Helen White

We are joined today by four candidates competing for the electorate seat in one of Tāmaki Makaurau's most hotly contested districts.

After Labour MP Helen White managed to retain the seat by a mere 18 votes in the last election, this year is shaping up to be a close race again, including last election's competition with the addition of Opportunities' Qulei Wong.

Thank you all for joining us today.

Thank you.

Now, to begin, we'll open the floor up with some opening statements, starting off with current MP Helen White, if you'd like to begin.

Ah.

Thank you.

It was released last night in Mount Helbert electorate.

In the other poll, the original poll, Helen White and Melissa Lee were neck and neck, basically.

I think it was 32-31 or something like that.

In this poll, Helen White is 26.

She's the incumbent, of course, for the Labour Party.

Needs to win because if she doesn't, she's not high enough on the list to get in.

So anyway, she's on seven.

I think she'd be disappointed with the lack of, you know, this isn't a race, in other words.

There was some polling out by the spin-off, I believe.

that put the difference between the top candidate, Helen White, from Labour at 33%, and then coming in second, very, very close once again, was Melissa Lee, 32%.

Very similar result to the last election, 2023, where Helen White only held on to that seat by about 18 votes.

You know, there was some chatter as well, as to whether perhaps Kyu Lai Wong, the leader of the Opportunity Party, would come in and be able to maybe snatch votes away or split the vote.

But it seems as though the result is still the same.

Uh, a man ha- uh, ahead of the media standup had to be moved out of the way by what they now call the Dignitary Protection Service, which is the old Diplomatic Pros- uh, Protection Squad.

Now, um, in Mount Albert, it's an interesting, uh, electorate, this one, and it will be really interesting in, to my mind, uh, this election because, um, at the last election, uh, Helen White had the majority, uh, cut there.

And don't forget, the seat has been in the Labor hands since n- uh, 1947.

Warren Freer [laughs] has had, had the seat, and then Helen Clark took it over.

Um, so Helen White had her majority, uh, slashed by National's Melissa Lee to just 18 votes at the last election, and National quite comfortably, uh, won the party vote, uh, in that seat with, uh, the Greens and the Labor Party running neck and neck for the second place.

Now standing beside Chris Hipkins today, Helen White said that she's quite determined to win the seat better this time

I love doing this job, so I'm not really thinking about anything else but this job right now.

I mean, look, I've just gotta throw myself into this, and I have for three years, and I'm gonna hope it pays off

Uh, Mount Albert is looking really, really intriguing this year because there's this whole argument about splitting the vote on the left.

Um, but there's also this, like, really tight race between, uh, National and Labor, Melissa Lee and Helen White.

Uh, and you know, there's also the flip side of if Melissa Lee gets in, uh, maybe the, a more senior MP like Nicola Willis won't get in off the list.

So weighing up the sort of-

Uh, you've got to do a combination of phoning people up, trying to find people on cell phones and landlines as to whether they live in the electorate, uh, which is a, a very small geographic area relatively, and people who are on online panels doing surveys for fun.

So that's how you've got to do it to poll it.

So it actually might be the reality that Ricardo Menéndez March is in the lead at the moment, or it could be the reality that, yeah, Helen White's well in the lead, or, you know, uh, that, that would be the, the bi- the polling bias would be anti-Greens if I had to guess.

Mm.

We've had the Mount Albert debate, we've had the Stuffed Kingmakers debate, we've had a few other debates as well.

One of the big things to come out of the Mount Albert debate for me was the polling that the spin-off commissioned alongside it from Curia, which showed basically a neck-and-neck race between Helen White and Melissa Lee, but that vote-splitting... on the left or what could be perceived as the left.

So support going to Ricardo Menendez March as well.

And Kuele Wong at 10% in Mount Albert.

It's perhaps unlikely on the balance of things, but certainly not inconceivable.

I think it's right up there, and certainly the moderator of the debate, the great Toby Manhigh, put that to Melissa Lee and said it was one of the toughest questions of the night.

Do you? Because the stakes are so high for Helen White from Labour and for Melissa Lee from National because they're both so low on the list that they wouldn't get back if they don't win this seat.

So then putting to Melissa Lee, so would you rather win this seat or have Nicola Willis return to...