Split Te Puke but still ready to vote

Te Puke Economic Development Group managing director Mark Boyle said there was a definite school of thought that people living in Te Puke's hinterland did not understand the contest or the issues for the East Coast.

Discontent with electorate boundary changes around Te Puke appears unlikely to translate into people not voting tomorrow, according to business and community leaders.

Te Puke Economic Development Group managing director Mark Boyle said the prevailing view was that Te Puke and surrounding rural areas would prefer to be in the same electorate, rather than split between Rotorua and the East Coast,

While the town had got used to the idea of being part of Rotorua because MP Todd McClay had for years represented Te Puke's rural hinterland and had an office in Te Puke, the same could not be said for residents living in areas like Maketu, Pongakawa and Pukehina, he said.

Electorate boundary changes last year saw these areas taken out of Rotorua and put into the huge East Coast Electorate which included Gisborne. Mr Boyle said there was a definite school of thought that people living in Te Puke's hinterland did not understand the contest or the issues for the East Coast.

"A lot of them are saying, who are the candidates - they have no visibility."

There were hardly any election signs and all people were seeing were signs put up by candidates going for the Waiariki and Rotorua seats, he said.

Mr Boyle said a common discussion point was why Te Puke had all of sudden became part of Rotorua while the areas around Te Puke had been taken out of Rotorua.

Despite this, he did not feel the boundary changes would have a negative impact on people getting out and voting tomorrow. Te Puke district residents would probably vote along traditional lines even if they did not understand who the candidates were. "I get a sense that people are pretty motivated to vote. I talk to a lot of people and all the talk is about Saturday."

Te Puke Community Board chairman Peter Miller said he felt the townspeople had accepted the boundary changes.

He said Mr McClay had been slowly gravitating to this part of the country. For instance he was one of the three judges at last year's Te Puke Christmas Parade.

Maketu Community Board chairman Shane Beech said the only East Coast candidate sign with a face on it that he had seen was National's Anne Tolley, with some smaller signs for the Labour candidate Moana Mackey. "It is really hard to put a face to the name."

Mr Beech said there was a lot of interest in the election with all the controversy going on and he would be surprised if people were turned off voting because they had been put into the East Coast electorate.

Hardly familiar territory

Rural Te Puke resident Diane Hintz yearns to once again vote in an electorate she can identify with.

Mrs Hintz, pictured, is one of many people unhappy with boundary changes that lumped their area into the sprawling East Coast electorate, the biggest town of which was Gisborne.

"Gisborne is a long way away and doesn't have much in common with areas around Te Puke," she said.

Mrs Hintz said it was even bad enough when rural Te Puke was in the Rotorua electorate, although Rotorua was at least closer than Gisborne. The orchid society and Te Puke A&P Show supporter hoped that the boundaries would be looked at again before the next election in 2017.

The last time Te Puke and its rural environs were united into one electorate was when they were part of the Bay of Plenty electorate.

Mrs Hintz said she had granddaughters voting for the first time in this election and liked the system in which people could cast their votes early. Using her voter ID card, she voted in just two minutes yesterday.

- additional reporting Pauline Carney