Manurewa candidate dons his trusty footwear

National candidate for Manurewa Dr Cam Calder is talking amiably to a group of senior citizens from a leather couch in the Mint Café on Manurewa’s Station Road. 

They have finished their coffees and are half-standing, ready to leave as Dr Calder tells them to: “Think National for your party vote. New Zealand deserves to do much better.”

They nod in agreement. One of the ladies says that New Zealand could indeed do much better.

Dr Calder’s blue rosette peers from underneath a navy blue raincoat. He urges me to not get too close as he has a cold, then crosses his legs to reveal a sturdy pair of walking boots.

“I wear the R.V. Williams for a reason,” he says later, in reference to the leg-work a politician puts in as they canvas door-to-door.

He’s an “optimistic guy”, but tells me he is “going all out” on the party vote in a constituency that he describes as predominantly red.

“It would be a privilege to get to Parliament,” he says, but it is clear that is not the main objective. Dr Calder believes the election will be won if National dominate the party vote.

He drinks a black coffee, strong enough to stain the side of the mug. He doesn’t take sugar – understandable considering his original profession.    

Trained as a dentist in Otago, Dr Calder eventually reached the UK after an OE which saw him travel overland throughout Asia and Europe.

He studied medicine at Cambridge and returned to live in Devonport in 1989.

He pre-empts a question about whether the people of Manurewa can relate to a man from the North Shore.

“People understand that candidates have to come from somewhere. When I am asked I say I am a Taranaki boy, who moved to the North Shore, who now drives every day to Manurewa,” he says.

He refutes the suggestion that he is a politician, rather a “concerned citizen”. His motivation is his children.

“I fear for their future,” he says. Then for the first time he launches into what sounds like politician talk.

“The National Party offers a future for our country and hope for our children.”

He moves on to fertile territory; a speech more rehearsed than when talking about his past.

In its first term, he says, the National Party will be “fostering the self-belief that has helped New Zealand for so long”. 

His party is going to give the economy a boost, he says, going on to use a baking analogy.

“We are going to grow the cake so that people in the bakery are able to be rewarded as they should be.”

Tax rates will go down and this will be funded by “a sinking lid of bureaucracy”; broadband will be improved so New Zealand businesses can communicate with international partners effectively; and the Resource Management Act and the Building Management Act will be re-drafted to reduce “legion and horrendous” hold-ups in infrastructure creation.

Education will draw on the examples of Korea, Japan and Finland where “they get the best out of teachers”, and there will be a greater emphasis on early childhood assessment. 

Dr Calder is now in full flow, an unabashed talker with a charismatic voice. 

Moving away from policy and on to the canvassing he has been doing, the old Dr Calder returns to a more relaxed style. 

He calls himself a “compassionate conservative”; he can empathise with Manurewa’s single-parent families because he too came from one.

“I always had the belief that I would achieve through hard work and effort,” he says. He looks convinced that National can “ignite” this belief in the single-parent families of Manurewa.

People are telling him security is the big issue in Manurewa, especially following the recent series of violent attacks, the latest of which involved the death of a 14-year-old boy in Weymouth.

It’s “shameful” that in New Zealand’s largest city, people have to live behind three sets of security locks, he says. 

The sun comes out and Dr Calder is eager to have his picture taken outside. 

I ask him whether he has an office and he tells me that his office is a white Toyota Corolla. We approach the vehicle, emblazoned with the National logo, and Calder poses awkwardly.

“I’m not the prettiest of subjects,” he says as he looks out to the road.

Pretty may not be the right word for Dr Calder but he leaves with a firm handshake and a smile, and a glance up to the heavens to see if it is about to rain.