How were you politicised?
My mother's involvement with Social Credit. She was in Garry Knapp's campaign team in the Torbay electorate. I know that my father was really irritated by the fact that tea wasn't on the table because mum was out campaigning so it made an impression on lots of levels.
Do you have a political hero, living or dead?
It would be my mum (Anne Martin, NZ First's current party president). Both with Social Credit and NZ First it wasn't seen as the norm, you were slightly off the track from everybody else and when you are slightly off the mainstream you get a bit of ridicule, you get a bit of flak.
She was also a primary school teacher at a time when women's responsibilities were seen to be to your children and do the housework. My dad never lifted up a vacuum cleaner or anything like that. She stood as a candidate for [Social Credit and NZ First] but was never voted in, was never highly placed on the list. So she stood as a candidate for a party that she believed in, even though that party never really believed in her as such. But she believed in it and it wasn't about her ego or personal position, it was about what this party stood for so that's why to me she's that political hero. What was your most memorable summer holiday as a child?Down at Waimarama [in southern Hawkes Bay] on the marae with my grandmother and grandfather. It wasn't the swimming, it was the crayfish. Why I remember it was there was so much crayfish I was sick from crayfish.
