‘Flying’ visit by Mr Bolger ...

Press, 24 July 1987, Page 4

‘Flying’ visit by Mr Bolger ...

By

PETER LUKE,

political reporter The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bolger, went to Auckland to woo voters yesterday — but spent almost as much time in the air as on the ground. Mr Bolger was out of his Wellington base for about eight hours. But for just under four hours he was either in a light aircraft between Wellington and Auckland, or in a helicopter for one of four rides.

The National Party, at its divisional conferences, emphasised that while Labour might have the healthy campaign funds, National would be stronger on the ground. For journalists covering the campaign, however, the reality yesterday was that National’s leader spent much of his time among the clouds rather than on the ground.

Marked for campaigning yesterday were the two Auckland marginal electorates of Clevedon and Eden.

Mr Bolger flew into Ardmore Aerodrome about 11 a.m. Two hours later he took a helicopter to Eden, without taking one step outside the aerodrome.

Instead, Mr Bolger chatted to officers of the Auckland Aero Club, took a short helicopter training flight, then visited the workshop of Motor Holdings Air Services. The training flight sold Mr Bolger on the benefits of the helicopter, particularly for servicing his own large King Country electorate.

After a brief discussion with eight or nine employees at the workshop on job training and education policy it was back to the helicopter.

Eden is one the most marginal of central Auckland seats. Labour holds it with a majority of 2306, but in Mr Hiwi Tauroa, a former headmaster, Counties rugby coach and Race Relations Conciliator, National has an undeniably popular candidate.

For National to win back Eden it must make inroads into the western and southern sections of the electorate.

Yet Mr Bolger spent his 90-minute visit in the pleasant, leafy and National streets of Epsom. He touched down at the prestigious Auckland Grammar School before visiting the Southern Cross Hospital. It was Mr Bolger’s first hospital visit of the fourweek campaign, and appropriately it was a private hospital. National’s health policy talks of an expanded role for the private sector in health.

At the hospital Mr Bolger spent most of his time talking to administrators and inspecting a $1.5 million C.T. Scanner. Eventually two patients were spoken to. One was an early 1960 s beauty queen; the other a National voter from Pakuranga. Asked last evening if he thought his visit had helped win Eden, Mr Bolger said he had visited other parts of the electorate earlier in the year. One of the objectives yesterday had been health, not electorate-related — to visit a big private hospital. In Auckland the boundaries of individual electorates were blurred by the fact that many lived and worked in different electorates, he suggested. True to this point, Mr Bolger’s next visit was to the Sanyo New Zealand, Ltd, factory, just over the

boundary in Roskill electorate, whose member of Parliament is the Minister of Employment, Mr Goff. Since 1984, numbers employed at this plant have dropped from about 250 to 50.

Mr Bolger told workers at their “smoko” that National would ensure that protection for manufacturing would not be phased out at the expense of greater unemployment. Unlike his smoko visit in East Cape electorate on Wednesday, no questions were asked, but Mr Bolger clearly struck a chord with individual workers when he went round tables.

Finally, Mr Bolger returned by helicopter to Clevedon, this time to launch his party’s housing policy in one of the new estates that has sprung up near the southern motorway. Aside from his own entourage and journalists,

about two dozen local people turned out — most were clearly strong National supporters. Mr Bolger returned by helicopter to Ardmore for his return flight to Wellington having seen or. been seen by a very small number of voters in either Clevedon or Eden. Journalists who had flown up with him had air travel on the mind by 6 p.m. Not only had they seen Mr Bolger climb into or out of innumerable helicopters but they remembered the ominous crack in the windscreen of their own aircraft from Wellington. While they waited for a replacement aircraft, Mr Bolger flew off. Ironically, it was the leader’s aircraft in which the heating failed on the return journey, forcing Mr Bolger to endure an icy 90-minute flight.