Otago looks ready to follow traditional National way

Losing traditionally safe National Party electorates such as Otago to Labour was the salt in the wound for the party when it haemorrhaged in the 2002 election.

It was one seat National believed it should never have lost, and the party's response reflects the rejuvenation it has undergone since that drubbing.

It found an enthusiastic candidate in former Oamaru local body politician Jacqui Dean, who has been campaigning for months and, on current polling, is likely to unseat David Parker, a surprise winner by just 684 votes three years ago.

The Otago electorate is so vast that maintaining a profile for an MP is difficult. Being a backbench MP makes that even more so.

Some say David Parker, 45, married with three children, has been effectively anonymous, but others say he has toiled away, albeit in the background, and worked on issues such as securing the future of Dunstan Hospital and encouraging the desire of Queenstown health services to come under the jurisdiction of the Otago District Health Board, rather than Southland.

But Mr Parker will struggle to keep the seat with such a slim majority.

Mrs Dean, 48, who is married with two sons and a daughter, has been campaigning full-time for months, has a high visibility and track-record in the electorate's key population area of North Otago and that effort should be sufficient to ensure the seat returns to the National Party.

Geographically, Otago is one of the country's largest electorates, and socially one of the most diverse, from service towns such as Oamaru in the east to the affluent, go-ahead boom towns of Queenstown and Wanaka three hours' drive to the west. On the farms in between live traditional National Party supporters.

The electorate will be a weathervane of people's attitudes to a number of recent issues, such as resource management planning, the growth of compliance costs, water management and property rights.

The reality for the Labour-led coalition is that many Otago constituents feel alienated and more politically motivated to work to unseat it. There appear to be more National Party billboards in farmers' paddocks than previously, and politics is being widely discussed.

Farmers who may have been disinterested in the 2002 campaign are angered by rising compliance costs (claimed by some to have increased by up to $4000 a year), public access to rivers and lakes, and the management of the Waitaki River.

The debate over public access to farm land has galvanised many farmers and has fuelled a wider debate about the property rights of farmers compared with those enjoyed by urban land owners.

The growth of the conservation estate through tenure review and the increasing influence and power of the Department of Conservation has provoked conflict between other landowners and recreational users in the sprawling electorate.

The tourist towns in Central Otago have also become a testing ground for some of the country's biggest planning issues involving land subdivision, resource consent appeals and private property rights.

There is dissatisfaction on all sides of the planning debate, including the influence of frivolous appeals and the cost and loss of rights for property owners versus the environmental and social impacts of development.

In North Otago, the major issue is the management of the Waitaki River. That will influence the growth of farming, irrigation and businesses.

The Waitaki River Water Allocation Committee is to report back after the election, but its draft proposal outraged farmers, business and community leaders who maintain any further restriction will hamper growth.

But the opposite view, that all the water in the river should be protected against commercial exploitation, has aroused a good deal of support.

Otago
Held by Labour's David Parker
2002 majority: 684
Facing strong challenge from National's Jacqui Dean

- OTAGO DAILY TIMES