Sep 17, 2008

KFCgate

Interesting discussion on Radio Live yesterday morning

Lush: Finally, I just want to go to what probably be a key in this election, in that 250,000 not yet enrolled to vote. Obviously its going to be very important for the Labour party to get these peoples registered and out there voting. Would you agree with that, Matthew Hooton.

Hooton: Yeah, the unions are working hard on this and Matt can probably brief us in more detail on what they are doing there. The trick is to identify people who are members of unions, but are not enrolled to vote, and particularly if they don’t speak English, so the union and the Labour party can go along, enrol them and help to fill in their ballot paper on the day, and that’s I’m sure part of Labours strategy.

Lush: So Mathew Hooton, you, you would see the fact that 250,000 people aren’t registered to vote would certainly be in the National party’s favour.

Hooton: Ohh, its whats, whats very important to the labour party is getting the vote in south Auckland out. That’s how they won in 2005, also west Auckland but I think, um, Labours lost west Auckland pretty badly already, its south Auckland…

Lush: Finally, your comments on that Matt McCarten…

McCarten: Yeah well, well, the enrolment is to get out the vote and that’s Labours only chance, I mean that is very, very big in the unions, and the electoral enrolments group are spending a huge amount of resource in doing that. But one of the things, the problem they’ve got, a lot of the vote, you know, doesn’t care, and so the unions have got 20% of their membership are not even enrolled, and so they’ve worked out if they can get that up, well that’s going to be 70,000-80,000 extra in, in, in the vote, but, but, but a lot of that’s youth, you know, and they don’t vote the first time around, and a lot, a lot, well most of them, so they’re going to have their work cut out for them, but realistically you’ll still have about 150,000 that wont be enrolled by election date and that, and that, and that will hurt the Labour party.

Lush: I’ll leave it there … thanks very much both Mathew Hooton and Matt McCarten.