Campaign trail takes leaders to schools

Labour Party leader David Cunliffe. Photo / Brett Phibbs

He faced a lecture theatre full of students at Waikato University and had smoko with workers at a Te Rapa factory but the warmest welcome for David Cunliffe as he campaigned in Hamilton yesterday was from Maori children at the Western Community Centre.

About 30 adults and about the same number of children from Maeroa Intermediate and Nawton Primary schools had already been warmed up by local Labour candidates Sue Moroney and Anjum Rahman - and Penny Gaylor, whose name initially escaped Mr Cunliffe.

Watch: Cunliffe: Teachers and building houses

The children, however, had their act together, performing polished waiata and a spirited haka.

"Whenever we're going around the country, getting a wonderful rousing welcome like that is just the best thing," Mr Cunliffe told them before getting down to his business of selling Labour's message of jobs, homes, families - and schools.

His outline of Labour's plan for smaller class sizes by recruiting 2000 new teachers received applause mainly from the grown-ups.

"In case the kids are thinking, 'More teachers, wow', we're also going to be making sure that every kid gets their own digital device."

That got a big cheer from the children.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister John Key was at his old school Burnside High in Christchurch to view students' robotic projects.

While there, he bumped into his old economics teacher and slotted in one last election promise, saying if re-elected as Prime Minister for a third term he would donate one of his prime ministerial warrants to the school.

To get to a fourth term, Mr Key was also clearly tempted to invest in some of the more controllable robots to replace some of his ministers.

He also attended a sod-turning for a new science department at Canterbury University, to be named after university alumnus Lord Ernest Rutherford and for which the Government has chipped in $100 million.

The PM said that the university also clearly had a good commerce department - he himself had graduated from it.