The country is having a bit of a rough time at the moment weather wise. Auckland has been hit particularly hard. Now it isn’t a major storm, but there have been wide spread, long duration power cuts, trees down, boats broken their moorings, things like that. I thought it would be interesting to see how the various electorate MPs in Auckland had responded on Twitter.
So what I have done is gone through and look at all of the electorate MPs in Auckland’s Twitter pages. I have screen grabbed the latest tweet as at around 11am this morning. They are in the order of which I remembered the MPs.
There is one more MP who really stands out:
Some hold that there is a difference between electorate and list MPs, that electorate MPs are directly elected and represent a geographic area. If we hold that this is true, then surely the time to step up and help your constituents is when things are not going well. I am not based in Auckland, so I don’t have first hand knowledge of how bad things up there are, other than Stuff and The NZ Herald’s coverage. But they are both reporting 40-50,000 customers without power, wind speeds of over 150km/h, and a truck blown over on the Harbour Bridge. Twitter would provide a great way for MPs to point people in the right direction of where to ask for help, or offering to do what they can. So far, the only MP who has really done that is Mark Mitchell. Even though he is a new Twitter user, he seems to get how it can be used. My personal view is that all of the other Auckland based electorate MPs have been found wanting in their response. Twitter can be a great way to show support for people who feel vulnerable, and to point people in the direction of either help, or how they can help. I think this is a sign that MPs still don’t understand the power and usefulness of Twitter.
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