We’re lucky in Ilam! 99% of all electorate battles are realistically just a choice between two candidates. This year, we are one of the few electorates with a genuine three-way race: Labour’s incumbent Sarah Pallet, versus the favourite in National’s Hamish Campbell, versus TOP’s leader, Raf Manji. I’ve had the good fortune to see all three in person. All three are caring, passionate people, and we’re lucky to have such a high-quality race. One stands out. I want Raf to be our electorate MP, and you should too.
(If you’re wondering if you’re in the Ilam electorate, you can look it up, but here’s a summary. The electorate is a slice of Christchurch best visualised by picturing two lines running out from Hagley Park: one to the west, through Riccarton all the way to Avonhead, Yaldhurst and Russley, and another on a north-north-west angle, through Merivale and Papanui before curving west above Bishopdale and Harewood. The slice extends all the way out past the airport to the banks of the Waimak, and also includes Strowan, Bryndwr, my beloved Burnside and, well, Ilam.)
Why should Raf Manji be our next MP?
I will give you four reasons. In return for you hearing me out, I promise not to spin things or distort reality - I want this guy in, but I think it’s far more convincing to just lay out the facts and let you decide than to present anybody on a pedestal.
Reason #1: Raf is experienced. Sarah Pallett has done three years as a Labour backbencher. Hamish Campbell? Zero. Both have valuable experiences in the world; I appreciate Pallett's presence as a literal midfwife to Labour's extension of ACC to birth injuries. Nonetheless, at most you're talking worthwhile input on once specific subject area.
Raf Manji served for six years as a councillor, where he operated as a financial right-hand man to Lianne Dalziel. He ensured shrewd stewardship of the city’s resources in the postquake era at the same time as other cities have been beset by dysfunction and lacked leadership.
He's got a background in banking, a bunch of degrees, travelled the world - in short, he's who’s done it all and seen it all without having overstayed his welcome. You elect him and he’ll be across the numbers with realistic plans, taken seriously as an advocate, and able to respond to issues and crises as they come up. None of that has compromised the fact that he will bring a fresh perspective instead of simply being a staid career politician.
You could contend that local politics doesn't prepare him for the national level. There'll always be difficulties in adapting, but I trust that him being across Christchurch's finances for six years will make him an expert at advocating for more funding for Christchurch's essential needs.
Reason #2: Raf has demonstrated how much he cares. There are, of course, his political contributions through the difficult post-quake years. Past that, Raf has shown in private life a dedication to the wellbeing of Christchurchers. His page on TOP’s website bears an impressive list of contributions, including working for the Student Volunteer Army. Sarah and Hamish have no comparable list of charitable efforts to offer up outside of politics.
Most notably, through the years after the March 15th terror attack, he took on a role as “fullback” delivering financial support promised to victims. He became one of the only figures in any position of responsibility that many families could trust to keep coming to. To listen to their calls sharing all of the traumas they had gone through that day and in all the days after was an enormous burden for Raf to share, but share it he did. Our politicians have shown, time and again, that they show up the day after a crisis and are gone the next month - just ask people in Hawke’s Bay still shovelling silt. Manji is different. He understands and he keeps coming back to help.
Reason #3: Raf represents the new New Zealand. Both Raf and Sarah have experienced immigration from the UK and, as an Irish-Indian Brit, Raf in particular can support new arrivals through that experience at a difficult time of transition and stick up for all sides of the community. Hamish Campbell went to CBHS, lives in Riccarton, and the farthest he’s gone afield is Australia; good for him, he’s a Christchurcher too, but he is not an MP who fits the profile of the many immigrant families that make their home here.
When you travel around Christchurch, you can see all of the changes that the city has undergone. At the same time, we still don’t feel like we’ve fully leapt into a bright new future. We have not entirely escaped the post-earthquake era. Central to Raf's pitch to us in Ilam is the Christchurch Plan: $1 billion to finally achieve that future. No other party is offering this. Cancer and mental health centres, public transport, roads and footpath upgrades, a hospital car parking expansion, a cop college with more constables and kiosks, a cathedral and arts repair fund and a new school. Realise all of that and you have the necessary expansion of Christchurch to accommodate our new New Zealanders, and to see the new New Zealand right in front of us.
Reason #4: Raf can get things done in Parliament. If we do not elect Raf now, then the certain outcome is that we get Hamish Campbell. I’ve heard him talk twice and he seems like a smart guy with notable skills. Good on him for that. The trouble is that we did this just three years ago: Sarah Pallett was elected as a good person with serious and valuable real-world experience, and she came in as #62 on the list in a 65-member caucus, where as just another faceless backbencher, she could do very little to effect change. What has she done for you lately?
The National Party have chosen to place Hamish at #63 on their list, amongst a host of other suits you couldn’t pick out of a lineup if they held you hostage for twelve hours. When do you think he is going to get enough promotions to make a change for the people of Christchurch? In six years? Nine? By then, the government might have already changed again. The sad reality is that most politicians in major parties serve as replaceable foot soldiers to promote a central message from and for Wellington and Auckland. Dreams of doing more go unrealised; the local community from whence they came is forgotten.
Elect Raf Manji and what do you get? In the best-case scenario, he holds the balance of power. He can have serious leverage with the incoming government to ensure that Christchurch gets its fair share of investment for the 2020s, and that significant components to TOP's other policies are delivered to help relieve the cost of living crisis. I've been very critical of a TOP policy, the Teal Card, on here before, and you are welcome to take that into account. At the end of the day, you might get chopped-up parts of the Teal Card reworked into palatable compromises with other parties. That's acceptable to me if it means MP Manji.
The alternative is relying on Christchurch’s all-Labour caucus; I like Duncan Webb and I think Megan Woods is an extraordinarily hard worker, but these people will almost certainly be confined to a shrunken Opposition and, frankly, nobody’s listening anymore; their credibility as a whole has been shaken in recent years.
In the worst-case, you have a voice in Parliament holding the government to account for anything they do to let down Christchurch while engaging in positive and constructive lawmaking. David Seymour was one MP with .5% of the vote and he legalised euthanasia - and, just like the MPs of the Māori Party and United Future, the government chose to give him roles and bring him into the tent even when they didn’t have to. It’s not hard to picture Manji, a constructive, reasonable guy, getting the same treatment. One MP can get a lot done when they’re an experienced, capable person who can work alongside, not take orders under, the major parties. Raf Manji will be that MP for us.
How can Raf Manji win Ilam?
Look, I get it. Even if you think this guy sounds good, you’re probably sceptical of his chances. There is no denying that Hamish Campbell is the favourite and Raf is the underdog. You might be thinking he’s another gadfly buzzing around the edges of the political scene with a handful of true converts deluded as to his chances. Can I be honest with you? I thought so too! And then I saw him in person, with every seat filled and a sensible, targeted message delivered by a guy who could actually explain why he is relevant, and listen and respond to voters’ concerns as well as the major party figures I’ve seen. The gears started whirring. Ilam delivered a surprise in 2020. We can do it again.
(Skip ahead to the bolded line two paragraphs from now if you want to dodge a stats dump.)
We’re stereotyped as one of New Zealand’s richer and bluer electorates, and that’s accurate, but within Ilam are multitudes. We have the third-highest share in the country of 15-19 year olds and of people in full-time study, the fifth-highest working in education in training, and overperform national averages on high school graduations and all manner of university degrees, thanks no doubt to UC being within Ilam. On a graph, the enormous percentage of university-age residents by national standards really sticks out. This will be one of the key demographics who aren’t a lock for Hamish Campbell and who will consider Raf, but there’s plenty of others.
One in five people in Ilam is of Asian descent, well over the national average; more Ilam residents are born overseas than is typical in most electorates; and more people in Ilam speak languages outside the top three most common nationally (English, te reo Māori and Samoan). The obvious statement is that Ilam earners are slightly likelier than the national average to make over $70,000 a year and have household incomes over the average. However, if you’ve gotten away from the main roads and you’re not in the flashest few suburbs, you know there are lots of pockets of social housing and older housing stock on smaller plots. The Social Deprivation Index records a 5-7/10 through much of Avonhead, Riccarton, Burnside, and especially Bryndwr, which was largely zoned as Decile 10 under the old system.
Why am I saying all of this? The longevity of Gerry Brownlee as a National Party stalwart; the clear affluence of Merivale and Fendalton (which make up only 7500 residents combined, or <12% of the electorate!); and the unfamiliarity of Wellington and Auckland commentators have led to a long-running misunderstanding.
Ilam has been painted as an eternally blue safe seat, but for that to be the case we’d have to be older, whiter and significantly richer than the rest of the country. That’s given the lie by the statistics I’ve just laid out: there are many different groups in Ilam, from lots of university students hoping for change, to plenty of beneficiaries looking for alternatives to National, to many well-educated, middle-class immigrant families weighing up their options.
In reality we have a significant lean towards National, but in uncertain times when the political landscape is shifting most of us are willing to consider another candidate. It's why independent candidate Raf Manji could make it into second place in 2017 with almost a quarter of votes cast, even then, amidst Jacindamania and against a much stronger National Party. Performances like that are not normal for New Zealand; you tend to only see one or two independent or minor challengers do so well across the entire country each election. And our willingness to consider our options is why Sarah Pallett, who does not have a strong profile in the electorate, could not only beat Gerry in 2020 but did so by a couple thousand votes. These are signs of the once-in-a-generation opportunity we now have.
Whether you loved or loathed Mr Brownlee, he was a personality who built his name in the electorate for 24 years in a row. Now he’s out and neither the National nor Labour candidates have much of a name around here. Raf’s local experience, by contrast, explains his strong showing in 2017, and now he’s returning for a second run after going through the wringer after March 15th, with the resources of TOP behind him, and a strong focus on mobilising students and other groups.
Sarah Pallett doesn’t have a pathway forwards in a centre-right electorate like this. Full credit to her for winning in 2020, but she was able to get over the line because National were in shambles and so many people were so relieved with Labour’s COVID response while things were still going right. She can expect some of the usual Labour groups to line up behind her again, but the large majority of us have heard very little from Sarah in these three years.
Put plainly, Labour don’t have the budget, time, or popularity to save her this year. Look around. How many Labour hoardings have you seen? How many National? This is one of the seats that they will have crossed off early in campaign planning and moved on. If you want an alternative to National, she can’t be it. If you don’t want Labour, then voting for Raf doesn’t risk letting her slip back through.
Raf, by contrast, is all in on Ilam. TOP know this electorate is their one chance - you can see that on their website - and they have suborned themselves behind their leader in a symbiotic arrangement: he can get into Parliament, and they can start to discuss their ideas. This is a perfectly timed run: Raf's experience is still fresh, dissatisfaction with the major parties is at an all time high, and the election is no longer close and so voters can afford to take a look at the minor parties. He has a unique appeal to different groups, from scores of uni students beaming on his social media to members of immigrant communities who feel like he gets them in a way others don’t.
All we will do by electing Hamish Campbell in 2023 will be making it easier for him to win reelection in 2026, and 2029, and so on. Just like Gerry, once you are a major party incumbent in an electorate that leans towards you, you become very hard to dislodge once you can leverage the name recognition and perks that come with representing us. We will have a “default” MP, and as passions ebb and the crises of recent years fade into the past, we will not have a chance at having a real say again for some time.
Journalists never gave much coverage to the 2017 Manji campaign, but it's not hard to piece together why he lost. In a year where both the side for stability and the side for change were incredibly strong, Raf could stand only as the safe, stable guide through the earthquake years pointing to a sunny economic future - his niche was largely dominated by Gerry Brownlee. Since then, Mr Manji has gone into the political wilderness, been reshaped by the events of March 15th, found this new calling with TOP and had the chance to learn from his mistakes. On top of those iron-clad foundations of stability and experience, he has been able to build new dimensions of appeal with serious ideas of change and reform. That’s why he should be our MP, and the fact he’s so good at communicating that is why could be our MP.
It’s Up To You Now
Electing Raf now is the one way in which we can look to an alternative. He is the right person for the job, he can slot right in from day one, and he will have an outsized ability to be a voice for New Zealand’s second-largest city. (No, Wellington, you can’t just swallow up the Hutt to get ahead.) And by nature of the fact that, yes, he is from a minor party that hasn't done any deals and will have won fair and square, we can easily take a temperature check on him in three years' time. But I’m pretty confident we won’t need to. I’m voting for Raf, and you should too.
Give him your electorate tick, talk to your friends and family about who they’re voting for, and see what you can do in this last week to help get him over the line. Remember, in 2020, if just 4% of Ilam’s residents had changed their minds, the outcome would have shifted. Your vote counts, now more than it will for a long time. Take this opportunity unique to Ilam and unique to this year - vote Raf!
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