Buller, the birthplace of the Labour Party, has changed the country before. Could they do it again? Julian Lee reports.

There is always a big surprise on election day. In 2011, National's Nicky Wagner flipped the traditionally red Christchurch Central electorate by just 47 votes. In 2014, Mana's Hone Harawira was ousted from the Te Tai Tokerau electorate by Labour's Kelvin Davis, an electorate Harawira was largely expected to win.

Where will the shocker be this year? Does the recent American election give us a clue?

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF An old Mobil sign turned into a WOF sign for a garage in Waimangaroa

Very few pundits predicted that Donald Trump would win the US presidential elections last year. When the dust did finally settle, it seemed that the people who had helped swing the election were members of the disgruntled working class.

America's "rust belt" – that area in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin where America's auto industry once thrived but has since collapsed – threw a protest vote the way of the man who seemed to be rebelling against the whole system.

Could the same thing happen in New Zealand next week?

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Owner of the Pig and Whistle pub in Westport, Graeme Ahern

There are many working class districts in New Zealand, but the Buller District on the West Coast especially has much in common with the United States' own rust belt.

This year incumbent Labour MP Damien O'Connor will face off against National's Maureen Pugh, with eight other candidates in the tightly contested seat.

Labour has traditionally been a safe electorate for the Coast – O'Connor first won it way back in 1993 – but the Coasters rebelled in 2008 by electing National's Chris Auchinvole before reinstating O'Connor in 2011.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF The closed down Holcim cement factory in Westport

They've done it before. In 1990 the Coasters elected National's Margaret Moir when Labour decided to abandon its socialist mantle in favour of a new capitalist look.

Like the rust belt in America, Buller has lost a spectacular number of jobs in recent years with the collapse of coal mining.

In 2012, 1100 people were working at Solid Energy's Stockton coal mine up the road. Now it's 200. A devastating loss for a town of just 4000. Last year, the Holcim concrete plant closed its doors too, with another 80 losing their jobs.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Reporter Julian Lee on the Coast.

And just like the "rust belt" in America, the Coast has traditionally voted for the mainstream centre-left party. Buller's voting places in particular have been loyal to Labour.

WATER WOES

The similarities between the American rust belt and Buller go on, but another example is particularly poignant.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF the 35-bed Buller Hospital is to be replaced with a new 10-bed centre.

Since 2014 the rust belt town of Flint, Michigan, once the home of GM cars in America, has had immense problems with contamination of its water supplies.

And now Westport, one of the wettest towns in New Zealand, is running out of water.

Earlier this week it was announced that the town's reservoir had six days of water left. In 2014, the town's 120-year-old water supply tunnel collapsed and the local authorities haven't had the money to repair it.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Signs of protest on a Buller road.

Graeme Ahern owns the highly distinctive pink-coloured Pig and Whistle on the outskirts of Westport north on the town. Ahern said the coal miners used to stop off there on the way back to town. He said the lay-offs at Stockton and Holcim were felt profoundly in Westport.

"That makes a big, big difference for a little place like this. Big difference."

Ahern said the Coast was proud of its Labour tradition and didn't think Coasters were ready for a change.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Lewis Fisher is a whitebaiter on the Buller River. He believes tourists are trashing the Coast.

"Our incumbent here Damien O'Connor was born and bred here, he's got lots of family here and I don't know what it's like in Tasman area but that's where the Labour loyalty comes from."

National's Pugh acknowledges that the red runs deep on the Coast.

"A lot of it is traditional voting and that's my mission. I've actually got to turn that around."

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Ace Engineering - Christopher Gearing does the final welds on one of the digger tracks for the mines

But almost everyone Stuff talked to on the Coast felt like both main parties had little to offer the Coast. Unfortunately, being Coasters, most asked, politely at best and aggressively at worst, not to be quoted in any way.

TENSIONS HIGH OVER HOSPITAL PLANS

Potentially the biggest issue in Buller is the local hospital. National announced in May that it was going to replace Buller Hospital with something called the Buller Integrated Family Health Centre.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Entry heading to the Stockton Mine. Hundreds of mining jobs have disappeared on the Coast.

The Government-appointed West Coast Hospital Redevelopment Partnership Group announced that the Accident Compensation Corporation would own the proposed $12 million Buller integrated family health centre and enter a "long-term" lease deal with the West Coast District Health Board (WCDHB).

The new 1632-square metre hospital, which is just over 25 per cent of the size of the current Buller Hospital, would have 10 beds. The current hospital has 35 beds.

The locals are not happy with National, but they're not satisfied Labour has the answers. Ahern said Labour was keen to build a new hospital but hadn't stated the details.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Pig and Whistle pub in Westport

O'Connor confirmed that Labour did not have detailed plans to replace National's ones.

"Labour is committed to build the hospital. It doesn't know the final structure but it knows it needs to be bigger than what is being proposed.

"We don't know the exact size that it should be and the layout so we have to sit down with Ministry of Health officials."

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF tourism is booming on the Coast with Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki one of the most sought-after sights.

If anything, Pugh says National has the interests of Buller at heart, especially those of the miners and farmers.

"One of the biggest things that we can say to the Buller District is that the National Government will support mining, it will support our farming sector.

"They're two industries that are absolutely critical here and we can't tax them out of existence, that would just be nuts. That would be the end of Buller as we know it."

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Head of Ban !080 Peter Salter at the West Coast-Tasman electorate Debate in Westport

1080 IN THE WATER

There are signs that the coast is in rebellion.

Blackball Museum curator Paul Maunder said the rise of the Ban 1080 Party was a sign of protest on the coast. In 2014, the Ban 1080 Party's leader Peter Salter got 6 per cent of the electorate's vote.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Blackball Museum curator Paul Maunder

"There's a protest vote with 1080, that's for sure. Last time Peter Salter got over 2000 votes," he said.

To be precise, 2318 votes – less than 70 votes shy of then-high-ranking Greens MP Kevin Hague.

On Tuesday night in Westport's local auditorium and cinema complex the candidates for West Coast -Tasman met to debate in front of a crowd of about 80.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Pancake Rocks in Punakaiki

Salter, mayor and owner of the entire town of Pukekura, 40 minutes south of Hokitika, was a natural showman.

Salter steps up to the podium with a bag of 1080 pellets.

"I'll show you how safe it is...", he said, before pouring the pellets into a number of bottles filled with water.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF The small town of Blackball where the Labour party movement began.

"This is horrible, nasty stuff," Salter continued, before proceeding to hand the contaminated water bottles to Pugh and O'Connor, with one reserved for the Greens candidate who couldn't make it.

He then told O'Connor and Pugh to drink the water. After all, since the Department of Conservation was sprinkling the pellets in his water supply, why shouldn't they have to do the same?

According to Maunder, it's a developing trend. Maunder noted that the elections were returning to the pre-television soapbox style where politicians went out and met people personally.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Old buildings in Westport have been left to crumble.

"It has become more active in terms of public meetings and debates. That whole face-to-face stuff has returned," he said.

But Maunder still puts his money on O'Connor taking out this election.

A POTENTIALLY POWERFUL MINORITY

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Blackball Museum curator Paul Maunder

It's a bad day for whitebaiting on the Buller River. Lewis Fisher said he only saw three single whitebait all morning. Which gives plenty of time to think about politics.

Fisher reckons New Zealand First has the most to offer Buller, by controlling foreigners coming into the country.

"Well, at least control the population of immigrants for a start, like the freedom camping and everything starting to stuff it up for us.

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF Reporter Julian Lee drives over Arthur's Pass.

"Because now we can't go to these places, there's 'no camping' signs everywhere. We used to camp here as kids and now we can't because of too many Maui vans or what not."

Fisher said tourists are trashing the Coast.

"They don't have as much respect for our country as we do. He's [Peters] probably got the most to offer us as far as it goes."

GEORGE HEARD/STUFF The small town of Blackball where the New Zealand Labour movement began.

And Peters is making moves on the Coast, but not just in the older or more outlying areas. Peters is stabbing right into the sacred heartland of the Labour party.

Blackball, 20 minutes up the Grey Valley from Greymouth, is practically the birthplace of left wing politics in New Zealand.

Bob Semple, Patrick Hickey and Paddy Webb started a strike at the Blackball mine in 1908, which resulted in a massive union victory and the founding of New Zealand's Labour movement. The founders and followers of this movement became the Labour Party eight years later.

The main street in Blackball, called Main St, is chocker with political billboards. Along 300 metres of Main St there are more billboards than the 134km length of the Coast from Stockton to Greymouth.

Many of them have Jacinda's face on them. Some are permanent billboards with skulls and bones on them opposing 1080. But there's a new, familiar face popping up through the sea of red and death symbols.

Winston Peters. New Zealand First. "Had Enough?," the billboards say.

There's one outside the deep red heart of Blackball, the pub known as Formerly the Blackball Hilton (the famous American Hilton hotel chain paid the pub out in 1992 to have their name changed.)

Owner Cynthia Robins confirmed Peters had been there a couple of times recently – a symbolic and cutting sign he was claiming followers in the town the Labour Party holds dear to its heart.

As for the number of political signs in town?

"People get signs for the party they believe in and they put them up on their fences. They always have in Blackball," she said.

Peters has support on the Coast. New Zealand First supporters typically don't like to publicly acknowledge it – combine that with the Coasters' proud tradition of privacy, and you have a silent but potentially powerful minority.

There's a sign of tension in Labour's homeland. For a small population of 35,000 voters straggled along an electorate almost the whole length of the South Island, they won't make a dent on the nationwide party vote.

But the Coasters have their own electorate – a powerful weapon. And they've changed New Zealand history before. Could they do it again?