Attendance at public meetings is a less scientific one, given that the attendees tend to be the already strongly affiliated rather than a random sample of society.
With that caveat, if you were in the upper echelons of the southern branch of the Green Party, you would have to be bouyed by the gathering it hosted this week.
It helps that Ms Swarbrick, whether you like her message or not, is an engaging and effective public speaker, so the oratory if nothing else might make the trip to town worth it.
But it also reflects the work she and the Green caucus have put into the South since the retirement of former Green MP, Metiria Turei, in 2017.
As Francisco Hernandez noted as he introduced her, Ms Swarbrick calls Dunedin her second-favourite city: "I have been to other New Zealand cities with Chloe and she doesn’t say that anywhere else." She has been here a lot in the past six years.
Mr Hernandez and the man who was sitting beside him, Scott Willis, are the living proof that the tactic has worked. Electing two Green MPs from Dunedin — albeit that a set of unusual and unfortunate circumstances lay behind Mr Hernandez making it to Parliament, just six years on from 2017, is an incredible achievement and should cement the party’s already high vote in the region for years to come. It is that hard work which means you can draw a decent crowd on a Monday night.
Ms Swarbrick’s trip South came after another week of the Greens and New Zealand First heckling each other vociferously in the House.
Diametrically opposed, both politically and in the geography of the House, the contest between the two parties is, despite the sloganeering by each of them, a genuine contest of ideas and visions for New Zealand’s future — let alone the country’s name — and makes for a fascinating watch.
In the black corner, the anti-woke forces of realism, real politik and benevolent capitalism; in the Green corner the woke as all get out forces of realism, conviction politik and anti-capitalism. Twelve three-minute rounds and may the best man/woman/they win.
That is more than a little simplistic but like all labels and cliche, there is some truth to it.
New Zealand First’s mantra of regional growth and anti-woke’ism offer a different vision of the future to the Green message of sustainability and inclusivity, and both sides have MPs with enough intellectual heft to make this a genuine debate.
There have been some jarring moments, such the unsavoury comments from NZ First’s frontbench about some Green MPs, and many of the Greens’ interjections are not going to make any compilation of great political quotations either.
But they can even agree sometimes: New Zealand First was the only governing party to support Marama Davidson’s Right To Repair Member’s Bill when it passed its first reading on Wednesday night.
In general though, this has been a passionate discourse between the two parties and a fascinating sideshow to the main drama in the House.
This is in no small part aided by Ms Swarbrick’s decision to aim high, not low. She has taken the unusual decision for a politician to try to win this debate with reason and reasoned explanations rather than simply yelling a lot: it is a novel idea, one can only hope it catches on more widely.
Not that Ms Swarbrick is above having a dig at her opponents, such as her claim on Monday that National ministers are avoiding coming to Dunedin because they are scared of being at the centre of heated protests such as have greeted the Prime Minister and Health Minister.
National is adamant this is utter rubbish, noting that ministers in the last government (and Jacinda Ardern in particular) attracted protesters as well, and that being barracked by protesters is part of the job.
As Jenny Shipley once said, if you want everyone to love you politics is not the sport for you.
While no-one has done the sums on ministerial visits to Dunedin, National also points out that the southern city has always been a tricky day trip, especially for a North Island-based minister. And speaking of tricky airline schedules . . .
Southern skies
The South often decries that it misses out on services, and Southland National MP Joseph Mooney highlighted a shining example of that on social media this week. He (and Act New Zealand list MP Todd Stephenson) both live in Queenstown. Mr Mooney said that Air New Zealand had changed its South Island schedules, and as a result on a sitting week he (and presumably Mr Stephenson) now had to fly to Auckland first, to be able to then catch a flight to Queenstown.
Quite apart from the utter waste of time and the added expense to the taxpayer, think about the addition to Parliament’s carbon footprint. If only the MPs could have a quiet word in the shareholding minister’s ears.
Making friends
It has been a while since we have run a Southern Say standard, a photo of one of our MPs in an incongruous situation. This photo of Dunedin Labour MP Rachel Brooking alongside a man wearing (for good reason we assume) a cockroach costume was too good to ignore. — mike.houlahan@odt.co.nz
