Northland candidates share and debate at upbeat public meeting

It was the last candidates meeting of the election campaign in Northland - and it was also the best.

More than 80 people gathered at Ōtiria Marae, near Moerewa - west of Kawakawa, on Tuesday night to hear from 12 would-be MPs contesting the Northland and Te Tai Tokerau electorates.

Three weeks ago another candidates meeting in Kerikeri made headlines after Labour MP Willow-Jean Prime was shouted down and jeered any time she used a Māori word, and even the organiser was heckled for not being Kiwi.

The Ngāti Hine-hosted event at Ōtiria, by contrast, was a love-fest.

Candidates piled praise on each other, audience members were encouraged to hold up humorous signs instead of calling out, and anyone who wanted to claim one of the night's spot prizes had to sing a song about aroha.

Many weighty topics were debated - tax, the cost of living, Te Tiriti, and youth mental health to name a few - but there were also plenty of laughs.

New Zealand First's Shane Jones even found humour in his ejection from Parliament in 2020.

"I'm the fulla you sacked. Despite spreading money around Ngāti Hine you rejected me. It was a debilitating experience to be made unemployed three years ago, but hey, Freddy's back," he said, a reference to the Nightmare on Elm Street movies.

Taxes proved a popular talking point with National promising tax relief to offset the soaring cost of living, New Zealand Loyal pledging to replace income tax with a 1 percent transaction tax, and the Greens saying if Labour didn't have the guts to bring in a wealth tax, they would.

Green candidate Hūhana Lyndon said the party would make sure the "mega-rich" paid their fair share.

"Three hundred and eleven families, that are worth $270 million each as a household, are not paying the same amount of tax as your average nurse, or teacher," she said.

Labour's Kelvin Davis warned that ACT planned to rewrite the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and defended his party's record for Māori.

"We have been criticised for not doing enough for Māori. We think we've done heaps, and there are others who say we've done too much."

Davis also pushed back against claims the country is increasingly divided.

"People have said the country is divided like never before and I say they're probably right - but it's not a division on race, it's an ignorance division. There are some people who are so ignorant about te ao Māori [the Māori world] that they are threatened and frightened by anything to do with it."

Before the meeting began the audience was invited to submit questions, which were then drawn at random.

The chosen topics included the parties' positions on Te Tiriti.

All candidates present backed the Treaty with Democracy NZ's Matt King and National's Grant McCallum saying they wanted to see Ngāpuhi settle its claims soon, while Jones doled out some tough love.

He said it was an indictment on all descendants of Rāhiri, Ngāpuhi's founding ancestor, that the tribe's Treaty settlement process had drifted for so long.

"No more excuses. Nor more rationalisations as to why things haven't happened. In the event that I get into Cabinet again, I'm doing it. Do it with me, or I'll do it to you," he said.

Housing was another hot topic. Maki Herbert, of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, touted hemp as a low-cost, fast-growing building material, while Prime and Te Pāti Māori's Mariameno Kapa-Kingi talked up their house-building records in Northland as MP and iwi leader, respectively.

In contrast to the Kerikeri debate, there were no attempts to shout down candidates.

The Greens' Reina Tuai Penney said she had not been able to bring her children to any other candidate meetings.

"They don't need to hear that the Treaty's bad, they don't need to hear that Māori are the problem, because we're not. The system is the problem," she said.

The unexpected star of the night was Jeffrey Lye of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, who, no matter what the question was, managed to make cannabis the answer.

Despite a serious message about harm caused by New Zealand's drug laws, Lye was responsible for much of the evening's laughter.

"We believe the local law creates the problem. You get five bros together drinking alcohol, they'll start a fight. You get five bros together smoking cannabis, they'll start a band and play music," he said.

Northland Party founder Mike Finlayson and New Zealand Loyal's Michael Feyen also took part.

Finlayson said his aim was to put the environment "first and foremost in everyone's faces" while Feyen said his party's goal was to abolish political parties.

"We are absolutely different to any party here. We do not want parties any more … We are a golden wave of discontent in this country, Māori and Pākehā," he said.

ACT did not attend.

Prime said the audience at Ōtiria, unlike the now infamous Kerikeri meeting, allowed everyone to be heard.

"My main disappointment with the debate in Kerikeri is that the supporters of the other candidates simply shouted me down so I could hardly answer a question. Here all of us were afforded the respect to just be able to get our points across."

McCallum agreed, saying it was easily the best meeting he had attended.

"Everyone got to have their say, and agree to disagree and make their points, without the angst and anger that we've struck at other meetings, which were just yell-fests and non-constructive," he said.

It's not clear which candidate came out on top after the two-hour debate, but the winners on the night were decency, debate and democracy.

Election day is 14 October. Early voting is underway with polling booths open daily around the motu.