Hawkins may swap seat for Super City board

George Hawkins. Photo / Paul Estcourt

Long-serving Labour MP and former Cabinet Minister George Hawkins has announced his conditional retirement from Parliament.

If he is elected to the Manurewa local board of the new Auckland Council in October, he will not stand again at next year's general election in Manurewa, which he holds with a 6726 majority.

That will free up one of Labour's safest and most coveted Auckland seats, from which his colleagues have been trying to prise him for years.

By next election, Mr Hawkins will have been in Parliament for 21 years. He is a former Mayor of Papakura.

The selection of a Labour candidate in Manurewa will be held after the local body election results are known on October 9.

Other nominees for the seat are expected to include Jerome Mika, an organiser with the Engineering Printing and Manufacturing Union, and former Labour list MP Louisa Wall.

News of a potential challenge to Mr Hawkins by Mr Mika was leaked by MP Chris Carter in his anonymous note to the Press Gallery designed to destabilise the leadership of Labour leader Phil Goff.

Only a week ago Mr Hawkins was digging in.

"There are a lot of pretenders to the throne out there and they will all leave disappointed," he told the Herald.

Mr Goff, an old ally of Mr Hawkins from the factional wars of the Labour Party, talked to Mr Hawkins to arrive at a solution that could give him a dignified exit from Parliament.

Mr Carter was kicked out of the Labour caucus and then attacked Mr Goff publicly, saying he was a "very nice guy but he's just not going to win".

Meanwhile, the first poll on the Chris Carter affair is bad news for Labour.

Most voters do not think Labour can win the next election whether Phil Goff stays as leader or not, according to a TV3 poll last night. It asked voters whether Mr Carter was right, and 42 per cent said he was. A further 32 per cent said Labour cannot win no matter who the leader is.

The poll showed 33 per cent of those identifying themselves as Labour supporters did not think Mr Goff could win next year's election and 54 per cent of Green Party supporters had the same view.

Mr Goff said the poll showed Labour was the underdog.

- Additional reporting by NZPA