‘Whanganui was in a mood for change in 2004. The incumbent mayor, Chas Poynter, a bookseller and the son of a bookseller, had been in office since 1986, a total of 18 years. He had gained some credit among right-wing voters for his staunch opposition to the occupation of Moutoa Gardens, but recently that support had been eroding. In 2001 he retained power with just 27 per cent of the vote. Now he was up against professional politician and media personality Michael Laws.
Laws had local connections. Born in Wairoa in 1957, he was educated in Whanganui: at Tawhero School, Whanganui Intermediate and Wanganui Boys’ College. His father, a teacher, was subsequently rector of Waitaki Boys’ High School in Ōamaru and then of Scots College, Wellington, both of which schools Michael attended. Laws won a sporting blue at Otago University, where he completed a Bachelor of Arts in History. He was an accomplished debater and public speaker who received some public recognition for his vociferous support for the 1981 Springbok rugby tour of New Zealand, representing a portion of the student body at odds with the majority, who opposed the tour. This seems to have given him, or confirmed in him, a taste for the profile that controversy brings.
After six years in Parliament as an MP with National and then New Zealand First, Laws became a newspaper columnist and talkback radio host. He also attended Bill Manhire’s creative writing class at Victoria University and in 2000 completed an MA in creative writing. He has written three books: a memoir of his political life; a thriller which fictionalised aspects of his political career he felt he could not include in the memoir; and a bestseller, Gladiator: The Norm Hewitt Story, about the former All Black.
He then moved into local politics, returning to live in Whanganui in 2002 and positioning himself there for a tilt at the mayoralty. He showed himself to be highly skilled at exploiting rifts in the community, living in the wealthy Whanganui suburb of St John’s Hill and sending his children to private schools while railing against elites; his views could be coruscating.
In one newspaper column he wrote: “But there is one group that hovers above all in the hoity-toity stakes, that regards the rest of humanity as little more than shaved monkeys — as uncivilised, unwashed plebeians with neither taste nor refinement.” These supporters of the arts are, he went on to say, “middle-class wannabes who patronise and lionise for the same reason that groupies grope rock stars”. He was opposed to government funding for the arts, and especially for the NZSO, RNZ and Opera New Zealand, which he described as promoting “that loathsome caterwauling known as opera. Where fat freaks warble in foreign languages before they die. Badly.”’
Read the rest of the excerpt here.
