We lived next door to Nikki for much of the time she was our local MP.
This was in Dedwood Terrace, St Mary’s Bay and Nikki’s Auckland home for those years was a self-contained unit in a house owned by the All Black Ali Williams’ mother Helen.
To be honest, being neighbours didn’t mean much more than an occasional hello on the footpath. She always struck me as being very reserved, almost aloof, when it came to chatting with us.
That’s perhaps understandable considering her complicated family life. Her parents separated when she was young and her step brother became a drug addict who was later convicted of murder in California.
I read today that Nikki won the Auckland Central seat in 2008 through plenty of old fashioned hard work on the stump, knocking on doors and being very visible in the electorate en route to beating Judith Tizard by just under 1500 votes.
She wasn’t living next door that year, but was for the two subsequent elections where Nikki comfortably retained the seat in contests with Jacinda Ardern.
If she repeated her 2008 electioneering strategy in 2011 and 2014 she certainly didn’t make much of an effort in her own street. There may have been a leaflet in the letter box but nothing more. There was certainly no door to door canvassing or neighbourhood meetings.
Maybe she thought leafy St Mary’s Bay was a shoo-in for her so it was better to make time in the Green and Labour enclaves of Grey Lynn and Waiheke Island. Whatever she did it worked as she won both those elections. Her margin over the future Prime Minister was 717 in 2011 and 600 in 2014.
One significant memory I do have of her is training for the Coast to Coast multi-sport race which she completed in February of 2013 – by which stage she had been promoted to Cabinet.
More than once I encountered her earlier that summer as she dragged her bike out the front door to start another training slog – always turning left down the hill to get some momentum up!
I can’t remember if she did the Kumara Beach to Sumner Beach classic by herself or in a two person team or whether she did it over one day or two. It doesn’t really matter. She put in the training and completed the event despite the demands of her job. I always admired her for that.
Sometime between 2014 and 2017 she moved out of Dedwood Terrace and bought her own place down a street on the other side of Jervois Road in Herne Bay. I don’t think I ever saw her in person again.
Nikki scored our votes in 2017 – the last time I voted National – but she never made any effort down her old street during that campaign either. By then she’d been diagnosed with the breast cancer that has now taken her life but it made little difference to the result.
In her fourth and final campaign she won her largest majority – 1581 – over that year’s Labour candidate Helen White.
It’s desperately sad that she has succumbed to this hideous disease at such a young age. A life has been cut down just as the really good years are beginning.
I liked what her old boss John Key had to say about her. “It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years.”
Nikki Kaye was obviously a determined and ambitious woman with, it would appear, little time for the social niceties of life in her neighbourhood. I don’t have a problem with that. She had a job to do.
RIP
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
To be honest, being neighbours didn’t mean much more than an occasional hello on the footpath. She always struck me as being very reserved, almost aloof, when it came to chatting with us.
That’s perhaps understandable considering her complicated family life. Her parents separated when she was young and her step brother became a drug addict who was later convicted of murder in California.
I read today that Nikki won the Auckland Central seat in 2008 through plenty of old fashioned hard work on the stump, knocking on doors and being very visible in the electorate en route to beating Judith Tizard by just under 1500 votes.
She wasn’t living next door that year, but was for the two subsequent elections where Nikki comfortably retained the seat in contests with Jacinda Ardern.
If she repeated her 2008 electioneering strategy in 2011 and 2014 she certainly didn’t make much of an effort in her own street. There may have been a leaflet in the letter box but nothing more. There was certainly no door to door canvassing or neighbourhood meetings.
Maybe she thought leafy St Mary’s Bay was a shoo-in for her so it was better to make time in the Green and Labour enclaves of Grey Lynn and Waiheke Island. Whatever she did it worked as she won both those elections. Her margin over the future Prime Minister was 717 in 2011 and 600 in 2014.
One significant memory I do have of her is training for the Coast to Coast multi-sport race which she completed in February of 2013 – by which stage she had been promoted to Cabinet.
More than once I encountered her earlier that summer as she dragged her bike out the front door to start another training slog – always turning left down the hill to get some momentum up!
I can’t remember if she did the Kumara Beach to Sumner Beach classic by herself or in a two person team or whether she did it over one day or two. It doesn’t really matter. She put in the training and completed the event despite the demands of her job. I always admired her for that.
Sometime between 2014 and 2017 she moved out of Dedwood Terrace and bought her own place down a street on the other side of Jervois Road in Herne Bay. I don’t think I ever saw her in person again.
Nikki scored our votes in 2017 – the last time I voted National – but she never made any effort down her old street during that campaign either. By then she’d been diagnosed with the breast cancer that has now taken her life but it made little difference to the result.
In her fourth and final campaign she won her largest majority – 1581 – over that year’s Labour candidate Helen White.
It’s desperately sad that she has succumbed to this hideous disease at such a young age. A life has been cut down just as the really good years are beginning.
I liked what her old boss John Key had to say about her. “It’s not the years in your life, it’s the life in your years.”
Nikki Kaye was obviously a determined and ambitious woman with, it would appear, little time for the social niceties of life in her neighbourhood. I don’t have a problem with that. She had a job to do.
RIP
Peter Williams was a writer and broadcaster for half a century. Now watching from the sidelines. Peter blogs regularly on Peter’s Substack - where this article was sourced.
2 comments:
Indeed RIP.
Yes, very sad in too many ways.
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