Conservative Party confirms first five members on list

Conservative Party leader Colin Craig. Photo / New Zealand Herald / Mark Mitchell

The Conservative Party has confirmed the first five members on its list, which includes a mix of familiar and new faces.

The party's leader Colin Craig and chief executive Christine Rankin take the number 1 and 2 rankings, and new recruit Garth McVicar has been placed at number 3.

Mr McVicar, who is the party's law and order spokesman, left his job at the hard-line lobby group Sensible Sentencing Trust to run for Parliament and has chosen to contest the Napier seat.

Mr Craig is running in East Coast Bays and Ms Rankin, the former Families Commissioner and head of Work and Income, will contest the Epsom seat.

At number 4 on the list is lawyer Melissa Perkin, who is currently the executive director of the New Zealand Bar Association.

The party's fifth-ranked candidate is Dr Edward Saafi, a biomedical health research scientist who has made several bids for election at local and central government level.

The Tongan-born, Auckland-based candidate will represent Conservatives in the safe Labour seat of Mangere, where he ran for the Destiny Party in 2005.

He also sought the National Party nomination for Botany in 2011 and ran on the Citizens and Ratepayers ticket in local body elections.

The Conservative Party has so far selected 36 candidates and is aiming to run a contestant in all 71 electorates.

The party rose 1.4 points in the latest Herald DigiPoll survey published today, but at 2.6 per cent of the party vote would not get any MPs into Parliament.