Everybody wants you to vote

Well sort of...

On Sunday I was invited to attend the Labour Party manifesto launch in West Auckland. The guest list included people like the Prime Minister, the Deputy PM, Kelvin Davis, Jan Tinetti - faces and names from the news, oh and the news was also on the guest list. We found out there that the PM had Covid and that was surreal.

I even made the news, so I’m big time famous now!

Not that he had covid - honestly I’m surprised more MPs and candidates haven’t gotten sick. They’re working all sorts of long, exhausting hours, out in crowds, meeting people - their body’s must be exhausted and the fact Covid is on the rise again in the community - well it’s not a surprise.

No, the surrealness came from comments around the room. Chippy being down was bad timing for sure, people acknowledged that but it didn’t deter most of them. The people in that room felt that taking the PM out of the campaign trail was not ideal but they had a support network in place to ensure their work could continue. But it all seemed to come with a weird caveat.

“We just need to get young people and Māori out to vote”

I heard that a number of times from people like Sir Bob Harvey, Deputy PM Carmel Sepuloni, Kelvin Davis, and a few members of the labour supporting crowd.