Election debates are in fashion, with emotions running high, and the Kiwi-Indian candidate’s election debate organised by Indian Association New Zealand (IANZ) on Saturday, September 2, was no different.
Emotions ran high in this debate, especially on the questions of law and order and immigration, with some members of public entering in a heated exchange of words with the candidates, requiring immediate intervention by moderators, organising committee and other members of public.
Clearly, it was a blinder, with many in the audience might have missed the drama by a whisker (The debate is available on The Indian Weekender's page on Facebook. Click Here for the full video).
However, what such “public bickering between political leaders” as Jacinda Ardern had publically said on Newshub leader’s debate the other night, proved beyond doubt, was that immigration and law and order are two most important issues for the Kiwi-Indian community.
Interestingly, these two issues were not debated as passionately as some of the other issues in two leader’s debate between Prime Minister Bill English and Leader of Opposition Jacinda Ardern on TVNZ 1 and Newshub respectively.
Though anti-immigration sentiments are overflowing in this election with calls for arbitrarily closing doors of New Zealand, but what is being missed is the point that such calls around immigration affect lives of individual people and communities.
Thus leaving the responsibility on the wider Kiwi-Indian community to lobby against any knee-jerk policy on immigration and bottom-up their collective voice on this important issue affecting one and all in the community.
Election debates are usually expected to swing from serving the entertainment, to service to the community, like a pendulum on an imaginary utility-pendulum (if anything like that exists).
Bigger the election debate, preferably broadcasted live on national TV, the potential of serving entertainment exceeds the element of service to the community, provided voters do not necessarily stack their votes on election debate.
However, for the Kiwi-Indian community and by and large other ethnic communities, the scope of such election debates are more a service to the community, and entertainment quotient, if any, is a bonus.
The community needs to comprehend key political messages of each political party, and sometimes this is best achieved by directly hearing to local co-ethnic political representatives in each party rather than from mainstream political leaders.
In this regard, this debate organised by Indian Association of New Zealand and supported by Humm FM and The Indian Weekender was a success as it brought five contenders from main political parties vying for Indian community’s votes.
The contestants included Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi of National Party, Priyanca Radhakrishnan of Labour Party, Mahesh Bindra of New Zealand First, Raj Pardeep Singh of Green party and Roshan Nauhria of New Zealand People’s Party.
The debate started with a two minute free run to each candidate to explain their respective political party’s vision for New Zealand followed by a more nuanced conversation on specific issues such as the economy, health, housing, immigration and law and order.
Candidates expectedly were following the trajectories of their respective political parties and leaders.
While National’s Kanwaljit Singh beat the drum of economic progress, surplus budget, and record levels of low-unemployment, their main nemesis, Labour’s Priyanca Radhakrishnan passionately advocated the cause of low productivity in NZ economy, poverty and inequality.
Mahesh Bindra had a task of challenging the notion of New Zealand First party being racist and xenophobic and Raj Pardeep Singh – a first timer in politics had the task cut out for helping Green Party get into Kiwi-Indian voters.
Roshan Nauhria of New Zealand People’s Party, the relatively new political party, claiming to exclusively represent ethnic migrants sought to impress voters on election promises on immigration and law and order.
To what extent did they eventually succeeded remains to be determined in future.
But, the debate was an appreciative initiative which brought to fore an important point that a lot more is needed to educate Kiwi-Indian community about key policies of major political parties.
The debate was collectively moderated by the trio of Ajay Vashist, Ram Lingam, and Roy Kaunds.
At the end a straw poll was taken to determine voter trends which returned with National at 40 per cent, Labour at 34 per cent, NZ First 12 per cent, Greens at 9 per cent and NZ People Party at 5 per cent.
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