was a "straight cop-out" and a "sad commentary on Labour's priorities when they are by themselves".
Ardern disagreed and said the PGF was only ever designed to be a $3 billion project over three years.
Afterwards the politicians were met with a haka by some children from the local primary school before Ardern was inundated with excited requests for selfies and autographs - and two enthusiastic boys even promised they'd vote for Ardern if they were old enough.
