Women's Expo: The inside story

The first weekend in October saw the doors open at the Christchurch Women’s Lifestyle Expo to hundreds of women from Canterbury and beyond.  The New Zealand Labour Party was one of over 700 stalls in the expo and even if I do say so myself one of, if not the best looking stands.

There were three petitions available for people to sign: Darien Fenton’s Fair Deal in Hard Times, ACE funding cuts as well as Occupational Therapy cuts. We had fantastic support from the local unions with plenty of flyers and postcards for people to sign, including the SFWU’s fair pay for hospital staff.

We had also printed off copy of Sue Moroney’s first e-newsletter Bread and Roses for people to take away and read, hopefully resulting in more people joining Sue’s mailing list.

The biggest highlight was the competition we had running to name as many female members of parliament as possible. The lucky winner (a lady from Styx Mill, Christchurch) won a meal out with our very own Ruth Dyson and Lianne Dalziel! At times throughout the weekend we had people queuing to enter the competition which was fantastic.

We had Ruth and Lianne as our guest speakers as well as Megan Woods who ran for Mayor in Christchurch at the last local election, and many people were thrilled to see their local MP there to have a chat with and bring up some of their compliments and concerns.

I think the free water-bottles, balloons and  red Jaffas helped our stand get attention of those who normally didn’t take much interest in politics come and see what we are all about.  The merchandise we had on display certainly gave the stall that edge that other stalls didn’t and quite a few of the merchandise flyers were taken away with the visitors of the stall.

The biggest issues that kept coming up were people’s unhappiness about cuts to ACE and other educational changes, the way Melissa Lee acted in the Mt Elbert bi-election, and of course Bully Bennett and her treatment of beneficiaries.

We only got two people that weren’t happy to support us and one was while we were setting up and I think he just wanted to stir us up for something to do, and the other just didn’t vote at all. All in all the weekend was a fantastic success and we are all looking forward to our stall next year!