Election 2023: Nine candidates bid for West Coast-Tasman votes

Nicole Mathewson Reporter from The Press

In the lead-up to the 2023 general election, The Press is profiling local electoral races. Here’s what you need to know about the candidates running to be West Coast-Tasman’s MP. (By reporter Joanne Naish)

The Labour Party won the West Coast-Tasman electorate party vote in 2020 for the first time since 2005.

It is a blue-voting heartland, but its long-standing MP is a Labour stalwart.

The West Coast-Tasman electorate seat has been held by Labour’s Damien O’Connor since 1996, apart from the interjection of National’s Chris Auchinvole from 2008 to 2011. The seat has never been held by a woman.

National took the party vote in every election since 2005 until Labour captured 20,521 party votes against National’s 10,934 in 2020. Labour gained 10.2 percentage points on its party vote share in 2017.

It is the second largest electorate by land area, stretching from Jackson Bay in the south to Farewell Spit in the north and as far east as the Southern Alps.

It adopted the traditionally blue-leaning settlement of Brightwater from Nelson to meet the population quota after the 2020 boundary review.

There are nine candidates standing for the electorate seat this year, including Jackie Farrelly (New Zealand First), Steve Richards (Greens), Kelly Lilley (ACT), Sue Grey (Outdoors and Freedom Party), and Richard Osmaston (Money Free Party). Sebastian Marinkovich is standing for New Zealand Loyal but is not on the party list after it only registered two of its candidates. Former Minerals West Coast manager and Westland District councillor Patrick Phelps is standing as an independent.

O’Connor took 48.5%, or 42,827, of the votes in 2020, 6208 more than National candidate Maureen Pugh, who is currently 26th on the National Party list.

Pugh, a farmer and former Westland mayor from Turiwhate, was the lowest ranking MP (number 19) to make it in on her party’s list in 2020. She previously described herself as a yo-yo MP since she narrowly missed entering Parliament on the list in the 2014 election, but came in after the resignation of Tim Groser in 2015. She again missed the cut on the list in 2017, but took a list seat after Bill English resigned in 2018.

O’Connor, a farmer from Westport, was first elected to Parliament in 1993 and holds ministerial portfolios in agriculture, biosecurity, land information, and trade and export growth, and is associate transport minister.

The electorate’s main population centres are Motueka, Westport, and Greymouth. It also includes the towns of Haast, Hokitika, Murchison, St Arnaud, Wakefield, Brightwater, and Tākaka. The electorate contains over half of New Zealand’s national parks.

Its 52,737 voters are mostly employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing industry (15.8%), followed by manufacturing (10.3%), and accommodation and food services (9.8%)

Over nine in 10 people in West Coast-Tasman are European (91.6%), the highest share among general electorates, and almost one-fifth (17.8%) use coal to heat their home.