PHOTO
With less than three weeks until Election Day, RNZ's South Island Correspondent Tim Brown and camera operator Louis Dunham have toured Te Waipounamu to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly from the places and people where the political spotlight does not usually shine.
They take readers on a journey from the Backroads to the Beehive, starting with the West Coast.
The West Coast's wild ancient forests and vast mineral wealth gave rise to the country's labour movement.
Key figures from Blackball's 1908 miners strike later served in the first Labour government and the West Coast has been a stronghold for the Labour Party since the 1920s, with the region's miners and workers its garrison.
The social and economic upheaval of the 1980s rearranged traditional alliances and the coast is now deeply divided.
National has won previously unwinnable West Coast seats three times since 1990, with Maureen Pugh most recently toppling Damien O'Connor by just over a thousand votes in 2023.
National has won the party vote in West Coast-Tasman at every election this century, apart from 2020's Labour landslide.
Moana mechanic David Larkin says it is not hard to figure out why.
"The values of the Labour Party now are nothing like the Labour Party that formed here. Those values have all gone," he says.
Just down the road in Ruru, fisherman Allan Rooney says he was Labour supporter until the party lost its way in the 1980s.
"It's a party of people that have never had a frickin' job. Look at 'em," he says during a break from weed-whacking his lush green lawns.
Pugh is stepping down in November and Labour stalwart O'Connor is instead running in the Otago and South Canterbury electorate of Waitaki after 33 years representing the coast.
Katie Milne, a West Coast dairy farmer and former Federated Farmers president, is standing for National and Rory Paterson, a North Canterbury-based teacher, is representing Labour.
Rooney is dismissive of Labour's chances.
"They didn't go so well last election. The guy that's standing here doesn't even friggin' live here but he's thinking about moving here if he gets in," he says.
Rooney is also dismissive of Chris Hipkins, only offering a husky chortle when asked for an opinion about the Labour leader. But he is no fan of National leader Christopher Luxon either and plans to back the coalition's minor parties.
"Back to reality is definitely Winston and looking ahead is David Seymour, right now," he says.
"If you'd asked me about ACT five or six years ago I would have started laughing but he has common sense policies."
The coast is full of contrasts.
'I'm not even religious but I get down on my knees and I pray that we get these clowns out of there'
Blackball local Matthew Howard - who prefers to be known as Mr Howard - does not see it that way.
"People have just got stupider and lost the point of why we had a Labour Party in the first place," he says dismissively when asked for an assessment of Labour's waning fortunes.
"We had to have a Labour Party so that we got decent working conditions, decent wages, people could have a decent home to live in and a decent life.
"The people in National and ACT, they don't want that for everybody. They only want that for a few."
Howard saves his most stinging criticism for New Zealand First.
"Winston is an old clown who should bugger off with his overfed mate," he says.
Howard owns the land on which a large Labour hoarding sits overlooking Blackball's main road and is in no doubt about how he will vote.
"Two ticks Labour all the way down the line. Hopefully they'll save the country from this bunch of absolute clowns we've got destroying it at the moment," he says.
"I'm not even religious but I get down on my knees and I pray that we get these clowns out of there."
Jane Wells, who has lived in Blackball on-and-off for 50 years and formerly ran the pub Formerly The Blackball Hilton, also wants a change in government.
"The government that we've had for the last three years has been the most revolting government we've ever had," she says.
"Everything they say reminds me of the people that they think support them and that's the people with lots of money. They don't give a s*** about the people at the bottom."
As Wells gestures to her great-granddaughter playing on the verandah of her home, she says she wants a better future for New Zealand.
"For the sake of the world we have got to do more as far as the environment and climate change goes," she says.
"We have got to be careful. Canterbury's water - that used to be pure aquifers and it was the talk of the world. With all the dairying, it's just horrific now. It's got so much crap in it that it's dangerous."
'I don't feel there is a strong person out there that I could trust to look after my needs'
Young Blackball mother Marie Tippet says neither major party has left her feeling enthused about the election.
"I don't think there's a strong leader in government at all and it's the first time since I turned 18 that I'm actually not sure who I'm going to vote for," she says.
"I don't feel there is a strong person out there that I could trust to look after my needs, my partner's business and his needs, and also my one-year-old daughter's needs. That worries me a bit to feel there isn't a strong backbone in Parliament."
Walking her daughter down the street with nearby hills filled with birdsong and the sun beating down, Tippet appreciates everything she has, although the cost of living is biting hard.
"I would like to think of myself as a nature-lover but I still burn coal in my fire because it's cheap and it's really warm. It's actually all I can afford," she says.
"Coal is still probably king on the West Coast.
"When I see the smoke of the chimneys, I do feel really conflicted because when I take my daughter for a walk I'm concerned about the smell in the air and I know that it's not good. I know that it's not good for me. I know it's definitely not good for her [daughter] and it's not good for her future and the environment. But in terms of where we are able to spend our money to be able to heat our homes it's kind of where we are at."
'If we stop mining for coal, it would devastate Westport'
Back in Moana, Larkin says the economy is broken.
"The problem with the economy in New Zealand at the moment is you don't make money with these," he says, holding up hands black with grease.
"The people who are making the money are sitting at desks or operating computers or doing share trading or whatever, but the people at the bottom of the heap who are actually doing the work are not making money."
Larkin supports mining jobs.
"The bottom line is if we stop mining for coal, they're not going to stop buying coal. It would devastate Westport if you closed the mines up on top of Stockton," he says.
"It gets over-dramatised, the impact that the mining is having on the environment."
Debates over the future of mining are heated.
Permits for Stockton Mine expire next year and a plan to expand mining into the Denniston Plateau has stalled through the fast-track approvals process.
Rooney says outsiders are the problem.
"The Denniston Plateau, for example, I've worked up there when I was a linesman. It's a s*** hole. It's all rock. They couldn't even bury people up there," he says.
"If you take that out of the equation, you're going to bugger Westport. We've already got 85 percent of the West Coast in DOC [Department of Conservation] land. How much more do they want?"
'They've taken the money from here'
Semi-retired Taylorville plumber John Tennent supports New Zealand First's plan to impose greater royalties on extractive mining.
"Put royalties on the coal and some of the gold and some of the timber, the natural resources that come from the coast and put it back into the communities from Haast to Karamea," he says.
Former mining town Dobson is across the bridge, overlooking Māwheranui/Grey River.
Brian Aynsley has lived there for most of his life since his father relocated the family after the Blackball Coal Mine closed in 1964.
He is a pensioner but supplements his income with farming because he would otherwise not survive financially.
"With insurance and I've got two lots of rates and I'm up for $10,000. What do you get - 15 on the pension? You can't live on five," he says.
He says too many have taken from the coast without thinking about its people and their sacrifice.
"If Shane Jones and Winston can get some sort of levy, you'll see a hell of an improvement," he says.
"DOC does a good job but they don't pay rates, they don't contribute to the roads and a lot of the tourists here are going to DOC estate and looking at it and their contribution is virtually nil.
"In the past we haven't received huge amounts of money coming back in. But you rely on the government to do the jobs on the roads and the bridges and the footpaths or supplying some funds to do all that. But they've taken the money from here and reallocated it somewhere else and you know what bureaucrats are like - you give a problem to a bureaucrat they only make it worse."
