Hadyn Jones: Next Top Politician show fails to find a celebrity

Andrew Little is standing in New Plymouth. Photo / Richard Robinson

The other night I went to see democracy in action. There was a sacrifice involved. MasterChef was on, I had cheese-flavoured snacks in the pantry and I figured if the telly got tedious I could always watch powder skiing on YouTube. However, I said no to all of that and yes to casting an eye over the men hoping to represent me.

So there we were, one person for every four seats in a small suburban hall. There were probably more attending detention at the boys' high school up the road than the 36 of us gathered to watch the latest instalment of New Plymouth's Next Top Politician.

A quick hands-up poll showed only three of us were undecided. The candidates must have been gutted. It's quite an effort to iron a shirt, find a suit, have a shave, do your hair and get a speech prepared for just three votes.

Still, in New Plymouth the margins are small. The incumbent, National's Jonathan Young, has the country's smallest majority of 105 votes.

Labour has put up its next big hope, former union leader Andrew Little. Gordon Brown, the local newspaper reporter, told me Little could be the next Labour Prime Minister. In the next breath he told me he did not know if he could win New Plymouth.

I left, after two hours of bluster, a little disillusioned with democracy. The candidates for the big parties sounded like they simply read from their leader's playbook.

I could have stayed at home and got the same information off their party's websites during the ad breaks in Celebrity Apprentice. They talked about asset sales and getting the economy going, but there were no concrete solutions for a city needing better roads.

New Plymouth also needs a bigger bridge to stop locals going catatonic over the twice-daily congestion. (Congestion in provincial terms is a 10-minute wait, max.)

The man who made the most sense was Rusty Kane, who stood at the back of the hall and only got five minutes to talk. Don't underestimate Rusty though, he got 700 votes last time ... what Labour would have done for just 100 of those.

Rusty wants to go to Wellington and sell his vote to the ruling party in exchange for things New Plymouth needs - such as a bigger bridge and better roads. He won't get elected, he doesn't have the big party marketing machinery behind him and only 36 of us know about his plan.

But he does have a good idea in going to Wellington and getting good stuff for your community. I thought that's what all our local MPs were supposed to do, rather than sitting on the benches and toeing the party line.