Bunkle denies report
ALLIANCE Wellington Central candidate Phillida Bunkle says
she is taking
City Voice to the Press Council over a
report that she is urging people to
give their electorate
votes to Labour.
She announced her complaint at a City
Voice election forum at St Andrew’s on
the Terrace the
day the report appeared (28 Oct), six days before
she
withdrew from the electorate ballot paper in favour
of Labour’s Marian
Hobbs.
The Voice reported that
Bunkle told a Labour Day rally on 25 Oct: “The
strategy
to make a change of government has to be – vote Labour in
the
electorate and Alliance on the list.”
But in a
personal statement at the City Voice forum, Bunkle said she
had
told the editor, Simon Collins, that he could not
interpret her words as
endorsing a vote for Labour
candidate Marian Hobbs in Wellington Central.
“The
statements reported did not include my statement about
Wellington
Central,” she said.
“I did not mention Miss
Hobbs. I made that perfectly clear to the editor.
That he
ignored that to manipulate the result is deeply unfortunate.
I have
been working very hard to make sure that the
spirit and the reality of
democracy is presented to you
in real choices.
“I have written to the Press Council. I
think we have had enough about this
attempt at
manipulation.”
On the same day, Bunkle announced that she
was writing to every voter in
Wellington Central asking
them whether she should contest the electorate
vote. She
withdrew after considering feedback from the letter.
•
Simon Collins responds: Phillida Bunkle did, indeed, tell me
after her
Labour Day speech that her advice to “vote
Labour in the electorate” did not
refer specifically to
Wellington Central. In retrospect, therefore, I
accept
that the headline, “Bunkle urges ‘Hobbs/Alliance’
vote”, went too far.
However, given that she was speaking
as the Alliance’s Wellington Central
candidate to a
Wellington Central rally, I believe it was fair to
interpret
her statement as a tacit endorsement of
tactical voting in the
seat.
ends