A brand new Lego bridge for Northland hand-made by New Zealand First leader and candidate Winston Peters will probably not be quite the same as what the Government is offering, say Northland residents.
A poll of 2,000 Northlanders from Cape Reinga to Wellsford has found that 78% of likely voters – regardless of their political allegiances – feel that the Government’s promise to extend 10 of the region’s bridges to two lanes, and secure the construction of the Puhoi to Wellsford motorway extension, is “preferable” to a quaint, Lego bridge built by Peters.
National have threatened not to conduct important road and bridge work in Northland if their candidate, Mark Osborne, cannot win the electorate’s by-election on March 28th.
But Peters says, worst case scenario, Northlanders don’t really need the work done anyway, and challenged the Prime Minister’s assertion that he couldn’t do anything himself.
“Oh, look, I’ll tell you if you need a new bridge, and this one doesn’t need any work, I can assure you of that,” Peters told media, as he climbed out of the wreckage of his vehicle at the Matakohe bridge.
He said that whatever National were promising the region, he could do “just as good.”
“See this here? You can put it where you like,” he told Dargaville residents earlier this week, as he unveiled a small, personally crafted bridge made of Lego. “You won’t get anything better than that anywhere, I promise you.”
At that time, Peters rejected criticisms that the bridge was “quite short” and “too small for cars.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Listen here, if you really believe that, then by golly, you’ve got another thing coming, and you better get your facts straight, alright? In my day, we would have thanked the mighty lord above for a bridge like that. We didn’t need any of this modern concrete rubbish.”
Peters has also personally nailed together a rickety wooden bridge just north of Whangarei, that connects one side of a stream to the other. It collapsed earlier today.
“The thing about Key and his people is they’re not willing to get down here and get their hands dirty. Well, I am,” he said, waving some sticks about.
No one is yet certain what Peters intends to do with the sticks.
Deputy Prime Minister Bill English, who was in Northland today campaigning for Osborne, said that the New Zealand First leader had become “desperate,” and that the tide was beginning to swing against him.
“No doubt it’s a close race,” he said, “but I think Northlanders are starting to understand that, look, bridges are important, roads are important, and you never know, if you don’t vote for the National candidate, when you might wake up, covered in blood, your car’s blown up, and there are no more roads at all.”
Those comments echo earlier ones from the Prime Minister, who said that, if Peters wins, there was “little the Government could do” to prevent entire towns from “vanishing altogether.”
Peters has rejected today’s poll on his bridge, saying Northlanders weren’t “that bloody ungrateful.”
He said he expected to win in a landslide that will “bring down the whole government,” and claims New Zealand First internal polling has him at 93%.