It was at that time that I signed up for the Labour Party. One thing led to another and I got the privilege to stand in my home, the Waimakariri electorate, for both the 2017 and 2020 general elections. I learnt a lot from both campaigns, especially the 2017 election. As a candidate who had not taken the usual path to politics, I quickly learnt that you needed a lot of money and a lot of time, both of which I had little of. But, with Clayton Cosgrove's old red bus, I would get out around the Waimakariri electorate, knock on doors, host street corner meetings, visit local businesses, and listen to what our community had to say. Our small but dedicated campaign team, all life members of the Labour Party—Sally Thompson, Roger Pike, Mavis Mannell, and Daryl Flynn Thompson and Ivan Hubbard—would diligently work away making a couple of bucks here and there through raffles to pay the invoices as they rolled in. To my wife's horror, we also had to sell some of the furniture in our house to square up the last of the bills after I lost the campaign. But we believed in Labour's vision and what it meant for everyday Kiwis, so we decided to do it all again in 2020. Although unsuccessful, those two campaigns served as another apprenticeship, and this time for Labour.