Labour MPs take to the road

CRAIG SIMCO/ The Dominion Post

WHO DID YOU SAY WAS STUFFED?: Phil Goff meets the locals in a tour of the Swazi factory in Levin.

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Labour MPs have joined leader Phil Goff on a bus trip through provincial centres in the lower North Island in a bid to reconnect with heartland areas the party lost in the last election.

Labour's "magical mystery tour", as some MPs and staffers have dubbed it, made its first call at the Levin HQ of outdoor clothing company Swazi, owned by the uncle of Labour chief whip Darren Hughes.

Davey Hughes showed Mr Goff and the MPs with him the party split up to visit different sites into a room reminiscent of an Alaskan hunting lodge.

And so Mr Goff spent the first stop of his tour sipping tea with the skins of several slaughtered animals at his feet and the stuffed corpses of others looking on balefully from the walls.

The next stop was a little livelier, with Mr Goff getting a chance to meet and greet locals at a cafe up the road.

From there, it was on to Wanganui, where the day ended with a forum with local community groups in a city pub. The bus will visit Hawera today before going to New Plymouth, where Labour will hold its weekly caucus.

With MPs' expenses under more scrutiny than ever, Mr Goff has been upfront that taxpayers are footing the bill for the Labour jaunt.

But he said such trips were necessary to allow MPs to see as broad a cross-section as possible, taking them away from areas they are from.

"We could easily have the caucus in Wellington, but then we're stuck in the environment where people expect politicians to be, where other politicians are, where the [press] gallery is, where the bureaucracy is.

"There is no substitute if you want to lay claim to running a country to get out there and to see people where they're living, where they're working."

- © Fairfax NZ News