Another intense selection battle is underway in the Labour Party this weekend with former president Claire Szabo seeking selection in Wellington Central and, like Mt Albert, the result has the potential to be embarrassing.
Her main rival is first-term list MP Ibrahim Omer, who has the strong backing ofE tū, Labour’s largest affiliated union.
Health Minister Ayesha Verrall decided against standing, and if she had, then she would have been the clear favourite. It is possible that neither Omer nor Szabo would have stood.
Szabo is impressive, is an accomplished public speaker, has an eye-watering CV, studied music and management, and has degrees from Trinity College Dublin and Harvard . The daughter of a Hungarian refugee, she is fluent in Hungarian. She stood previously in North Shore in 2014 and was a highly competent president for three years.
But Omer, a former Eritrean refugee with one of the most compelling backstories of any MP, is thought to be favoured as the one more likely to motivate young voters to beat Tamatha Paul, the Greens’ bright young star and city councillor who is standing in the seat.
What is clear is that, unlike in Mt Albert, the incumbent MP, Finance Minister Grant Robertson, is not declaring a favourite.
Wellington Central MP and Finance Minister Grant Robertson will run as a list-only candidate at the election. Photo / Mark Mitchell
The Mt Albert result was a humiliation for former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern when her preferred candidate, rising star and list MP Camilla Belich, was roundly beaten by list MP and local resident Helen White.
Ardern who will resign as Mt Albert MP and from Parliament on April 15 resisted any explicit endorsement until the 11th hour of the heated contest.
But last Friday night with just hours to go until the selection, she and former Prime Minister Helen Clark backed Belich in an internal email distributed by Belich. But to the Labour locals, their views counted for nothing.
At the selection meeting, Ardern also formally nominated a known Belich supporter as a voting floor delegate on the selection panel. However he never got enough support to even make the panel - and White was later declared the winner by the panel.
On a candidate selection panel, there are up to seven votes: three national office-holders, two Labour electorate committee reps, a floor delegate, and a floor vote determined by the qualified members present.
Votes by the panel are not always required, however. If the four local votes are adamantly in support of one candidate, there may be little point in the office-holders forcing a vote they would lose - and perpetuate the head-office vs locals narrative.
If nothing else, the Mt Albert selection appears to have ended the era of head office riding into town determined to get the outcome it wants.
The Wellington Central selection has two other candidates besides Szabo and Omer, Gail Duncan and James Little. Duncan has next to no support.
Little is a popular young activist in the electorate and managed Robertson’s election campaign in 2020. But his nomination is seen as a signal of future ambitions rather than a serious expectation that he expects to win selection this time. He is a political adviser who, coincidentally, is at present based in Robertson’s office.
Claire Szabo when she was Labour Party president in 2020 introducing new candidates, from left, Barbara Edmonds, Dr Ayesha Verrall and Ibrahim Omer. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Szabo and Omer are clearly the two main contenders and whichever one loses, the other is likely to get a reasonably high list placing.
But an immediate past party president missing out on a selection would still be an embarrassment.
The biggest obstacle for Szabo is that she has only just moved back to Wellington from Auckland this year. A former Wellingtonian, she moved to Auckland in 2013 for a job leading Habitat for Humanity. And she has had no time to re-establish links with the Labour locals. She is currently a roving political adviser in the Beehive and is working for new minister Duncan Webb at present.
It seems, however, that Labour’s Wellington Central members are treating her better than Mt Albert treated Camilla Belich, who was regarded from the outset as an outsider for living in another part of Auckland.
The Labour electorate committee is chaired by Kathy Baxter, a respected firm but fair former Beehive staffer. She is expected to be on the selection panel along with another LEC rep.
New party president Jill Day will be on the selection panel, along with senior vice-president Carol Beaumont and the party’s women’s vice-president, Jo Brunskill.
List MP Ibrahim Omer during his maiden speech in 2020. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Members of affiliated unions are entitled to vote if they have been a union member for more than a year and live in the electorate.
Despite Grant Robertson playing “Switzerland” in the contest, quite a few locals believe he privately supports Omer. If he does, he is not letting it show.
Omer has not been a highly visible MP this term but he is said to have strong connections nationally with Muslims and with the survivors of the March 15 massacre, with the union movement, the low-paid security guards and cleaners he once helped to organise, and Labour students at Vic.
He is New Zealand’s first African MP and the custom in the bigger parties has been for list MPs with a national ethnic constituency to be list-only, not contest a safe general seat. By even seeking selection for Wellington Central, he is saying he does not want to be type-cast.
Omer’s maiden speech in November 2020 was one of the most moving that has ever been delivered and he received a standing ovation from the House.
It traversed not just how he got to New Zealand but the realities of life as a refugee and how he went from cleaning lecture theatres at Victoria University to studying there.
He explained his work with E Tu and his dedication to the principle of the living wage.
It was an inspirational and unique story. He will be hoping to emulate that inspiration in Wellington Central on Sunday afternoon.
