I step out of the cold and get to grips with Raf Manji’s warm hand and warmer smile. Before the lights cut out, I count around thirty-five people filling almost every chair, diverse in age, race and gender. I see Wass, who you’ll know from his barbershop on Victoria Street. There’s a man who, well into his golden years, swims alongside my parents at Jellie Park. Then the lights flicker back on and we’re away.
Manji introduces himself: he worked in London investment banking for over a decade, immigrated in 2002, served for six of the post-quake years as a councillor, put his expertise to good use as Christchurch Council’s “money man”, ran for Parliament as an independent, came second place to Gerry Brownlee, and, after March 15th, served as a trusted support for many deeply affected Muslim Christchurchers. It’s a lot.
And now he leads the Opportunities Party. And he’s back for a second tilt at Ilam.
For the next fifty minutes, Manji is laser focused on one simple message: Christchurch has no voice in Wellington, where Parliament only interrupts its partisan bickering to fixate on Auckland, and if we give him our vote he will be our voice. His Christchurch Plan is a grab bag of policies back from his 2017 run. Over half of the billion-dollar pledge will build a cancer centre. A new school will go up. So will new police kiosks and a training college. Mental health support. Zero-emissions buses. He’ll even fix those pernicious sidewalks!
You might notice that this sounds more like the program of a candidate for local government. The reason why becomes clearer in the Q&A segment, when I ask how we avoid another March 15th. For the second time tonight, he acknowledges the people here affected by terror, and then he turns to the Teal Card and National Civics Service, arguing that these programs will reduce economic inequality, build social cohesion and undermine prejudice.
There are a raft of mock Teal Cards by the entrance; the young volunteers hanging around didn’t try to engage and offer one. If not for my question, Manji would not have mentioned these youth-focused policies all night. TOP needs Raf to win Ilam so they can get into Parliament, and Raf needs TOP for their volunteers, brand and policy heft, but TOP’s national policies are a much more awkward fit for Ilam than Manji’s delivery of the Christchurch Plan.
The strategy is clear: while Manji talks to libraries and churches about reducing chlorination and centralisation, combating cancer and crime, TOP’s stalwarts like co-deputies Jessica Hammond and Shai Navot can crisscross North Island university campuses and craft bars, touting the Teal Card to bring in the party vote.
Neena is a carpenter of my generation who moved here recently. She asks a thoughtful question about “passive” housing, a movement which promotes houses that use next to no energy. Manji namechecks an organisation she knows and agrees wholeheartedly that we must view cheap housing as costly in the long run. Sophie, down my row and a few decades older, puts forward a much trickier question about whether Manji will be tough enough to take on the property developers. He flashes a grin and flexes a bicep, before he takes back the mic to continue to encourage more affordable development.
Manji didn’t even mention housing in his speech. Indeed, on the push card I found in our letterbox the other day, he gave a measured critique of the MDRS. A TOP leader equivocating on building up apartments seems inconceivable nationally, but makes sense in a city where two thirds of our tallest buildings did not survive the earthquake era.
Wasseim asks him about negotiating power and getting things done in government, and later an older woman in front of me asks if he’ll take Winston’s approach in 2017 of working with either side. Manji’s answers develop a cogent approach: he’ll work with whoever, bring common sense and a fresh approach to Parliament, present pragmatic proposals that can be easily implemented, and, if need be, knock some heads together. The crowd are getting what they’re asking for.
I raise my hand. Manji laughs that I’m a repeat offender and lets me have another go. I ask how TOP will get things done if they don’t end up as the kingmaker, and he skillfully steers back onto message: once in Parliament, TOP would now get in front of media cameras and would be able to deliver a Christchurch voice, and they would eschew partisan methods of control and power in favour of collaborative lawmaking.
A man in a high-necked blue windbreaker notes that Manji has not spoken a single word of Māori so far and wonders if this was intentional. Candidates around the country, particularly those on the right, keep getting questions like this. Manji’s response? “Interesting, I wouldn’t have thought about that”. He gives an honest answer: he wouldn’t typically speak te reo, and he’d do so where appropriate on a marae or in a cultural setting.
Then he concludes - pointedly now adapting his closing statement to mention housing - and I can’t ask my third question - can you win? Instead, while I listen to loud music in a Hell Pizza, I am left to formulate my own answer. I have seen more advertising for our current MP, Labour’s Sarah Pallett, and National’s challenger Hamish Campbell, but more volunteers for Raf; all three are fresh and likeable and none are pushing it on age; Labour and National are stronger brands and more recognisable, but people are sick of Labour and sceptical of National.
I could never honestly call the TOP candidate as the favourite against Labour and National’s massive head start in name recognition and resources. From how the crowd reacted, Raf is in the running to win this thing. The last true three-way race we saw in New Zealand was Wellington Central last election, and the third-party candidate won. Dinner arrives. Back into the night.
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