The MP for Tauranga, Simon Bridges, appears to be the future of the National Party. He’s rising fast up the party list, is creating a large media profile, has been voted the second ‘hottest’ politician, and insiders pick him as a potential future leader. I’m interviewing Simon Bridges today at 12 noon as part of University of Otago Vote Chat. What would you like me to ask him? [Read more below]
He’s only 35, and already Simon Bridges seems to have amassed an interesting career. He’s got degrees in Politics and Law, after which he became a litigation lawyer at Auckland law firm Kensington Swan. He then moved on to become a Senior Crown prosecutor in Tauranga. He’s since done more study – at both the London School of Economics and Oxford University. On top of that he’s even worked as an intern in the British House of Commons. And, of course, now he’s the National MP for Tauranga, having beaten Winston Peters’ attempts to win back the seat in 2008. Bridges won with an impressive nearly 12,000-majority vote.
Bridges is part-Maori, but he obviously didn’t get the memo to say that young Maori are supposed to support Labour, and so he joined up with the National Party while he was in high school (where incidentally he was taught by future Labour MP and Minister Chris Carter). And he doesn’t exactly come from an Establishment born-to-rule background. Growing up, his family wasn’t exactly rich – his father was a Baptist Minister and his mother a primary school teacher. The biggest Establishment claim to fame would have to be that he’s related to former Labour Cabinet minister Koro Wetere.
So what are his politics? Although he joined the National Party at the height of its neoliberal rightwing reforms of the early 1990s, he appears to be somewhat more centrist than most National MPs. Upon coming into Parliament in 2008 he cited the issue of the developing underclass as one of the main issues that needed to be dealt with. He also said that he wasn’t ‘excited’ at all about the economic reforms that Ruth Richardson pushed through in the 90s. In fact, when asked about the need for future economic austerity, he has said this: ‘It's not the early 90s. A middle course can get us back to a good position. More disciplined spending, but not cuts. National's policy is not a penny less spent but spent better’. Similarly, he says he prefers the Maori Party as a National’s coalition partner over the other more rightwing alternatives.
So I’ll be asking him all about those things above. As well as that, I’ll be asking some of the usual questions that I’ve been asking other MPs – about gay marriage, inequality, issues of ethnicity, drug reform, and alcohol use.
If anyone has additional topics and specific questions that they want put to Simon Bridges, please let me know – or participate on the Twittersphere in realtime (see details below). Of course, I may not be able to use all the questions you suggest, but it’s helpful to get ideas from others and it’s useful to know what topics you find particularly interesting.
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The University of Otago Vote Chat takes place every week until the general election. The interviews occur in front of a public audience at the University of Otago Media Production studios, where the conversation is filmed for livestreaming on the internet and as a podcast for iTunes.
The intention is to make these political meetings rather different from the usual stage-managed and bland affairs that can happen during election campaigns. So there’ll be lots of challenging and quirky questions, and the MP won’t be allowed to revert to simply giving the usual well-rehearsed campaigning speech. The audience can help by heckling, cheering, or merely tweeting their reaction and questions to the Twitter feed – using the hashtag #OUVoteChat2011 – which will be projected up on the lecture theatre screen.
If you’re in Dunedin there is still the ability to come along and participate and/or watch – but seating is limited to about 45 or so – so turn up early. The Media Production Studio is on the 2nd floor of the Owheo Building, 133 Union Street East (Cnr of Union Street East and Forth Streets). You can see a map here:
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps?q=133+union+street+east+dunedin&hl=en&sll=-41.244772,172.617188&sspn=37.305694,86.572266&vpsrc=0&t=m&z=16
If you want to watch the live-stream of the interviews, go to:
http://www.otago.ac.nz/its/mediaproduction/streaming/mpstudio.html
Eventually all the interviews will be available as podcasts to download from iTunes, but in the meantime you can also watch them on YouTube here: http://www.youtube.com/user/OUVoteChat
Some weeks there will be more than one politician. Future politicians include Bill English and Tau Henare. To keep up with all the detail, there’s a Facebook “Vote Chat 2011” page here:
http://www.facebook.com/VoteChat2011
