Orewa played key role, says Sutton

Jim Sutton says National's desire to regain power in the provinces hurt Labour. Picture / Hawke's Bay Today

Labour MP Jim Sutton believes Don Brash's Orewa race relations speech played a key role in National winning a number of provincial seats - but also concedes National was hungrier for them.

Mr Sutton lost his Aoraki seat, which covers Timaru and South Canterbury, to National's Jo Goodhew by a large 6616 majority.

His was one of 13 electorate seats lost by Labour, 10 of which went to National and most of which were in the provinces.

Mr Sutton, the Trade and Associate Rural Affairs Minister in the last government, was yesterday philosophical, saying he had won and lost a number of seats in his political career.

He put his loss last week down to "a lot of factors [which] came together".

"I think Orewa 1 played quite well in the provincial seats generally. The Maori thing. There's quite a lot of anti-immigration sentiment in parts of the community in seats like those."

Orewa had produced a noticeable reaction.

"People don't like to admit it, but it's there and it was pretty big. So what can you do about that?

"Then there was all this PC stuff ... You say 'PC stuff? What do you mean?' and they say 'Not smoking in pubs'. Well as far as I can tell most people prefer no smoking in pubs."

National's desire to assert its "historical dominance" in the provinces had also contributed to the Labour loss. It had run "the first energetic, organised National campaign for some time, certainly in my seat and I suspect in other provincial seats as well".

"In a way you might say National was the hungriest in the provincial seats. These were their seats of old and they were sick of not running the show."

Mr Sutton believes Labour has done a lot for rural New Zealand, but that has not been turned into "political brownie points".

"I've been a farmer for lots of my life and we fixed all the producer boards ... and we've returned a lot of government services to rural towns which had been taken away by successive governments."

Additional factors influenced different regions, Mr Sutton said. In his seat, school reviews had been a big factor for voters.

But he said he had not been prepared to try to defer closures that in his view ensured the best educational future for students in the electorate.

"It's good for education, rationalising a school network, but it's hell of a bad for the sitting member. But sometimes if you are going to do your job properly you have just got to take it on the chin and try and explain it."

In Hawkes Bay the "near-collapse of the apple industry has played very badly for Russell Fairbrother and Rick Barker", who lost Napier and Tukituki respectively.

Mr Sutton, who returns to Parliament as a list MP, will shift his main residence from Timaru to Wellington for the next three years but continue to have an electorate office in the city. While at 63 he may not lead the fight-back in the provinces, it would happen, he said.