KEY POINTS:
It's the Generation Game, with a difference: "Nice to see you _ now see ya later."
If Labour veterans like Judith Tizard and Mark Burton find themselves on the dole queue after Saturday's election, they can blame young upstarts from National and Labour.
The National Party has singled
out Auckland Central as a strategic seat and has given 28-year-old Nikki Kaye billboards and campaign resources to try to seize the harbourside jewel for the first time from the MP of 18 years.
But it is the thrusting young activists of Tizard's own party, Labour, who pose the greater threat.
Jacinda Ardern, 28, returned only weeks ago from her OE in London to take a safe slot at No 20 on Labour's list _ 18 places above Tizard. On her OE she did a stint serving up meatballs in a New York soup kitchen while she tried to find work. Soon she will be earning an MP's salary of $126,200.
Carmel Sepuloni, 31, a Mt Roskill health manager with a 10-year-old son, is also ahead of Tizard on the list.
Chris Hipkins, 30, is likely to inherit the Hutt Valley electorate of Rimutaka for Labour _ effectively pushing Tizard still farther down the list. And Grant Robertson, 37, could do the same if he holds Wellington Central.
When they were younger, Tizard says she and Helen Clark were like sisters. But in the muddy streams of politics, water is thicker than blood.
Ardern, Hipkins and Robertson have all worked in the Prime Minister's Office as advisers and it seems that is what counts.
Like Labour's Fish and Chip Brigade in the 1980s, National's Brat Pack in the 1990s, and then its Millennium Club the following decade, this year's intake of former ninth-floor advisers could form an energetic young faction that unnerves older, slower MPs.
Tizard, 52, is not the only Government minister who will be feeling prematurely old, jaded and unwanted: Cabinet minister Damien O'Connor, 50, former minister Mark Burton, 52, and junior minister Mahara Okeroa, 62, are all low on the party list and at risk in their electorates.
Martin Gallagher, 56, is under threat in Hamilton West, while Dave Hereora, Louisa Wall and Lesley Soper may as well start sending out their curriculum vitaes now. Barring a big upturn for Labour, they won't be back next week.
In Tauranga, National's Simon Bridges, 32, has been charged with the unenviable responsibility of battling Parliament's longest-serving MP, 63-year-old Winston Peters.
If New Zealand First fails to cross the 5 per cent threshold, and Peters does not win back Tauranga, then Bridges will have ended one of New Zealand's most extraordinary and controversial political careers.
Deborah Morris, who walked straight into Cabinet with Peters at the tender age of 26, warned the young pretenders that life would not be easy on the green benches.
Younger MPs needed to clearly identify their goals _ hers included a youth suicide strategy and free healthcare for the under-sixes _ and be willing to work across party lines to achieve those goals.
"Once I was in a Cabinet committee, asking some probing questions about social welfare benefits," she said. "Jim Bolger responded, `oh, we've got a cheeky one in this Deborah Morris'."
The public and media had fixated on her tattoos and piercings, she said; other MPs, particularly women, viciously and wrongly speculated she had slept her way up the NZ First party list.
"Parliament is a violent place," she added. "I was appalled that other women would bad-mouth each other in such a way. So I confronted them on it _ you have to do that."
This year's new candidates insisted their youth was an asset, helping them represent younger New Zealanders _ but some admitted to nerves.
"I'm anxious about it and I'd be foolish not to be," said Ardern, who previously had a nose piercing. "I'm excited but not daunted."
How did she feel about ousting some of Labour's most senior MPs? "The party made a concerted effort to being in fresh faces and new blood, while retaining experience," she said.
And she added, mercilessly: "I think they've got the balance about right."
