The union wishlist for Labour
The Dom Post reported:
A senior Labour Party office holder has accused the party hierarchy of treating Pacific party members merely as campaign workers and voting fodder.
The Labour Party’s Mana Tagata Pasefika chairman Shane Laulu says it is at risk of losing the traditional support of Pacific members if they are not given more prominence.
In a letter addressed to Labour Party official Paul Tolich and John Ryall, the Service and Food Workers Union national secretary, Mr Laulu said he was disappointed at the lack of “Pacific candidates and their overall ranking order”.
Mr Laulu said the Labour Party was in danger of losing the support of the Pacific community because of a fallacy “their vote is a given”.
“I believe Pacific party members have moved beyond being seen as only campaign workers and voting fodder.”
Mr Laulu, who has been a member of the Service and Food Workers Union for the past decade, wrote the letter after unions, including the EPMU, SFWU, dairy workers and meatworkers’ union, published their preferred rankings of Labour candidates.
The letter and list rankings were obtained by The Dominion Post.
The full list of rankings is meant to go online, but I don’t think it has, so I got a copy off the reporter. The unions wishlist is:
- Andrew Little – EPMU
- Michael Wood – FINSEC
- Jerome Mika – EPMU
- Deb Mahuta
- Brenda Alexander
- Mea’ole Keil – SWFU
- Josie Pagani – Rangitikei
- Jordan Carter
- Christine Rose – Rodney
- Kate Sutton
- Sehai Orgad – Hamilton East
- Nicola Vallance
- Peter Foster
It will be interesting to see how closely this follows the final list. The unions have a pact that that they are all obliged to vote in the order they have agreed, as a bloc. This gives them considerable strength at the regional list rankings and the national list ranking.
One may wonder how many new MPs will Labour get? Last election they got 43, and generally they have polled below this level. But let’s assume they get 43 MPs again.
Retiring MPs are Pete Hodgson, George Hawkins, Mita Ririnui and Lynne Pillay. So assuming they protect their current MPs, they should get 4 new MPs. However three of these will be electorate MPs in Dunedin North, Manurewa and Wigram. So if Labour get 43 MPs again, they may have just new List MP.
This suggests to me they will need to rank Little above some of the caucus to guarantee him a place.