Okay, so does that mean that you've had to play a bit of catch-up getting into campaign mode for Christchurch Central?

We started our campaign meetings in August last year and we were focused on increasing the party vote.

So when Duncan stood down at the end of last year, we changed tact and we had plenty of time to look at the blueprint that Chloe had made in Auckland when winning that seat and Tamith Paul in Wellington in the last election.

What are you hearing from people?

We've been out door knocking since March this year and we've door knocked 13,000 Christchurch Central homes.

And what we are hearing is the same in all of our communities.

Life's too expensive.

We're getting ripped off at the supermarket and we want some serious changes to how things are.

But there's another concern for Labour.

Hi, team Meet Kahurangi Carter.

For the first time, the Greens are running a two-tick campaign in Christchurch Central.

Chlöe Swarbrick, our co-leader for the Greens, showed us how that was done in 2020 in Auckland Central when everybody said she couldn't.

And she showed that when you show up for community, when you're out there, when you're connected, and you work really hard, that people feel represented in the halls of power.

Surrounded by supporters at the Botanic Gardens, the once zero waste advocate and current list MP is focused on housing, homelessness, water quality, and supporting the creative sector.

But her boldest claim is about the state of the race itself.

I've been involved for years here.

... for our city? And, you know, with you being, you know, a creative and, and understand, you know, the power of storytelling, you know, what, what do you see the potential of that in the future?

Nobody can touch our hearts and minds like artists and like stories.

If someone's t- retelling a story about something they're so passionate about or something that happened to them, we're q- we, we're like magnets.

We wanna, we wanna hear it.

We're so enthralled by it because someone's passionate about it, and that's how we connect with people who we don't agree with.

It's how we connect to their experience or, um, can share our experience, and it just makes us closer together because to move to the future that we want, one where everybody has the things that they need to live a good life, probably not that much to ask, you know? I want to live a good life.

Well, what do we need? Well, we need to be able to talk to people and relate to people who have differences of opinions to us.

Yeah.

What would you require them to do with that?

It's looking at solutions.

So it could go to partner with a local farm to feed stock.

It could partner with local farmers Local solutions like composting, there's lots of ways that it could go there and those solutions are out there in community already and lots of them are already doing that.

My ex-husband did work for a supermarket for a long time.

would redistribute some of the food that wasn't edible for humans, but to one of the local farmers that we were living near.

And those are not required, but they could be.

Pai?