Working for Wigram

You studied at Canterbury?

Yes, I spent ten years of my life here at Canterbury, so it feels a bit like a second home. I did my undergraduate work here, and my honours, and my masters and my PhD in the History department.

And you have generally good memories of it?

Oh, absolutely. It's a fine establishment that has a good international reputation, and one that I wouldn't like to see slip.

Do you foresee any dangers that might cause it to slip?

Yes; I think National's underfunding of the tertiary sector. We're seeing that. We saw the rankings that came out in September; five of the six New Zealand universities that are ranked have slipped. There was further warning in that document that unless New Zealand puts priority and funding into its tertiary education sector that [they'll continue to slip].

I think we have very specific concerns around Canterbury at the moment with the funding cuts. For National to come out and herald keeping funding levels at the beginning of 2011 level is all well and good, but it completely belies the reality of what the loss of tuition fees means for the university. That's only going to mean one thing: it's going to mean job cuts. Once we start getting rid of people and academics from universities, you seriously undermine what it can be in the future. I see that the University of Canterbury has to be an absolutely central part of how we rebuild Christchurch. It's where its critic and conscience should reside. The Government needs to put its funding where its mouth is and invest in it.

Does that make the University of Canterbury a special case scenario compared to other universities?

Absolutely. Canterbury has to be treated differently; Christchurch needs to be treated differently. We had both Prime Minister Key and Minister Brownlee tell us in Christchurch that no one would be worse off because of the earthquakes, but I think we're seeing across a range of scenarios that we are worse off. If we want to have a world-class city that we're going to rebuild – and I think us here in Christchurch are absolutely determined to be part of rebuilding a world-class city – that there has to be some special treatment of Christchurch over the next few years.

Where's the Government falling short in terms of earthquake recovery?

The fundamental difference between Labour and National's earthquake package for Christchurch and for Canterbury is around how active the state is going to be in it. One of the dangers we have is that we have all these people that have to leave their homes and leave where they're currently residing and go out into the marketplace and buy land to rebuild homes. What Labour is proposing is that the Government get involved in that process and actually develop and sell at cost to people to try and take some heat out of what will be a huge bubble which will push land prices up all over Christchurch and Canterbury and make things unaffordable for people. That's the fundamental difference; it's about the role of the government and how interventionalist the government is going to be in it.

Also Labour want sot get more actively involved in the insurance industry. Access to land is one of the things that is one of the things that is causing the most grief to people. The other is how people deal with their insurance companies. Labour knows that sometimes the market does fail, and that there is going to be a case for the government intervening there as well. We're seeing market failure all around us in terms of the insurance industry at the moment.

Obviously there are quite a good number of students in your electorate. Aside from funding at Canterbury, what other policies does Labour bring that will ensure that student needs are met?

If I can think back in the ten years I was a student, there were a number of issues that were perennial and didn't seem to go well. One was you couldn't seem to work enough hours to actually make enough money to get by. So I think that Labour's proposal to lift the minimum wage to $15 an hour will be one that will have a huge amount of benefit for students. If 20 hours of your week are spent working, you're actually going to get paid a decent wage for a decent day's work. A lot of student jobs are minimum wage – they were when I was a student, I'm assuming a lot of them still are. $15 an hour isn't too much to pay somebody. It's fair and it's reasonable.

The other thing that always I remember being a bit of a problem was the flat shop, and how much groceries were costing. Labour's proposal to remove GST off fresh fruit and vegetables will be something that will have an added bonus for many student flats. It may introduce some fruit into the fruit bowl and veges into the fridge in some of them. It will allow people not to have to make economic choices about eating healthily, which I think is a huge gain for a number of people.

The third policy that will have a huge benefit for students, and it will for all New Zealanders, is the first $5000 of income will be tax-free. That will put money back in everyone's pockets. And particularly for students, that extra $20-odd a week that will be put back in the pocket will be welcome. It'll pay for your transport, your petrol, your bus fares, or whatever it is you're using to get around.

Those three policies that Labour is introducing in terms of the minimum wage, the GST off fresh fruit and veg, and the $5000 tax free, for a family we're looking at that putting about an extra $100 a week back into people's pockets, which is a huge amount of money for families which are struggling along on a pay-to-pay basis.

Another big issue facing students at the moment is the prospect of voluntary student membership. It's seen a good deal of protest happening around the country. What's Labour's position on that policy?

Well, we're opposed to voluntary student membership. I think we see the benefit that students' associations and connectivity between students deliver. I mean, Canta Magazine is part of that. That we have all the services offered through student unions, and can only be offered under their collective model. If people choose to opt out, what do you do? Tell them they're not allowed to collect Canta that week, or do you start charging for it? It's going to bring a range of complexity around delivering student services, which really need to be universal. It's part of having an active intellectual life on campus, having those services as a part of it.

Proponents of voluntary student membership suggest that students are the last group which are required to join a union when they sign up to become a student. Does that put them in an unfair category compared to the rest of society?

I think there's some ideological hysteria around the word "union" in there by proponents of VSM. Fundamentally different than a trade union, but I think the word strikes fear into the heart of some of those on the right who want to get rid of anything to do with compulsion and the word "union".

You're running in an electorate which has had the same MP since its inception in 1996. Has introducing yourself to voters been a challenge at all?

Jim [Anderton] goes back even further than that; Jim was first elected to the Sydenham seat in 84. I grew up in the Sydenham seat, so I was ten when Jim became my local MP. Yes, it's always a challenge to introduce yourself to voters; I guess I'm not starting from an absolute zero position in that, though. I have represented half the electorate as a community board member; I was elected in 2004 in Spreydon-Heathcote, and was an active community board member in my community. I've lived in Spreydon – I grew up there, I live there now, so I do have a large community network around where I've grown up. Also, I ran for the mayoralty in 2007. I think we're finding when we're door-knocking that there's still some residual recognition from that. But that hasn't meant we've been resting on our laurels. We've been door-knocking since December, and phone canvassing since the beginning of this year. We're running very much a grassroots, back-to-basics campaign, which is around giving me the opportunity to meet as many local people as possible. So we're starting this Saturday a reasonably strenuous schedule of street corner meetings – 200 of them throughout the electorate between now and November. Really I want to give anyone in the electorate that wants the opportunity to meet me, the opportunity to do so. That's the kind of campaign I'm committed to; because that's the kind of local representative I want to be.

It's a community for which you have a great deal of passion...

Hugely so. It's a wonderfully rich and textured community, but I think most MPs or prospective candidates will say that about the area they're seeking to represent. I guess for me it's an electorate that has the sixth lowest median income in the country. There's a huge amount of hardship in it. But there is a huge amount of resilience. A huge amount of hope. And a huge amount of character amongst its people. I would be greatly honoured to represent Wigram.

If I'm to take the position of a highly pragmatic voter, if you look at the polls recently Labour has been quite a long way behind National, so if I'm looking to vote for my electorate MP, am I better off voting for someone who might be more likely to be a part of the Government?

I think you've got to take a long-term approach to local representation. I think one of the things I've learnt from working with Jim over the period of time I have, which has been well over a decade now, is that Jim has been an incredibly effective member of Parliament whether or not he's been in government. He's fought for the people he's represented, and he's stood alongside them, fought the battles with them. Being in government is immaterial. When you've committed to being an MP for the long term, which I am, you can't assume you'll be in government the whole time. Local people, when they make their choices about who they vote for, what they've demonstrated is they've voted for someone who's going to be an effective local representative for them. For 20-odd years they've voted for someone who hasn't been part of a mainstream political party, but they've known or battled for them, so no, I don't think really that that is something that comes into play. I think the voters of Wigram are used to some reasonably strategic voting as well. You can see that when you look at the way the party vote and their candidate votes for them.

What have been the highlights of the campaign for you so far?

One of the highlights for me personally of the campaign this far has been my campaign team. I got selected on Suffrage Day last year, the 19th of September, only a couple of weeks after the first of the earthquakes. A number of the people that are involved in my campaign were also involved in Jim's mayoral campaign. We thought there was some resilience to get through that campaign, and we got through it, and it was a particularly difficult campaign – particularly for people whose first campaign it was. I have a large number of young people involved, and I think losing campaigns is something you need to learn. There's a huge amount you can learn from it. But we've kept on going through the February earthquakes. WE got out there in the days following the February earthquake, and we organised people in our local area shovelling silt. We were really helped by students from Lincoln University, and the Student Volunteer Army here. Then we kept on going through the June earthquakes as well. so it's really been the ability of my campaign team to keep on going, and prove how committed they are to us winning Wigram that's been the highlight for me.