Deputy Dave

He suffered years of poor poll results and jibes about his dancing, but Act leader David Seymour is on the cusp of becoming Deputy Prime Minister.

- BY DANYL MCLAUCHLAN

'Wanker!" The woman has bobbed silver hair and wears designer yoga gear. She has lowered her passenger window and leaned across the seat of her gleaming new Porsche Cayenne hybrid to shout insults at David Seymour, who stands on the side of Parnell Rd speaking to a crowd of his constituents. "Good morning, madam," Seymour replies brightly, turning to walk towards her, and then, "Perhaps not," as she raises the window again and glides silently, carbon-lightly, away.

It is just before noon on a glorious midautumn Sunday in the Auckland electorate of Epsom, where Seymour has been the local MP for 10 years: he's on the third of seven street-corner meetings to engage with his constituents. There are a handful of hecklers - it's only three days since the Treaty Principles Bill was voted down before second reading but the general mood is one of warm approval. For every insult or blared car horn there are a dozen people yelling, "Good on you, David!" when they spot the Act leader in his natural habitat: the calm, spacious streets of the nation's wealthiest electorate.

If there's any unhappiness among the crowds that gather about him - most of whom look like models in an ad for exclusive retirement villages or luxury cruises (whitehaired, gleaming teeth, elegant linen shirts), their groomed toy dogs panting gently in the midday warmth - it's that he hasn't done enough. There are still too many bureaucrats in Wellington, too many ridiculous zero-carbon laws making life tough for our hard-working farmers, still too many te reo names in government departments.