On the hunt for hearts, minds and votes

National MPs go pressing the flesh to the amusement - and sometimes bemusement - of Peter Calder

"You want to know what's wrong with the place?" the thin Maori man demands as he peers over the top of his reading glasses.

It sounds like a statement but it is a question, and he's not waiting round for someone else to answer it.

"Too many teachers and too many lawyers," he says.

Jim Hetet, who proudly claims the famous weaver, the late Rangimarie, as his auntie, may not know that the two men he's laying down the law to at the Northcote shopping centre are North Shore MP Wayne Mapp (a former lawyer) and Ilam MP Gerry Brownlee, who once taught technical subjects in high school.

But you get the impression that it wouldn't change anything if he did.

This is the election campaign beyond the bright lights of television studios and the hoopla of leaders' debates. Here's where votes are courted now so they can be counted later, in the shopping malls of Auckland's North Shore.

And on this particular midweek afternoon, the politicians are all politeness and the punters all puzzlement. Many wave the campaigners aside, a few argue the toss, but most just look bemused.

The men in sober suits emblazoned with National rosettes step off the big blue bus and work the shops armed with a pile of pamphlets and an unshakeable conviction that they're right.

They are on Northcote MP Ian Revell's patch, supporting his re-election campaign but seeking, too, to boost the party vote that will be so crucial to the makeup of the new Parliament.

Mr Revell strides energetically between shop counters and cafe tables, thrusting pamphlets under shoppers' noses and trumpeting his "10 good reasons to vote National back in."

He hangs on like grim death to a conversation with a woman determined to vote the Government out (and go to prison) over the new drivers' licences and tries to ease the fears of another angered at smalltown factory closures.

Across the other side of the centre, Wayne Mapp asks an enterprising travel agent how business is and watches nonplussed as she thrusts a brochure into his hands and staples her card to it.

"Give me a ring if there's anything I can help with," she chirps, having got the better of the encounter.

The bright blue bus - emblazoned with a two-metre-high image of Jenny Shipley, it's nicknamed Lipstick One - makes a few jaws drop when it rolls through a down-at-heel state housing area.

"This," says Mr Revell, almost proprietorially, "is one of the more difficult areas. It's a bit dodgy. I can't get my staff to door-knock in here so I have to do it myself.

"But it's a good place to watch helicopters. The police chopper spends a lot of time up around here."

It's hard to know how many minds are getting changed, how many votes are being gathered, but Gerry Brownlee, far from his home turf, reckons it's effort well spent.

"When people come to cast a vote, they ask themselves: who do I know? This exercise works because people get a feel for what you're like."

Behind his refrigerated counter, Bob Ham the butcher is not so sure.

"Let's be honest," he says, "you only see them once every three years."