National Party leader Judith Collins light-heartedly roasts me within two minutes of meeting.
"Local Democracy Reporter? That's good actually. It's better than Local Communism.
"That's my little sense of humour, Felix. Life's too short not to have a sense of humour.
"I often think I am a stand-up comedian. You've either got it or you ain't."
Collins was in Rotorua today
to announce
that would see the launch of a national tourism festival and a tourism accelerator fund if National is elected to govern on October 17.
Collins says a new National government wouldn't be "housing lots of people from other places in Rotorua motels" - something the Ministry of Social Development refutes is happening.
"It is important that if we're going to house those who are homeless, we get that housing built for them, not just continue to pay up to, in some cases, $2000 a week to keep people in motels.
"That's a huge amount of money.
"We need to actually build housing."
For an incoming National government, it would be about "getting a lot of community housing built" and continuing and expanding Housing First initiatives.
The first step is to "get rid" of the Resource Management Act, and override the Act with new legislation for "mass consents".
"That's what we had to do after Christchurch. We didn't do it enough in many ways. We did better in Kaikoura."
She takes the opportunity to point out the Labour Government's under-delivery on Kiwibuild.
"I don't understand how they can even have the gall to ever talk about housing. They promised 100,000 houses with Kiwibuild [by 2028]. They said 16,000 in the first three years, they got 580.
"They've set up a new government department, spent $2 billion on it … It's basically $4m per house."
A Kiwibuild fact sheet stated $2b was an "initial capital injection, which will be recycled as houses are sold".
Rotorua also has one of the highest Māori populations in New Zealand and Collins says she would focus on Māori education and housing.
"When we took office in 2008 Māori success rates in Level 2 NCEA were about 52 per cent. When we left office it was close to 75 per cent. You put the effort into education.
"You get education, you get housing, you can get a job."
She says there is "a lot of Māori land" that could be used for housing, but the challenge was getting money to build.
"Just get the housing built. I don't really care where it is, when it's state housing, I just want it built.
She says infrastructure work National has committed to will also create jobs.
"You accept failure based on ethnicity, you're accepting racism."
The Prime Minister had copped a bit of flak about not visiting Ihumātao, but Collins says she too would not visit.
"I would respect the Treaty settlement that had already been in place. The mana whenua ... wanted to do a deal to build houses.
"The people who are occupying the land … in my opinion, are there illegally.
"What I see when I look at some of the occupiers of Ihumātao are a bunch of skinny white people who want to interfere in other peoples' property rights.
"I might go to visit the local mana whenua when they're getting their housing."
There has been some criticism of how she described Donald Trump in a televised debate on Wednesday night.
"I was looking to find something nice to say.
"I'll say this about Trump, he may have upset a lot of people on various things, but he hasn't yet shown, from what I can see, a great readiness to send other people's kids to war."
Rotorua's received a fairly big piece of the Government funding pie with money for the Lakefront, Whakarewarewa Forest and other projects - so would National keep topping that up, or has Rotorua had its fill?
Flanking Collins, Rotorua's MP Todd McClay chimes in with plans for upgrades to roads across the electorate.
"Has Rotorua had all it deserves? No we haven't, because we pay more than our fair share of [fuel] tax … and most of that money goes to other parts of the country, we need our roads."
Collins punctuates the next line with her signature cackle: "you're going to get a nice big road, there you go".
"The infrastructure plan, that's what we've got, building housing - all these things will help Rotorua.
"We're not going to be bringing back international tourism anytime until we've got the border protection agency in place and we are absolutely certain of the safety of the regime.
"Keeping Auckland out of lockdown is helpful for Rotorua."
It's election night, National has won the 2020 election and Judith Collins will be the next Prime Minister of New Zealand - what are the first words to come out of her mouth?
The answer is surprisingly demure for a politician with "Crusher" for a nickname: "Thank you".
'This decision has not been made lightly'.