White is 37 on her party list, while Lee is 30, meaning they need to win the seat to remain in Parliament.<\/p>\n
The Greens\u2019 Ricardo Menendez March was on 14%, and Opportunity leader Qiulae Wong on 10%.<\/p>\n
Act\u2019s Alex Price (3%) and NZ First\u2019s Sheldon Eden-Whaitiri (5%) trailed but said they were campaigning for the party vote only.<\/p>\n
Lee faced a tough question \u2013 would she be happy to become the MP if it meant Finance Minister Nicola Willis was out of Parliament?<\/p>\n
On current polling, National would lose most of its list MPs, depending on how many electorates the party wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s a hard one,\u201d Lee said, avoiding the question, while saying Willis was an excellent Finance Minister.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love to be the local MP.\u201d<\/p>\n
White appeared to have the most local knowledge in a pop quiz from moderator Toby Manhire.<\/p>\n
She said she\u2019d fight to save the Carrington Hospital from destruction and save the Pt Chevalier bowls club.<\/p>\n
But she might have some issues with her leader, Chris Hipkins.<\/p>\n
When asked by moderator Toby Manhire how they ranked their leaders out of 10, most gave their leader 10 (to no one\u2019s surprise).<\/p>\n
All except White, and Wong (who abstained, saying it wasn\u2019t right to rate herself).<\/p>\n
The Labour MP gave Hipkins 9 out of 10, to loud laughter and shock from the audience.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s because he can always reflect on what he can do better. We have a leader who listens and talks to their caucus and collaborates,\u201d White said.<\/p>\n
The Spinoff\/Curia poll also showed National and Labour neck and neck at 32% in the party vote, similar to national polling.<\/p>\n
The Greens were on 19%, Opportunity and NZ First at 6% and Act on 3%. Polling was carried out between September 21 and 28.<\/p>\n
The debate became heated at times when discussing supermarket policy, immigration and the cost of living.<\/p>\n
Referring to NZ First\u2019s pledge to buy back the BNZ, Menendez-March said: \u201cIsn\u2019t it interesting that introducing a third supermarket is communism, but nationalising a bank isn\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eden-Whaitiri later hit back: \u201cIf Ricardo is running the supermarket, if it\u2019s got the rainbow tick or it\u2019s honouring the Treaty it goes on the shelves.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New Zealand First candidate also upset other politicians by saying immigration was the source of many of the electorate\u2019s issues.<\/p>\n
Homelessness in Mt Albert has also increased in recent years, with all candidates agreeing more needed to be done to solve the social problems that had led to that.<\/p>\n
Katie Bradford is a senior correspondent at the Herald. She has been a broadcast journalist for more than 20 years and was based in the press gallery for 10 years. She specialises in politics, business and Auckland issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"White is 37 on her party list, while Lee is 30, meaning they need to win the seat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616263,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[2246,3017,10049,51125,651,217467,38691,5903,42,32576,100628,78,6721,7240,663,10048,43,13027,7798,7248,5348,418,303606,40,38,41,39,303,16550,102],"class_list":["post-616262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-2246","tag-ahead","tag-albert","tag-barely","tag-close","tag-contested","tag-crucial","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-helen","tag-hotly","tag-in","tag-labour","tag-lead","tag-looks","tag-mt","tag-news","tag-poll","tag-race","tag-seat","tag-showing","tag-shows","tag-smidgen","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-very","tag-white","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616262"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616262\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616263"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}