Day-to-day living, marine protection, and the return of ancestral land are leading issues for the three candidates campaigning to win the Waiariki seat.
Radio New Zealand's Te Manu Korihi News profiles the electorate in the final of its series on the Maori seats.
Two lawyers and a former teacher are contesting Waiariki, which covers the Bay of Plenty - taking in Tauranga, Whakatane, Rotorua, Murupara - and strays into Waikato to include Taupo.
[image:3489:third:right]The Maori Party candidate is Te Ururoa Flavell, a former school principal who says he's still teaching today: forever explaining to Maori how Parliament works and the hard mahi it takes to make a policy law.
Mr Flavell says, politically, what gets him out of bed in the morning, is the motivation to try to make better lives for Maori.
Local people are telling him unemployment, education and health are the important issues.
"All of that is associated with the whole issues of poverty and having enough money to put bread and butter on the table."
Te Ururoa Flavell says helping people get jobs and money for the basics are also one the main national issues for the Maori Party.
[image:3876:third:right]One of his opponents is Mana Party co-vice president Annette Sykes, a high-profile lawyer who has represented and supported Maori activists, such as Tame Iti.
Locally, improving environmental protection is high on her list of priorities. Ms Sykes says this would safeguard jobs in primary industries in which Maori traditionally work.
She says there is burgeoning unemployment in the electorate and 62% of those without jobs are Maori.
"A lot of them do rely on the sea for their livelihoods, either in aquaculture or in fishing or processing industries and tourism.
"All of those are being placed by poor regulation, firstly of the maritime laws but more fundamentally by poor regulation around the whole foreshore and seabed issue."
[image:3875:third:right]The other main contender for Waiariki is the Labour Party's Louis Te Kani, also a lawyer.
He used to work with Annette Sykes in the same Rotorua office and maintains they're good mates.
When asked if he could solve one issue for the people of Waiariki, he shot back with a crystal clear answer: the return of Te Urewera to Tuhoe.
"For me, that's a real local issue, without question."
If he can help deliver the ancestral forested ranges back to Tuhoe before other parties do, his other focus is jobs - pushing the Labour Party policy to get rangatahi into trades training.
Te Ururoa Flavell wants to hold or improve the majority of 6,812 with which he won the seat in 2008 but Annette Sykes and Louis Te Kani will - at the very least - be hoping to dent that margin on Saturday.
