He's picked a more manageable battle this time round. 'A winnable battle in a swingable seat,” says Tamati Coffey, the former TV weather presenter-turned-successful Rotorua businessman and second-time parliamentary hopeful.

He was in Tauranga doing a sweep of the city, with an ear to the ground, dunking polenta chips in aioli in Red Square, charming the locals and talking up his chances of making it to Parliament, and quite possibly the front benches.

'Even National party strategists would tell you a 7000-vote majority is a swingable seat.” And the Maori seat of Waiariki, which Coffey has targeted, is held by the Maori Party's Te Ururoa Flavell with a majority of less than 4000.

'And given that the Mana Party's Annette Sykes split our vote, the margin is much smaller.”

'The feedback I got after the last election was I stood in the wrong seat.” Tamati says there were ‘scuffles' at polling booths all around the Waiariki electorate with whanau and friends saying: ‘I want to vote for Tamati' and polling officials saying: ‘You can't because you are on the Maori roll and not the general roll'. The same people are now very happy with his decision. 'They have wrapped around me and encouraged me.”

Tamati took a thumping from National's Rotorua MP and minister of trade and State Owned Enterprises, Todd McCLay in 2014. But he's unbowed.

'Thumping? Just 7000 votes,” he protests. Again, Tamati says he was within a swingable margin.

Tamati has been in town, in Tauranga, in Labour heartland, which is also a lonely Labour enclave. 'I understand Merivale was the only booth Labour won last election.”

And he says what confronted him in Merivale was homelessness, a problem being neglected by the Government. 'The chair of the school board is putting up homeless people in her garage. The principal of the local school is also taking in people. It's a sorry state and it's accepted by the Government.”

Tamati is not just looking for a career shift, he's out to change the Government. 'A vote for me, a vote for Labour will be a vote for change. A vote for the Maori Party is a vote for the same.”

He says the tide is going out for the Maori Party. 'And it pains me to say that. I was a big convert to the Maori Party; I thought they would do all these amazing things for our people, turn around all the negative statistics. Well they haven't.”

He sees the growing demographic of the Waiariki electorate, which includes the population centres of Tauranga, Whakatane, Rotorua and Taupo, as young people.

'But no-one is singing their song, talking to them in the language they understand about what affects them.”

And Tamati says we have to start by informing them what their vote means, why it's so important, because at the moment they are looking at him and asking why are they voting? 'They don't understand the difference between a vote for a local council and central government, what central government does and where they fit in.”

He says when young people are informed, they get powerful. 'And it's become our job to educate them before we start shouting at them and telling them they have to vote.”

And the man who did all the talking on the television is now doing the listening.

'I will listen to people like those in opposition to the Te Ture Whenua reforms, which will overhaul laws relating to Maori land. Maori Land Court judges have said they are uprooting a system instead of tinkering with it, which is what's really required.”

'We have seen the sale of our assets, the sale of our state houses. And Maori people are asking at what point will the Government start listening? At the moment people don't like what they have got.”