There can be few things worse than being at work and quietly going about doing your job while, unbeknown to you, you might not actually have a job tomorrow. That was the invidious position which Southland National MP Penny Simmonds found herself in yesterday. She spent her lunchtime taking part in a boisterous pre-election debate at the University of Otago, all the while being unaware that while she was on stage Prime Minister Christopher Luxon had called an urgent caucus vote on his leadership for the following day. Luckily for Ms Simmonds no-one in a standing-room only Union Hall broke the news to her, so she was able to take a full and uninhibited part in the highly spirited 90 minute free-for-all. As you would expect at an Otago University Students Association-organised debate student concerns were front and centre, including means testing student allowances, the quality — or otherwise — of student flats and voluntary membership of students associations. ©Allied MediaFrom left Labour list MP Shanan Halbert, Te Pāti Māori Te Tai Tonga candidate Lisa Marie Murch, Green party co-leader Chole Swarbrick and Alliance leader Victor Billot during the OUSA Leaders Debate at the Otago University on Tuesday. Photo: Peter McIntosh Act New Zealand’s Parmjeet Parmar was behind the eight ball from the start: on Monday her party had announced a policy to make student services fees — the at present compulsory contribution to help run services like Student Health, counselling and welfare programmes — voluntary. Predictably, she spent most of her time behind the microphone being drowned out by angry voices, although to be fair to her she kept on saying things that she knew would be unpopular — such as defending time limits on voter enrolment or means testing allowances. Receiving a much more favourable reception was the Te Pāti Māori Te Tai Tonga candidate Lisa Marie Murch, who adopted what is almost always a winning strategy — promising the audience almost exactly what they want: ‘‘We are committing to doubling your student allowance and keeping it in line with inflation. We're going to remove the parental threshold for you to receive student allowance which means it will not go on your parents' income. We're going to get rid of the cost of living requirement and take that repayment away. You will not have to repay that. We are looking out for the students. ’’ ©Allied MediaFrom left is MP for Invercargill National MP Penny Simmonds, Act list MP Parmjeet Parmar, NZ First list Andy Foster and Opportunity Party deputy leader Daniel Eb during the OUSA Leaders Debate at the Otago University on Tuesday. Photo: Peter McIntosh Alliance leader Victor Billott, with his all socialism all the time agenda, also had no difficulty earning applause. Opportunity Party deputy leader Daniel Eb meanwhile, more than held his own in front of a receptive audience, after pointedly moving his seat to the middle of the stage to physically demonstrate his party’s centrist philosophy: ‘‘We cannot afford to have the only party that stands for the environment be the Green Party. We have to have a party like Opportunity that can work constructively with both sides and when the right want to slow down or backslide on climate, we stay firm and we say no. Climate needs a representative around the Cabinet table, every single government.’’ Although possibly not a New Zealand First Cabinet table, given its representative, list MP Andy Foster, was under fire throughout, although he did curry some favour on the subject of asset sales. ‘‘By and large, New Zealand First has always stood against asset sales . . . In terms of buying back assets, the one that we're committed to saying we do want to see if we can buy back is the BNZ, because we think we should have a bank at scale, so we're not always paying the Aussies.’’ Labour’s Shanan Halbert and Ms Simmonds were far away from each other on stage, let alone in political philosophies, and Mr Halbert spent most of his time trying to bait his main rival. Primarily he wanted Ms Simmonds to confirm that she plans to privatise tertiary education. She does not, and said so several times. It would be fair to say that Mr Halbert did not take no for an answer. ©Allied MediaStudents during the OUSA Leaders Debate at the Otago University on Tuesday. Photo: Peter McIntosh To the surprise of absolutely no-one, Greens co-leader Chloe Swarbrick was the clear winner of the debate on an audience voice vote. ‘‘We believe in the Green Party that we have this thing called society because we are not 5 million people all running around in competition with each other,’’ Swarbrick said. ‘‘We are New Zealanders and we work together to ensure everybody has their basic needs met. It's that simple.’’ And with that, everyone then went their separate political ways. mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz
