Will the second time be the charm for a second time? Matt Flight hopes so – if that pattern holds, he will represent the Kaikoura Electorate in Parliament come wintertime.
The Marlburian announced last week that he is standing for Labour in the triennial election on 7 November. He seeks the seat which Stuart Smith of National has held for four terms.
Matt ran for MP in 2020, a year after his first bid for Marlborough District Council. In 2022, he got elected as a Blenheim Ward councillor, but last spring opted not to seek another term. That opened this opportunity.
“I really regretted stepping down from Council, but it was a matter of affordability,” he said last Thursday before starting his workday. Matt is the appliance repair specialist behind Marlborough Appliance Repair Specialist, his business better known as MARS.
“A few ducks started lining up,” he continued, “they started getting into a row, and I thought that this could be a possibility. Come February, when [local Labour Party leaders] asked if I wanted to make a commitment, I said, ‘Yes, actually I do’.”
How and why
Labour elected him as its candidate the preceding Thursday. Along with the electorate incumbent, former Marlborough councillor Jamie Arbuckle serves in Wellington as NZ First List MP.
Why did he get back into politics?
Matt replied that “things are happening with [Central] Government at the moment which are not helping everyone”.
Elaborating, he continued: “The government needs to start looking after the people and not after its back pocket. That’s what really rung out to me – ‘you can help the people, and this is how you can help the people’.”
Matt’s work van symbolises his Labour ethic and, from his vantage, represents a difference from his 2020 bid. He said locals recognise him as the man from MARS as well as Council, so his “presence in Marlborough has quadrupled in the last four years.” As such, he aims for a breakthrough in the Canterbury portion of the electorate.
“This time, there’s a lot of negativity toward National compared to what there was last time,” Matt assessed. “Certainly, New Zealand is hurting a lot, and in government, you have to take the people along with you.”
