Sunday 7th June 2009: Q+A’s Paul Holmes interviews Mt Albert by-election candidates Russel Norman (Green) & John Boscawen (ACT).

Points of interest:

- Norman: Rodney Hide plans to reduce consultation over Auckland asset sales
- Boscawen: A sitting MP asked me to go soft on Melissa Lee in by-election
- Norman: Making it safe for kids to bike to school would ease Auckland traffic congestion
- Boscawen: Because ACT MPs get a free vote electing me would give “huge power” to the people of Mt Albert

The interview has been transcribed below. The full length video interviews and panel discussions from this morning’s Q+A can be seen on tvnz.co.nz at, http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

RUSSEL NORMAN & JOHN BOSCAWEN interviewed by PAUL HOLMES

PAUL Welcome then to Q + A, to the Green candidate Russell Norman, who is the Green’s co-leader, and to John Boscawen of ACT. So each of you, off you go for about 30 seconds, what qualifies each of you to be the member for Mt Albert? John Boscowan

JOHN Look Paul, I’ve got a history of standing up for others, the rights of others, the great thing about this by-election is it’s not going to change the Government and people have got a chance to go out and choose the candidate who they can have confidence in who’ll represent them, and I believe that my track record proves I’m the strongest most credible candidate and I think I’ll do an outstanding job as MP for Mt Albert.

PAUL Do you know Mt Albert?

JOHN I certainly do, I’ve spent a lot of time in Mt Albert over the years and a lot of time in the last month, and put in a damn sight more than what Russell’s spent commuting from Wellington! But look there are a number challenges facing the people of Mt Albert, in fact I think the biggest change, challenge, facing the people of Mt Albert and in fact all New Zealanders, is the fall in living standards and we need to take drastic steps to turn that around and raise our productivity.

PAUL Well how can you do that in Mt Albert?

JOHN Look…

PAUL Well wait a minute and I’ll come back to something like that, what does an Australian who lives in Wellington know about Mt Albert? And how does an Australian living in Wellington qualify to be MP for Mt Albert?

RUSSELL Thanks Paul for those (laughs) so from my point of view, I’m someone who’s been in New Zealand for 12 years, I’m a migrant to New Zealand and I’m proud to live in Aotearoa New Zealand – it’s as great place to live. I also am a co-leader of a political party, the people of Mt Albert are used to having a leader as their local representative, and as a co-leader of the Green Party I’m in a position where I can be on the front bench and represent the people of Mt Albert in Parliament. I’m the one who’s been asking the questions about whether the whole forced amalgamation is going to be causing a privatisation of the assets of Auckland and the people in Mt Albert are deeply concerned about whether there’s going to be privatisation of all the water assets for example and also the Green Party is the party that’s been pushing for better public transport which everyone who lives in Auckland knows is the only way that ultimately we will solve traffic congestion.

PAUL If you walked out of this TVNZ building now and got the bus to Mt Albert, what bus would you take?

RUSSELL I caught a 211 the other day, I caught a 233 the other day out to St Lukes, I catch the bus around and they’re OK but they could be an awful lot better. The trains are OK but they could be a helluva lot better and after 9 years of Labour the train system is in bad shape and it needs to be a lot better.

JOHN I disagree, I don’t think the trains are very good at all. I’ve spent three mornings on the Mt Albert railway station and it’s a shambles, it’s a disgrace…

RUSSELL That’s right, the Mt Albert station in particular is a mess…

JOHN …and the trains come at 15 minute intervals, they’re filled to the gunnels they need more rolling stock and greater frequency.

PAUL Do you know what bus to catch from here to Mt Albert?

JOHN I certainly do, I’ve probably run on about 30 buses in the last few days, probably 50 buses Paul because I ride a couple of stops I distribute my brochures and I get on the next one.

PAUL What number bus?

JOHN 212, 214, 216 from Mt Albert along New North Road and into Symonds Street. Done it many times.

PAUL Right Oh right oh, very good.

RUSSELL (laughing) You asked the question Paul!

JOHN I’ve ridden more buses in the last four weeks in Mt Albert than Russell’s had hot dinners!

PAUL Never ask a question when you don’t know what the answer’s going to be. Speaking of transport, now let’s move on to the great elephant in the room – of course, tunnel or motorway? Now Russell, can anyone really, can any government really afford the tunnel? Helen Clark was Mt Albert member AND Prime Minister for nine years and no tunnel got started.

RUSSELL Well my view and the Green party view all along, has been that if we’ve got one and a half billion dollars, because that seems to be what’s allocated, then the next one and a half billion dollars in Auckland should be spent on improving public transport, walking and cycling because we know that it’s actually only public transport walking and cycling that improves congestion. So if we build the Waterview connection let’s look at it further down the track, you know in five to ten years, then it should be via the tunnel. But the first thing we should do is improve public transport, walking and cycling. For example, 36% of the morning peak hour traffic is kids going to school, being driven to school, everyone knows that in the school holidays the peak hour drops right off, if it was safe to ride your bike to school lots of parents would like their kids to ride their bikes to school but because we’ve spent all the money on cars rather than spending the money on making biking safe, parents drive their kids to school. It makes more sense to make it safe for kids to ride their bike to school.

PAUL So it’s a mix, what do you think to that, sounds quite reasonable?

JOHN It is, but the point is that 84% of people who currently commute to work commute by cars. The New Zealand Transport Agency did a briefing on the tunnel and the route ten days ago – Russell didn’t even turn up

RUSSELL I’ve read all the NZTA documents and I can tell you 84%, why is that 84% of people drive to work, because they’ve got no options. Because we’ve spent all of our money on motorways and people think well I’ve got to get to work how am I going to get there, well all of the roads are being built but there aren’t the alternatives being built – let’s spend our money on the alternatives.

JOHN Well look, Russell is being a chief scare-mongerer.

RUSSELL I’m not a scare-mongering!

JOHN You’ve had your turn, don’t interrupt, you’ve had your turn. Look the reality is it’s not a choice between a road and a tunnel. The road that’s being promoted by the Government is 60% underground Paul – two thirds is underground. Two thirds. It’s going to result in the loss of about 70 homes more than the tunnel that Labour would have promoted. The Labour candidate and Russell are going around saying that there’ll be 365 houses demolished…

RUSSELL 365 families will be moved out of their homes – you didn’t know that?

JOHN No, it’s between 335 and 365 families…

RUSSELL It’s 365. It’s true.

JOHN The Labour candidate stood up at AUT last Thursday and he said 365 houses would be demolished. That’s rubbish. About 150 homes will be required

RUSSELL 365 homes….

JOHN …about 150 for the construction that will be resold are available.

PAUL Well let’s agree to disagree there. John Boscowan you’ve said this is a two horse race between me and David Shearer and that you are the only right wing candidate worth voting for. What’s wrong with Melissa Lee?

JOHN Look I think that’s obvious Paul, I think she’s said she doesn’t expect to win, I believe I can win, I believe I’m a credible candidate, I’ve done a lot of door knocking, I’ve had a lot of people tell me they support me and they’re going to vote for me and they’ve already voted for me, they’ve voted early. And when I ask them why they say because I think you’re a strong and credible candidate. I’ve had a lot of people who voted for the National Party at the last election said that they’ll be voting for me – I believe I’m a very strong candidate and people can vote for me with confidence.

PAUL Did the National party ask you to go soft on Melissa Lee?

JOHN Look, I had a sitting member suggest that to me yes.

PAUL Who was that sitting member?

JOHN Look I’m not going to disclose that Paul, that’s not important.

PAUL Was it a senior sitting member?

JOHN That’s not important Paul, what’s important Paul, is that the people of Mt Albert chose a representative that they can have confidence in, and who will represent them. And what I provide is an option of someone who will provide strong representation. And one thing Paul if I win this election next Saturday you can be sure, just like Rodney Hide who increased his majority from 3,000 to 13,000, I’ll be working very, very hard for the people in Mt Albert because If I win next Saturday I’ll be wanting to win again in 2011

PAUL But you’re both representatives of the two parties that want greater transparencies so who was the sitting member?

JOHN It was a member of the National Party Paul, that’s not important.

RUSSELL That’s not important!

PAUL That’s enough of that – moving on eh Russell!. Speaking of Transparency I see you holier-than-thou, high-and-mighty Greens want everyone to declare everything they spend and where they spend it in taxis and shuttles and aeroplanes and so forth, are now pulling back and baulking is the word used today I think and you’re saying we’ll declare how much we spend on aeroplanes but we won’t tell you where we’ve gone.

RUSSELL What we did was…

PAUL And what if we’re going to Sydney every weekend to see the opera?

RUSSELL Well that’s international travel, and as you would have seen in the Herald on Sunday I think a week ago, I’ve spent zero taxpayers money on international travel. What did was we went through in each category how much we spent in the first four months of the year…

PAUL I know that, why won’t you tell us where you go? I mean this is the thing you want all this transparency and then suddenly (laughs) we’ve got some conditions. Now if you travel internationally….

RUSSELL Well what we said was how much we spent on each category which was more than anyone else was doing and actually opened the doors so we could move towards more transparency in spending.

JOHN I should add that I disclosed my spending last Sunday as well in the Herald and

RUSSELL ..in fact we were the two that broke it weren’t we…

JOHN ..yes and I’ve got nothing to hide , I’m a hard working member of Parliament and I’m doing what I can do to represent the people of Mt Albert and all New Zealanders.

RUSSELL And if there is a lot of money, lets be serious about this we do spend a lot of money getting around the country, but we go around and talk to people. As a co-leader of a party, people ask me to speak to meetings right across the country and I do that because I think its important.

PAUL We accept that this but we also feel I think as taxpayers we have a right to know where you go – I mean nobody’s going to sit down and read these things every day of the week but I mean we have a right that if we need to know, it could be the Green party is spending all their money flying to the Urewera Forest.

JOHN Well the interesting thing of course is that the Green Party is saying we should have taxpayer funding of political parties and I think what this last week’s shown is that we already have substantial taxpayer funding of political parties because Russell is the co-leader of the Greens and he travels to Green party conferences obviously paid for by the tax payer.

RUSSELL We’ve been very clear about it – we said we supported partial public funding. The Green party model is this: There should be a limit on how much individual donations are to political parties so that one person cannot a big donor for a political party and then you make the parties go out and get large numbers of small donations because I think that’s the way you make parties accountable to people. You also have some partial public funding in order to make sure that the decisions around the spending of 60 billion dollars worth of public money is not heavily influenced by these big corporate donors, that’s important for the public to make sure all of this spending is not done by political parties that are owned by these big corporate donors.

PAUL But you say there’s already some partial funding for getting around the country.

RUSSELL Yeah, there is.

PAUL Let’s get back to Mt Albert what kind of a campaign; you did very well with a wet lamington on your head continuing to speak.

JOHN Oh well I didn’t realise it was a lamington Paul,

PAUL What did you think it was?

JOHN I just thought it was a wet sponge to be honest it was only up there about 15 or 20 seconds but it didn’t matter, I wanted to get my point across and the person who did that well they’re another candidate. Look Paul, the thing about this election is that I hear Melissa Lee say that she’s closest to the government. The reality is that both the labour candidate, and Melissa Lee, is that in parliament as back benchers, they would be told how to vote, they’re told how to vote. I’m a member of the ACT party, the national party has got 58 MPs in parliament, and to pass any single piece of legislation they need to get four more votes. They come first to the ACT party and we’ve got a free vote. And I was one of three ACT MPs who voted for the Wanganui gang patches bill, two of my colleagues didn’t but that’s huge power, and what I can say to the people of Mt Albert is that I can provide strong representation because before any piece of legislation can be passed by this current government they need to have at least four more votes and I provide one of those four.

PAUL Finish from you, has Melissa Lee been a disaster?

RUSSELL I think Melissa’s made it hard for the National Party but I think what’s made it harder is the Waterview connection and also the whole super city thing. I mean I’ve just been looking at a cabinet paper this morning that came out on Friday which shows that Rodney Hide plans to reduce peoples, the level of consultation over sale of Port assets and Airport assets, so I think National and ACT have made it hard for Melissa Lee.

PAUL Very quick response

JOHN Look the Labour Party’s royal commission made it clear that we should have a single city, a single city authority, it wasn’t ignored. What the government did want to do..

RUSSELL Referendum. How about referendum John?

JOHN …they wanted to have local democracy, they wanted to have local Boards, they wanted to have 20 to 30 local boards,

RUSSELL …let the people decide….

JOHN ….and that’s what is being provided.

PAUL I’ve got to stop you there but thank you very much Russell Norman for coming in always a pleasant, and Mr Boscowan…

JOHN Thanks very much Paul.

For Panel Analysis From Richard Griffin And Mike Williams Of The Mt Albert Campaign Please Go To http://tvnz.co.nz/q-and-a-news

ENDS

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