One man's poll: Voices of the people

The politicians claim they know what the country wants. SIMON COLLINS travelled the length and breadth of the land to find out what really matters to them.

Kaitaia College seventh-former Fauna Verbeek spoke for an entire community at a public meeting last month about cuts in services at Kaitaia Hospital.

"There are three basic things the community needs: education, health, law enforcement," she said.

The meeting, attended by 900 people in a town of just 5000, was called after the Northland District Health Board stopped surgery at the hospital outside normal business hours.

"How can you tell a six-month-old that they can only swallow dangerous objects between nine and five?" Verbeek asked.

Since then, the board has cancelled the credentials of the hospital's three surgeons to perform caesareans - a procedure they have carried out safely for years. This week 2000 people marched through the town in protest at sending pregnant women 155km away to Whangarei instead.

Kaitaia's trauma has shocked people throughout the country. In Timaru last week, Joanne, an accountancy clerk, said: "I'm a bit worried, being in a small town too."

Leah, a resident in Timaru's Strathallan rest home, said Kaitaia's plight was "awful".

As the election campaign opened this week, New Zealand basked in apparent prosperity. Dairy farmers have just had their best year ever. There are 9 per cent more full-time jobs than there were three years ago. We are still spending more than we are earning, but by less than at any time for 13 years.

Asked to rate "the state of the country" on a seven-point scale, 81 per cent of the more than 600 people questioned by the Weekend Herald in the past three weeks rated it "okay" or better. Opinion polls suggest that on July 27 voters will give the Labour Party victory on a scale it has not enjoyed since the "social security" election of 1938.

Yet, while aware of the good times, New Zealanders like Verbeek are worried.

"Kaitaia seems to be in a social and economic decline," she told last month's meeting. "I believe the reason surgeons and anaesthetists do not want to live here is because of Kaitaia's social and economic decline.

"Kids roam the streets. If we don't get rid of the 'Cannabis Country' label, the doctors we have at present will possibly leave also.

"Students can't wait to get out of Kaitaia. They hate it," she said.

And it's not just Kaitaia. In Hastings, retail manager Simon Bingley, 27, said: "I don't want to stay in New Zealand longer than I have to. It's so tempting to go away because we are not properly paid here."

Carl Davis, a 39-year-old engineer in Howick, said: "In my father's day, him being a tradesman, he could support his wife and four children on his wage alone. In the same trade, a person today could not do that."

Chris Lane, 50, a Hamilton sales manager, said: "Nobody seems to have any money any more. It's getting more expensive to live. Wages are going down, prices are going up."

For this article, we asked people to rate the present state of the country "considering the things that you think matter most". We then asked them why they chose the rating they did.

Thirteen per cent said the state of the country was "excellent" or "very good", 35 per cent said "good", 33 per cent "okay", 13 per cent "poor" and only 5 per cent "very poor" or "awful".

Of those who gave reasons for a high rating, the vast majority cited the economy.

"Things are booming. We are building things," said Brian Smith, 60, a night worker at Hastings' expanding Write Price Foodbarn.

In Wanganui, cleaner Joan Jacob, 40, said: "More people are getting jobs. All the ones who were on the dole for years are getting into the workforce."

In Greymouth, pest-control operator Murray Piner said: "I've been in this business 21 years, and because of what's happening with farming and mining it's the best it's been for a long time."

There is also a sense of welcome political stability.

"Helen Clark has done a good job in the past two years and why destabilise it?" said Ngatea dairy farmer Sue Speedy. "I hate chopping and changing all the time."

Manukau accountant Geoff Foster echoed the sentiment. At age 55 he was planning to vote Labour for the first time. "They are going along with a steady ship - no-surprises management."

Yet these positives were almost taken for granted. When asked about the state of New Zealand, natural pride made people want to say "excellent".

So Labour got scant credit for specifics. Only 1.7 per cent of those questioned mentioned its decision to scrap interest on student loans while studying, 1.3 per cent cited lower state house rentals, 0.5 per cent pointed to fairer employment law and the same number to paid parental leave.

Instead, people wanted to talk about the reasons they could not rank the state of the nation more highly. Their list was dominated by a set of issues to do with the economy, jobs and welfare, mentioned by a total of 36 per cent of the sample, plus Verbeek's three "basics": Education (mentioned by 30 per cent), crime (22 per cent) and health (20 per cent).

Smaller numbers worried about political bickering and broken promises (9 per cent), immigration and foreign aid (also 9 per cent), and Treaty of Waitangi issues and genetic modification (both 6 per cent). There were no limits on the number or kind of issues people could mention.

In the country's northernmost settlement of Te Hapua, near North Cape, oyster farmers Moekauri and Nutana Wiki exemplify some of the positives and the worries about jobs. They rated the state of the country "between okay and poor" because of the red tape they have to go through to try to expand their business.

"I don't like these Greens," Nutana said. "They are the main stops on this aquaculture because they think it's taking up space within the harbour that belongs to the birds."

There are about eight oyster farms now on the Parengarenga Harbour, and "quite a potential for more".

"There are very few people on the dole here now. Parengarenga has been able to make money," Moekauri said.

But elsewhere, unemployment persists. Robert Hopopapera, a former forestry worker in Rotorua, said he could not even get a job on a roadside digger because you now need a heavy traffic licence to operate it.

"If you already know how to drive a digger, why go for it?" he asked. "The dole people are getting left out."

Education is supposed to be a job ticket, but with high school teachers on strike on and off for months, parents are concerned. Surprisingly, there was virtual unanimity that the teachers deserved a pay rise.

"They should keep up with inflation," said William, a Taranaki dairy farmer.

"In most countries, they pay the police and teachers and hospital nurses. Those are the people they don't look after [here]," said Jill Warner, a Howick shop manager.

One or two were prepared to pay higher taxes to finance education, but most suggested the money should be found by cuts elsewhere.

Prime candidates for cutting included welfare, foreign aid, treaty settlements, the number of MPs and what is seen as Prime Minister Helen Clark's favourite, the arts.

As a retired couple in Timaru put it: "She's given too much to the arts and Greens instead of hospitals and schools and things that really matter."

People also wanted more police and much tougher sentences for criminals (see separate story). And, in spite of all the money successive Governments have poured into health, the public perception is that health care is harder to get.

"I fear for the health of people who can't afford health insurance," said Henderson homemaker Karen Davis.

Said Sheryl Cullen, of Manurewa: "People can't afford to go to the doctor, hence the reason they end up with terminal illnesses."

Not just in Kaitaia but wherever you go, people have horror stories about hospital waiting lists.

In Balfour in rural Southland, retired farmer Anita Stevens was due to have an operation in March but had to make way for a more urgent case.

She finally paid to have the operation done privately - only to wake from the anaesthetic to have the surgeon say he had had to abandon it halfway through because he realised she needed the backup of a larger hospital.

"It was a horrible feeling. Thank goodness my husband was there," she said. She's still waiting for the procedure.

Oddly, all this angst does not seem to be channelled into any political alternative. At the Kaitaia meeting, National MP John Carter did not attack the Labour Government and said he was using his contacts to find an anaesthetist for the hospital.

"It's not an issue of funding," he said. "We don't have enough people available to do the services."

No one blamed Labour MP Dover Samuels, who backed the community's fight to restore services.

The only other MP present, Act's Ken Shirley, stood silently on the sidelines. Act's message of compulsory private health insurance, allowing Kaitaia people to pay higher premiums if they wanted a better service, would have been hard to pitch to the mostly elderly, low-income audience.

Six years of mixed-member proportional (MMP) government seem to have failed to restore any trust in politicians.

"I won't vote because I can't see the point. You vote one in and they don't do the things you asked them to do," said Stephen Sharpe, 38, who runs an internet cafe in Kaitaia. "They are all as bad as each other. It makes me angry."

Alf Letch, 78, a retired Wanganui plumber, said: "All the political parties are now pretty well the same, there's very little difference between any of them."

And in Greymouth, 50-year-old welder Ross Hodder said: "I don't think MMP does any good. It creates too much squabbling."

Immigration, foreign aid and the Treaty of Waitangi are classic cases where both major parties seem to have lost touch with the public.

"People are coming in from other countries and getting housing before the New Zealanders," said Mike Rayman, who runs a painting company in Auckland's Blockhouse Bay.

"You get the Somalis and all them coming in. We've been living here for 30 years and we have to wait two years on a waiting list. The next minute, they [refugees] get in before us."

Glenbrook market gardener Reupena Kovati said: "The Government is giving $40 million to Indonesia, yet we are struggling to get the education fixed up."

L. Bennett, a young Howick mother-to-be, applied the same logic to treaty settlements - "the inequity of Government funds, such as $2 million to the Middlemore neonatal unit and $175 million to Maori television".

"It's time someone stood up against the Treaty of Waitangi and put a stop to it," she said.

The politicians also risk alienating many voters over genetic modification. Fears about GM food were raised across all regions, ages and genders.

Ray Murray, a Tauranga draftsman, said: "We have a country that is GE-free. We are unique in the world. We already have a large organic industry - why not make the most of it?"

In Christchurch, sales assistant Robyn Liddall said: "As a country, we have often stood for things that matter. I think GE is a major issue. Once you let out field trials, you don't know what's going to happen."

Other issues did not prove big concerns in this open-ended survey. Only 1.8 per cent of people mentioned Labour's scrapping of the Air Force Skyhawks, 1 per cent worried about traffic and roads and 0.5 per cent talked about the Matrimonial Property Act.

What voters did volunteer, however, was a hugely lopsided preference for Helen Clark over National's Bill English. The way people talked about her, you would think Clark was everybody's lifelong friend.

"I feel more in tune with her for some reason," said Hariata Hetaraka, a 21-year-old mother in Wanganui and about as far away as you can get from Clark's original university milieu.

A Hastings labourer and former gang member, who gave his name as Alan, said: "I like Helen, she's down to earth."

A Christchurch sales assistant, Mrs D. McMillan, said: "I like Helen. I probably would vote National but I don't like Bill English, I think he's too weak."

Clark has her detractors, like 85-year-old Mrs Joan Evershed, of Tauranga, who said: "For anyone to invite the Queen to dinner and then turn up in her gardening clothes! I reckon if you start losing all the dignity, I think that's what's gone."

But in this sample only 1.7 per cent had anything negative to say about her, compared with 10.2 per cent who praised her.

For English the figures were the other way around: 4.8 per cent against and only 2.3 per cent for.

Boxing in the Fight for Life event accounted for most of his positive mentions. Said Unitec business student Vincent Suifua, 18: "Bill English is cool, I reckon."

But English is struggling to convey what he stands for - in part, perhaps, because he is being deliberately ambiguous, using policies such as a 2008 deadline on treaty settlements to try to appeal, for example, both to Maori activists such as National candidate Hekia Parata and to Pakeha who just want the whole thing to go away.

Clark's strength is what Kaitaia teacher Joann Reid calls her "no-nonsense approach". You know where you stand with her. "I like her sense of direction."

Howick builder Glen Watson, a traditional National voter now switching to Labour, said: "I don't perceive Bill English as a strong leader. They used to have a good definite direction. Now that the Labour Party has moved more to the centre, National is not as clear as it used to be. It's blurred the lines between them."

English cannot play, like NZ First and Act, on resentment about refugees and treaty claims. On National Radio last Sunday, he spoke about his past volunteer work with Cambodian refugees and supported Clark's decision to accept refugees from the Tampa. His Samoan wife Mary is a doctor in Wellington's most multicultural suburb, Newtown.

No matter how much more he promises to spend on health and education, voters still see Labour as historically the party for the needy.

"They are for the people," said Kaitaia motelier Sally McPhee.

Nor can English jump on the GE-free bandwagon, because that would contradict National's core strength as "the business party".

That leaves only the economy. And on that score, Clark's election timing is superb. The recent drop in world dairy prices has not yet fed through to farmers, and the sharp rise in the kiwi dollar that will squeeze exporters' incomes seems, for now, like a sign of strength.

"I suppose there's nothing really major [wrong]," said professional rugby player Josh Heke, on his way out to France. "The dollar's rising so we can't really moan about that, can we?"

So National is bleeding - in all directions. There are farmers like Southland's John Morrison who are voting Labour to stop the Greens from getting the balance of power, and others like retired Hawke's Bay farmer Margaret Harper who are voting Green to stop Labour getting sole power.

A Christchurch roading manager called Pete is even voting Act in the hope that it might be Labour's coalition partner.

"I'd hate to see Labour get a clear majority," he said.

Only in one place does National seem to be gaining votes - on the West Coast, where Labour was founded. Coasters saw the nasty downside of Helen Clark's "no-nonsense approach" when she called them "feral" and "inbred", or genetically incapable of accepting Labour's ban on logging native forests.

Two years later, relief teacher Val Anisy is horrified at what Clark's comments have done to her students' self-respect.

"I have had kids quote to me, 'We are feral inbreds.' That's what she said. The leader let us down," Anisy said.

Greymouth nurse Nola Richards is also switching to National. "I feel we've got the wrong person as Prime Minister. I don't think she cares about people, specifically for the West Coast. She's just trying to lock us up."

For Labour, the Coast is a warning of the fine line between strong leadership and heartless arrogance. As Clark knows from her own bitter early years as leader, voters' views of their leaders can change dramatically.

But for National the only real hope lies, paradoxically, in that rising dollar and the likelihood that as a result there will be a lot more people worried about keeping their jobs and making an adequate living in three years' time.

Until then, Bill English will just have to wait. This is Helen Clark's year.

* This article, and others to follow next week, are based on 604 face-to-face interviews with a total of 620 individuals from Te Hapua in the Far North to Invercargill in the south, from June 12 to 27.

Everyone was shown a card saying, "On the things that matter most, I'd rate the current state of NZ as: 7/Excellent, 6/Very good, 5/Good, 4/Okay, 3/Poor, 2/Very poor, 1/Awful." Everyone was then asked to explain why they made their choice.

They were also shown the reverse of the card, listing all parties registered when the election was called on June 11, plus Jim Anderton's new Progressive Coalition. They were asked to say which party they were thinking of supporting with their party vote, and why.

Finally, there were three further questions about ethnic issues, which will be reported on Monday. Names, ages, occupations and ethnicity were requested, for quoting purposes, but not required.

The gender balance (51 per cent women, 49 per cent men) matched the 2001 census. Interviews in Auckland (32 per cent), the rest of the North Island (42 per cent) and the South Island (27 per cent) also nearly matched the national population split.

However, lower-income and younger people were overrepresented because they were more likely to be on the streets and in shopping malls, where most of the interviews took place. Just 30 per cent of the sample were aged 50 and over, 45 per cent were aged 30 to 49 and 25 per cent were under 30, against census figures of 37 per cent, 41 per cent and 22 per cent respectively.

Only 74 per cent had European ethnicity (census 81 per cent), 17 per cent (15 per cent) Maori, 6 per cent (7 per cent) Pacific Island and 8 per cent (7 per cent) Asian and other. These tallies count people of dual ethnicity twice.

Intended party votes for Labour exactly matched this week's Herald-DigiPoll (51.2 per cent). But National voters were under-represented (22 per cent against DigiPoll's 24.6 per cent) and the Greens were overrepresented (10.6 per cent against 9.6 per cent). This survey does not claim scientific accuracy.

* Monday: Ethnic politics.

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