OPINION
There is more than one way to describe the battle between two women to become the next MP for Mt Albert, but perhaps the most apt is that it pits an establishment candidate against an anti-establishment candidate.
In this case, the establishment is the Labour Party and Camilla Belich is the candidate clearly favoured by the current and immediate past leadership.
Helen White is the anti-establishment candidate by dint of the fact she is not quietly standing aside for the preferred candidate of the party leadership.
Both were employment lawyers until they were elected to Parliament on the red wave in 2020.
Belich has the support of the powerful E Tu union, whom she praised in her maiden speech, and White has the support of the Amalgamated Workers Union, whom she praised in her maiden speech.
While Belich has the support of the leadership, White has the support of the Labour electorate committee.
One word of endorsement by the outgoing MP, former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, would clinch it for Belich. But that is not how these things work.
And even if she used others to express a preference, or Prime Minister Chris Hipkins made it clear who he supported, that would play into the narrative of White’s supporters - that the candidate should be a local choice and not a “Wellington” choice.
Former president Nigel Haworth, who resigned after criticism for his handling of allegations against a Labour staffer, has endorsed White saying she has “selflessly done the hard yards for Labour.”
While Ardern’s succession plans to replace Haworth with Claire Szabo worked well, and her plan for Hipkins to replace her as Prime Minister worked well, she hasn’t been able to engineer an easy succession in her own seat. She may prefer Belich but it has turned into a heated contest.
One thing is clear: if White wins the selection, which begins on Saturday morning at Western Springs College, it will be an upset for the party hierarchy.
The stakes are high. Mt Albert is a safe seat where the red flag has flown continuously. In no election under MMP has its majority fallen under 10,000. Coincidentally, it has produced three Labour Party leaders, Helen Clark, David Shearer and Ardern.
Belich can be seen as the more successful MP as measured by the positions she has been already been given. Within her first term, she has been chosen to chair the caucus committee of Labour MPs. She is now chair of the education and workforce select committee and she has just been made a junior whip. She is on the promotion ladder and is clearly ministerial material.
In her first go at Parliament, in 2020, she stood in the Epsom seat but was given a high list ranking of No 30.
Belich is considered part of Labour and union aristocracy. She talked in her maiden speech about her grandfather, former Wellington mayor James Belich, who canvassed for Michael Joseph Savage.
Her parents were active white-collar unionists and prominent members of the Wellington Left. Her husband, Andrew Kirton, is a former general secretary of Labour and is Hipkins’ chief of staff. They are what you’d call a connected couple.
White has not had as many party successes as Belich. She was placed at No 40 on the list when she first stood in Auckland Central in 2017 and lost to National incumbent Nikki Kaye.
By 2020, she was placed at No 48 on the party list. She was expected to win back Auckland Central for Labour but eventually lost it in a battle with Green MP Chloe Swarbrick. White is deputy chair of the regulations review committee and is on the transport committee.
When she was running for Auckland Central, she made much of her experience in having been raised in Freeman’s Bay when it was a working-class suburb.
But having lived in Sandringham for about 30 years, she can say she lives in the Mt Albert electorate and her supporters are making a virtue of the fact she is not prime-ministerial material.
It is said that locals would welcome the chance to have an MP who could just focus on the electorate.
Belich who lives in Auckland but doesn’t live in the electorate has said she and her family would move there if selected. White’s people say that if Belich is such a rising star, she is likely to get a high list placing and get into Parliament anyway and Labour could get two good women.
Belich’s supporters say she is clearly the stronger candidate with a big future and it should be a merit-based selection.
If White misses out on Mt Albert, her political career could be over. She could not credibly run in Auckland Central again, having lost there twice and gone looking to run in another seat.
The latest poll result puts Labour on 35.5 per cent, fractionally above National (Taxpayers’ Union Curia poll) and for the sake of comparison, applying that to the 2020 list and electorate result, Belich would just get in and White would miss out.
The selection panel will comprise seven votes: likely to be those of president Jill Day, Senior Maori Vice-President Tane Phillips, New Zealand Council Auckland regional member Antonia Verstappen, two Labour electorate committee representatives to be elected on Friday night, a voting delegate elected from qualifying members from the floor and a red-card vote for the highest polling candidate in a vote taken from qualifying members from the floor.
Floor voters must live in the electorate, and either have been a financial member of the party for at least a year, or a member of an affiliated union for at least a year.
It looks set to come down to the votes from the floor on the day.
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