East Coast Bays

In 15 years as a National MP on the North Shore, Murray McCully has seen his electorate change in a way that has made his job harder - but fortunes for property developers.

A 1999 redrawing of electorate boundaries took away blue-tinged Whenuapai and Coatesville and his majority shrank from 11,647 to 4948 votes. This year, boundary changes have pushed true-blue areas Greenhithe and Albany in to the new seat of Helensville.

McCully's Albany seat is once more called East Coast Bays but it's a different place to what it was.

Many Bays backyards now have homes on them and rows of terrace houses have sprung up on the fields facing the Northern Motorway. New residents include families from South Africa and Korea who, like others, were drawn to the electorate by its proximity to Massey University's Albany campus and to Rangitoto College.

The result, says McCully, is enormous pressure on schools, especially Rangitoto, which is now the country's largest.

The senior party strategist says National's policy to repeal zoning and allow schools greater self-management is strongly supported, as are his efforts to get a new middle or intermediate school by 2004 - a year earlier than the Ministry of Education is planning.

Other issues going against the Government are Treaty of Waitangi claims and law and order.

But Labour candidate Hamish McCracken is upbeat. He predicts that boundary changes alone will take a 1200-vote bite out of McCully's majority.

The trade union official was pleased with his second place last time but realistically agrees that McCully's seat is safe.

Labour's focus is on the party vote - and getting those thousands of new residents on the roll and voting.

A colourful campaign is assured.

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