National Party Leader Judith Collins high fives dispatch supervisor David Zhang during a tour at Jackson Electrical in Onehunga. Photo / Dean Purcell
National Party Leader Judith Collins high fives dispatch supervisor David Zhang during a tour at Jackson Electrical in Onehunga. Photo / Dean Purcell
COMMENT:
You can spend all day on the election campaign trail waiting for that little bit of magic - and often it doesn't come.
It looked for a while as though that was what National leader Judith Collins was facing in Onehunga today, as she visited a couple of successfulbusinesses.
Some journalists tried to make their own magic by persuading her to pose in front of a scrap heap at Endless Metals. Collins and local Maungakiekie MP Denise Lee obliged.
Collins herself tried to make her own magic, taking delight in the massive crushing claw that picked up metal in the yard and turned it into scrap metal to export.
"That looked like fun," she said back in the smoko room.
Illustration / Rod Emmerson
She engaged with workers about traffic congestion in area and how the East-West link might help that, although the one worker she asked about it lived only five minutes from work.
She posed for photos with co-founder Lisa Kagan and the company's QR code promo featuring the slogan "Did we crush it?"
Kagan and husband Stuart started the company in 2018 and opened their doors for business in 2019. They now employ 45 people in three different locations.
National leader Judith Collins and Maungakiekie MP Denise Lee in front of the scrap heap at Endless Metals in Onehunga. Photo / Audrey Young
The next stop was Jackson's electrical engineering plant not far down the road. It has been in business for 40 years and employs about 70 people.
Founder Jim Jackson explained that the company policy is that "there's no such thing as no".
He said people walk in the door describing what they want and they design and make all manner of things for all manner of people, including Team New Zealand.
One part of the plant was off limits to the Collins tour because Team NZ was apparently delivering something to be worked on and they might not take kindly to a bank of cameras, Jackson thought.
Collins met other people along the way, one woman in accounts who had been there for 25 years. She watched machines sculpting polystyrene for fibreglass moulds; she talked with a technician repairing a 63-amp lifeguard.
And then she met David Zhang, the warehouse supervisor.
"Judith Collins!" he declared, clearly thrilled to meet a political hero. "You should have been National leader long ago."
This was the magic and spark that Collins was looking for in an otherwise perfunctory day on the campaign. It clearly thrilled her because she rewarded him with a high five.
