by Geoffrey Churchman

This took place last night in the Southwards Car Museum theatre where about 250 Grey Power members plus members of the different parties showed up to hear 5 of the 6 candidates for the seat speak and answer questions.

It was the first time I’d heard sitting MP Terisa Ngobi speak anywhere in the last three years and I also learned how her name is pronounced — ‘N’ plus ‘gobi’ with a short vowel. The prior concern that Labour+Green’s disruptive ‘whoop, whoop’ brigade would show up in their face nappies with their rude behaviour proved groundless and this time it was Ngobi who got the biggest jeers while National candidate Tim Costley got the biggest applause. It seemed to me that Ngobi didn’t fully understand the statistics that she had been given by the party heirarchy to parrot and suffered the inevitable audience reaction.

The six candidates included one for Liz Gunn’s Party, NZ Loyal — Bryan Ten-Have — who seems to think that a 1% tax on all financial transactions is the magic wand for economic salvation, but he also mentioned some of the reasons why the party was formed, all of which I agree with. However, he didn’t come across as the best informed of the candidates. But the most amateurish was Green candidate Ali Muhammed (yes that is the right way around) who is obsessed with Socialist dogma and his diction sounded like he had just got off the boat from wherever he is from.

Sean Rush, the Act candidate as a barrister by training speaks well, and towards the end of the 2+ hours injected a bit of passion and vernacular which was well received. Sharing the rostrum for the latter part of the meeting was former Wellington Mayor Andy Foster who while not standing in Otaki (NZ First isn’t standing a candidate here) spoke on behalf of NZF to persuades party votes from the audience. Both Sean Rush and Andy Foster were on the Wellington Council last term so know each other well. Andy Foster was able to able to give the lie to Terisa Ngobi’s claim that this government has consulted with local councils about the massive changes, all to achieve centralised rule, it has imposed.

There is another candidate on the ballot paper for Otaki, a Bob Wessex who is given the designation NAP — which stands for Not a Party(!) and wasn’t there.

Audience questions were generally intelligent ones, although there was the inevitable groan-inducing ‘what will you do to mitigate climate change’? Sean Rush handled that one the best.

The final question was on Freedom of Speech and Sean Rush as well as Bryan Ten-Have had pointed things to say about the regime of censorship, deplatforming, defamation and general throught control that we have been subjected to under this dreadful government and its legacy media lackeys.

Overall I enjoyed listening to Tim Costley, Sean Rush and Andy Foster, who are good speakers with good understanding of issues, but you can only choose one, and our editors have made clear who that will be. Early voting begins on Monday.