Chips, oysters - all for votes

By AUDREY YOUNG and VERNON SMALL

Bill English begins the morning in Auckland defending the right of grown-ups to smoke in bars, then eats a plate of greasy chips before launching National's health policy.

At the other end of the country, Helen Clark rugs up in an overcoat and blue-soled gumboots to brave the Southland cold and inspect tiny paua.

But it is all about votes as the two leaders hit the election trail far from their homes and deep in each other's territories.

In Auckland, Mr English, a Southland farmer, buys a blue silk tie at an exclusive High St men's shop and is horrified to discover it cost $159.

In Southland, Helen Clark, a former Auckland academic, samples the region's culinary delights at a lunch featuring raw Bluff oysters and crayfish.

Mr English does not want to create any distraction from the health policy.

The big print of the policy focuses on the prospect of cuts to services as district health board deficits grow to $300 million.

The small print talks about reducing obesity ... and reducing smoking?

"That's right, but not in bars," Mr English tells reporters.

He sees no incongruity in his party's opposition to Labour's move to stub out cigarettes in bars.

"There are much more important issues in health than trying to run the lives of grown adults who decide to smoke in bars.

"We need to be focusing on services for people rather than politically correct causes at the margin."

Mr English says district health boards are planning widespread cuts. He knows how to read the figures because he was once Minister of Health.

"And no one would say there is fat in our hospitals. Go and ask them."

Which reminds a journalist of how much fat the National leader has ingested at lunchtime, courtesy of those chips.

"I had chips because I like them," he says with guilt-free conviction.

"If it is getting around to the diet, I think I can probably stop the questions." Press conference over.

Mr English and his wife, Mary, a doctor, begin the day visiting a Tongan health centre in Onehunga, which Mr English opened in 1997 when he was Health Minister. It began with 10 patients and now has more than 10,000.

They walk hand in hand up Queen St with Auckland Central candidate and list MP Pansy Wong for a fast-paced meet-and-greet.

Mr English meets no resistance from anybody he approaches, not even from a sinister-looking young man with a scarf over his face, sitting near a bank.

It turns out he is more interested in Maori television than in robbing the bank.

Helen Clark's day starts at 4.45am.

Two plane trips and three hours' travelling later, she is in a building at the South Island's southern tip, hunched against the cold blowing lazily but bitterly off the ice and looking at the infant paua.

"They're slow growers. Slow to die and slow to recover," Abalone NZ executive Daryle Blacker explains, shirt hanging out of his jeans and sweater riding high.

The paua "factory" is Helen Clark's second stop of the day. First was an interview at the local radio station.

"The Labour horse is cantering well down the straight," she says, picking up on Invercargill radio host Malcolm Gayfer's racing imagery.

She tells him Labour is aiming to form the strongest government it can.

The Greens have threatened to bring it down over GM, so she is going "all out for a majority government with Jim [Anderton]".

An hour later, the finer points of the life cycle of the paua have been explained and the seven-car cavalcade heads for the much warmer Konini Primary School, where Helen Clark - a much more relaxed version than in 1999 - listens to songs, hands out books and answers the kids' questions.

What was her favourite childhood book, one child asks. Black Beauty, although it made her cry. Her favourite meal? A curry. Does she eat too much fast food? Well, she does tend to put a frozen curry in the microwave in her Beehive office when she is working late at night.

The school puts on a Southland spread for lunch - raw Bluff oysters and crayfish take pride of place.

For her visit to the Bluff Community Board, chairman Rex Powley has asked members to steer clear of controversy.

But Helen Clark invites all questions so they ask for action on cleaning up two sheds of "dross", waste from the aluminium smelter which was bought and stored ready to be cleaned before the company that started the venture went broke.

MP Mark Peck manages to hold out hope of a solution without any promises, and no one seems to expect anything specific of the Prime Minister.

The 20-minute drive back to Invercargill passes the "Welcome to Bluff" sign, bearing a placard daubed with the words, "The Home of Dross".

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