A National voter driven to do the unthinkable

By SIMON COLLINS

Farmer John Morrison will pour himself a stiff whisky on July 27 and vote Labour for the first time in his life - to keep the Greens out of power.

Mr Morrison, who retired last month as president of Southland Federated Farmers, is urging farmers on the local radio station Hokonui Gold to vote for National leader Bill English as MP for Clutha-Southland but to give their party votes to Labour.

Station owner Jamie Mackay says "plenty" of his listeners are talking about heeding the call. "It's certainly stirred up quite a hornets' nest. There are a lot of farmers considering that as an option.

"Whether they can drag themselves away from their conservatism, or whether once they get to the ballot box they find it abhorrent to vote for Labour for the first time in their lives, remains to be seen.

"The effect of the Greens on the rural community is enough that they think we would sooner have Helen [Clark] governing on her own. That is the big issue of the election campaign."

The Deep South has been galvanised by the Green Party's threat to withdraw support from any Labour government that ends the existing moratorium on commercial release of genetically modified organisms. The ban is due to end in October next year.

Science Minister Pete Hodgson, who made a stinging attack on the Greens' position last week, will debate the issue with Greens co-leader Jeanette Fitzsimons in the Dunedin Civic Centre tomorrow night.

Mr Morrison, who stood for Act in Clutha-Southland at the last election, urged voters then to give their electorate votes to Mr English but their party votes to Act "to give National a coalition partner".

"That's the reason I'll be voting Labour [this year] - to give Labour a mandate so that they can act without a coalition partner.

"My ideal government would be a Labour-National coalition, but that's never going to happen.

"I don't want those Greens to hold the balance of power. It goes against everything that we hold dear."

Mr Morrison said New Zealand was right to be cautious about genetic modification, but the technique had many potential benefits medically and economically.

"As long as we make the hurdle between the laboratory and the field high enough, I think we must go with it."

A fourth-generation Southland farmer, Mr Morrison said most of his colleagues were "genetically National". His own family were "horrified" at his stance.

"I might come out of the polling booth and cut my right hand off for voting Labour," he said. "I'll need a couple of good stiff Johnnie Walkers before I go down to vote, I can tell you - but I'm going to do it."

His successor as Southland Federated Farmers president, Don Nicolson, said he would not be following Mr Morrison's advice. But he is so disillusioned with all the parties that he may not vote at all.

"I am concerned about National because they are playing a centrist game. They are talking about social things again."

Like Mr Morrison, he voted Act last time, but he now feels Act has been "weakened so much because they are not looking likely to get enough dominance in the next Parliament".

"I am actually concerned about even dignifying the election process [by voting]," Mr Nicolson said. "I think people need to learn to value what we have got left of the productive economy, because we are not going to be able to sustain the way the extreme left want it for very much longer."

However, the "extreme left" Greens have infiltrated the very heart of rural Southland. In the two-shop district of Dipton, where Mr English grew up, the co-owner of the Dipton Dairy, Patricia Pattison, is giving the Greens her party vote.

"They were the only party that had anything decent to say after September 11."

Mrs Pattison, who is training to be a lay preacher in the Anglican Church, said she would give her electorate vote to Labour, because "it speaks more for the people".

"The poorer people in New Zealand need to be looked after more than the rich people, who can look after themselves a lot better.

"I think the poor are so far down the bottom of the heap now that anything we can do to bring them up or give them a better chance is great."

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