Strategy

Jon Reeves, formerly of Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) Auckland, recently sent me details regarding various "The Way Forward" campaigns around the place to keep open rail lines.

I am heavily involved in the Hamilton-Auckland passenger train campaign through CBT. We have been running the campaign for almost 2 years now. I thought our experiences mnay be of interest, and useful, for some of TWF folk.

A major difference is that we are looking to get a rail service established, rather than save a rail line. We do share some common opponents however such as Stephen Joyce/National Party MPs/various local councils.

Our campaign has gone through several iterations. It has to date been successful. We have shifted (albeit reluctantly for some of them) the position of local councils, we have built good public support and recognition and we have forced our local Government MPs on a number of occasions to publicly justify their opposition to the service. At every point in our campaign we have sought public support, and shown public support to local body and government politicians, for the service. That has been powerful.

Our campaign to date - more details available at www.votetrains.org.nz

1. The genesis of the campaign were some public meetings in Hamilton run by Jon Reeves and the Auckland CBT crew followed by several hundred postcards to Stephen Joyce and local Government MPs and meetings with the MPs.

2. November 2009 a petition was launched. It was a little quiet to start off with. However, when we took it out to the public it proved popular. People saw the service as a 'no brainer' and willingly signed it. In the space of 1 month before Christmas I had personally collected around 1300 signatures. That showed to me how successful it was. In the new year we took it around markets and festivals. We gathered 11,500 signatures which was the largest petition out of this region for a decade. We presented the petition to local MPs and councils and made a feature of it, getting front page coverage in the regional newspaper.

Shortly after we organised a number of submissions to local councils under their annual plans urging them to support the service.

From the petition we gathered hundreds of email addresses for an emailing list (permission sought from people).

3. Local Body elections October 2010.

We ran a local body election campaign "Vote Trains" to urge people to vote in rail friendly candidates. We had public meetings throughout the Waikato, well over one hundred corflute "Vote Train" signs and we leafletted every meet the candidates meeting we could find. We also attracted media coverage. Importantly, we telephoned every candidate and polled them about the rail service and published the results on our website.

We had a number of train friendly councillors elected and movement from those formerly reluctant to support the service. Local body politicians formed the view that CBT was a fairly large, well funded and powerful organisation with the ear of the public. We seemed larger than we perhaps were. Importantly, Councillors were not quite sure how far and wide our influence extended and that uncertainty prompted the local councils to set up a working party to investigate getting the service up and running.

4. This working party reports in September 2011. In the meantime, in order that the Councils do not forget, we are arranging submissions under the annual plans. We have a pro-forma submission we are getting signed (successfully) at local markets and festivals. We also have online submissions on our website.

Very shortly a petition will come from the town of Tuakau with well over 3,200 signatures asking for the rail service. This will be presented to local councillors and MPs with the requisite media coverage.

5. Whats to come. The general election in November. We have been getting postcards signed locally to send to our Government MPs asking them to support the Tuakau petition. We don't expect they will however it, once again, forces them to state their opposition to the submission. We plan a large public meeting in late August where we will invite politicians/candidates to attend and state their position on the rail service. We will frame the evening at the outset with a presentation on the strengths of the rail service (versus for example the loss making Holiday Highway). We will do this meeting early to try and set the agenda but also avoid the Rugby World Cup. We will also plan some form of "Vote Trains" election campaign. The advantage we have is that the likes of Labour, Green and NZ First MPs/candidates support the rail service whilst our Government Mps do not. We will once again force them to state their position publicly. If they can see votes leaking away as a result, as local body politicians did, we can influence their position.

Thats our story to date. I hope it may be of some nterest and use.

Rob George

Hamilton