Surveying National's grassroots for signs of life

Judith Collins loves it in the ethnically diverse "fastest-growing electorate in the country". Pictures / Kenny Rodger

This is boring. "This is democracy." Well, it's boring. "Better than a gun to the head." Right at this moment, the idea of a gun to the head seems infinitely preferable.

The conversation is taking place on the campaign trail, with the National Clevedon electorate chairman, Roger Burrill. He's a farmer and drives his Hilux with the billboard with Judith and Don on the back. "Should you want to put a sign up on your place, here is my card," he says.

We are out door-knocking with Burrill, Clevedon MP Judith Collins, or Miss Perky, as she doesn't mind being called, and her intern Tony Bates - "he's not Monica Lewinsky", says Collins He has, presumably, heard this little joke before. He doesn't seem to mind. He also doesn't seem to mind being told to run back to the car to fetch more flyers. Or trailing in Collins' wake as she knocks on doors and says: "Hi, I'm Judith Collins. I'm your local MP. I'm here to ask for your vote, please."

The door-knocking is happening in Maghera Drive, in a place called Dannemora.

Dannemora is flat and seems to go on forever, it is beige and cream, stucco and brick and tile. The gardens comprise yuccas, some ornamental grasses, feathery palms and pebbles. It is a low-maintenance sort of place and it looks brand new because it is.

This what Collins calls the "mortgage belt" and she loves it here in "the fastest-growing electorate in the country", in a part of the electorate where "there are a lot of new immigrants: from Korea, India, Fiji. It's not what you'd call a naturally National area."

We have driven here in convoy. Burrill leading in his Hilux with Collins' mug on the back; Collins in her Mazda campaign car. No one has tooted and given her the thumbs up. "No, and no one's tooted and given me one finger either."

Down here, at the grassroots of electioneering, it helps to be an optimist.

In November, 2002, four months after the last election, and following National's abysmal results - it polled 21 per cent - we spent a day in Clevedon with Collins. She was already in campaign mode; she is always in campaign mode. She held Clevedon with a majority of just over 3000. She had run what was widely acknowledged to be a terrific campaign. National had run a dog of a campaign.

It was, we put to her then, confused and confusing. "I shall not argue with you," she said. "You can't argue with the facts." And this: "People were saying, 'I know what you stand for; I don't know what the National party stands for'."

She was scathing then about the central campaign planning. Some candidates didn't like the National colours on their billboards. There was no template for business cards or flyers. This year, of course Collins is going to say, "I have no negative comments and even after the election I'll have no negative comments. No, really."

She says the party organisation is now "a precision instrument". Right, so why didn't her electorate office have any of the bumper stickers for the guy who turned up there wanting them? "We haven't got them in yet." Aha, a glitch in the precision machine. Not likely, not with Collins. "We will turn every negative into a positive, and the positive is that I will hand-deliver them."

The party has been turned upside down and shaken by National president Judith Kirk and Steven Joyce, the party's inaugural general manager and campaign manager.

Kirk wouldn't then, and won't now, give membership figures - which is a bit of shame, she says, because she wouldn't mind a skite.

The Young Nats, whose meeting we attended at the University of Auckland in 2002, and who reported "a mass exodus" now say membership is up by around 300 since then.

They've lost one. Cameron Henderson, the then enthusiastic Young Nat, says he'll be voting Labour on September 17. "I have defected to the red side." The lure was Labour's student loan policy, which he calculates will save him $3500.

If you can judge a campaign by its ads, this one is patently different. There is the "Taxathon" brochure and ads, all bright colours and dancing MPs and a winking Don Brash. "You've got to appeal to people in an eye-catching way," says Joyce. "The parties have to deliver their messages in a way that people will read them."

What did go so badly wrong three years ago isn't a message the party is so keen on sending. Collins, ever forthright, has fewer qualms. What has changed, says Collins, is that "at the last election, electorates were very much little fiefdoms. Head office was more like a monarchy with powerful barons." And, "there's just not the internal bickering there was at the last election".

Four months after that election, she was still obviously irritated but undeterred. She was then, as she is on the day we return to Clevedon, out there doing what looks to any sane person to be drudgery and boredom.

Back then, we visited a trust house in a rough neighbourhood, went to a meeting with a mayor, to a Lions Club dinner at the Clevedon Bowling Club, where Collins gave a talk. The audience were mostly long-time National voters, many who voted for Collins and did not give their party vote to the Nats.

We wanted to see what it was like down there at grassroots level. We wanted to see how National was going to turn those results around, from the bottom up, and the top down. We concluded it would help if the party could clone Collins.

We went to Wellington to talk to the then leader, Bill English, now National's education spokesman and, rather oddly, looking more like a potential leader than he ever did when he was leader. This year nobody had any great interest in pondering this paradox. English left a polite message saying that he didn't "have any great interest in comparing the last couple of elections - for obvious reasons".

Kirk had been the party's president for three months then. She wore pinstripes and pearls and was resolutely low-key, determined to remain a backroom worker. What she has been working on, at the risk of "sounding like a broken record", is getting candidates to push the party vote. "I think that's something we did not campaign well for last time."

KIRK knows the value of grass roots campaigning. She is a fervent believer in the value of knocking on doors. Tell her it's boring and she says "if you had been to our candidates' college and been trained in door-knocking and how to do it, you would have enjoyed it". Now that is overly optimistic, but this is one of the things you learn at the college, set up in November 2004. You also learn "what is involved in being a candidate. People like me who are involved all the time know what it's all about, but some people were surprised when we told them it was a full-time job being an MP."

Collins doesn't need any pointers. She is very good at door knocking. A tip: never go alone because a Labour voter might try to entice you in for a cup of tea and talk to you, tying up your time and preventing you from knocking on more doors. And another: you can tell a Labour voter. Collins' lips go thin and tight. "They look mean."

It could be that the mean ones don't, actually, appreciate a politician on their doorstep. It's annoying, surely. "Yeah it is. For some people. But I'll tell you what, some people really appreciate the fact that you made the effort. It's one of the things that people want to see you doing. And just being seen door-knocking is almost as good as door-knocking. People see you're doing it and they think: that person's wanting our vote."

This is low-profile, hard-work politicking. Although Steven Joyce doesn't call it that. He calls it "the retail campaign, if you like. But I think it's crucial and the personal part of campaigning ... remains a crucial part of it."

Which doesn't make it any less boring. "Ha, well, maybe it is for you, but you're not a politician. I'm sure they love it. It can give you a lot of energy, you know, be very affirming."

It's like being missionaries, then. "That's your term, not mine."

This time around, door-knocking is compulsory for the Nats. Cottage meetings are encouraged. And there are some good things about today's cottage meeting: A glorious display of daffodils outside the tidy brick-and-tile residence of the Besters of Bellfield Rd, Papakura; a glorious display of chocolate muffins and sweet slices on the coffee table inside; antimacassars on the armchairs and a china cabinet in the lounge.

Everyone - all eight people - is a little awkward to begin. Except Collins, because awkward is not in her repertoire. If she is disappointed by the small turn-out it doesn't show now, and it won't later.

Neighbours Malcolm and Katie Garner have popped over in their slippers. Collins tells a little story about some "dreadfully over-the-top" slippers she saw recently. "But they were so expensive, maybe after the election."

This is what she calls "labour-intensive" campaigning. For nearly two hours she will balance a cup of tea and a cake plate on her knee. "The reason I drink tea," she tells an enthralled room, "is that I get to drink a lot of tea during the day and if I have coffee, after about 10 cups, I'm bouncing off the walls. And I'm much more mild after 10 cups of tea - if I ever am mild."

This is good. It says: I'm just like you. But also, it offers an insight into the life of the politician - all that tea! The things they have to do! And, that "if I ever am mild" lets her audience know that Collins is the sort of feisty politician this country needs.

She asks for questions on "the burning issues". MMP is one: would National hold a referendum to "knock off this MMP?" Marty Johnston says, "I just hate the thought of the country being ruled by such a small percentage that they have to get one of those hairy-looking fellows or somebody like that on their side to push through some legislation. And I don't think that's right."

And so on through immigration and health and law and order and one she might not have anticipated. South African immigrant, John Becker, who is a first-time voter in New Zealand, says, "Is military conscription perhaps not the solution?" Says Collins, quick as a politician: "It may be a solution, but it may not be the one for now."

She hits all the right marks. She gets in little personal details about her dad, who went through World War II pretending he couldn't salute and how she inherited his love of pushing "against authority". About how, "as you know, Don's wife is from Singapore", cue knowing laughter, and "my husband's from Samoa".

There are a few digs at Labour. She comes across as tough when she talks about family group conferences where "they hold hands and sing Kumbaya". There is an uncertain quiet when she says she would have voted for the Civil Union bill "if it had been simply to allow gay couples to have a formal relationship protected in some way."

What Malcolm Garner wants her to know is that Brash is "too slow ... he hasn't had the oomph". She says she'll pass it on.

The verdict on her performance is that the two life-long National voters will vote National. The two undecideds who were always going to give Collins a tick, will likely vote National. The Beckers look likely to do the same.

One other will vote Collins but not National, which is the position she held when she walked into the room.

They love Collins, but they did anyway. She is typically upbeat: everyone there will talk to at least 10 others, she says.

But today, on Bellfield Rd, what they really want Collins to do is help them get some of those traffic islands to slow the hoons down.

"Well," says the perennially perky MP, "it's law and order and, you know, this is grassroots stuff."