Why a makeup shop is talking about the election

We sell face paint and special effects makeup. We are not a political party and we are not about to tell you who to vote for.

But enrolment closes at midnight on 25 October, and we would rather say something now than wish we had said it on 8 November.

Here is why it matters to us.

Makeup is a job

Everything on our shelves ends up on somebody who is making something.

A theatre company mid season. A film crew. A festival. A drag performer. A body painter at a competition. A school production. Someone painting forty tigers at a gala day in the rain and loving every second of it.

None of that work exists on its own. It sits inside an arts sector, and that sector pays for the productions, the festivals and the venues our customers get hired to work on. When that gets smaller, the work gets smaller, and we feel it in here too.

So when people say a makeup shop should stay out of politics, we would gently point out that this is our industry they are talking about.

The arts have had a hard few years

Not opinion. Numbers:

• $27 million less for the arts across four years
• Creative New Zealand has gone from 84 staff down to 55
• Arts funding has sat roughly flat for two decades while the cost of everything else climbed
• Some theatre companies have lost more than half their funding in a single round
• Festivals, theatres and venues have closed or scaled back around the country

The part that gets us is that the arts already pay for themselves. Research on live performance here puts the return at $3.20 for every $1 spent. This is not a handout. It is an industry that employs people and gives young artists somewhere to start, being treated like a nice-to-have.

The people with the most to lose are the least likely to be counted

At the end of August, only about 57% of 18 to 24 year olds were enrolled to vote. Nearly 188,000 of them are still off the roll.

That is our art school students. Our workshop crowd. The ones teaching themselves prosthetics on the bedroom floor at 1am and tagging us in the results at 2am. The people who will run this industry in ten years are the least represented in the decisions being made about it now.

If you are in that age bracket, or you know somebody who is, this is the bit to do something about.

It takes five minutes

Go to vote.nz. That is the whole process. You need your driver licence, passport or RealMe login, and about as long as it takes to lay down a base.

The dates worth knowing:

• 4 October. Enrol by this date to get your EasyVote card posted to you.
• 25 October, midnight. Enrolment closes. You cannot just rock up on the day.
• 26 October. Advance voting opens.
• 7 November. Election day.

Already enrolled? Check your details are current anyway. If you have moved house since the last election, and most of us have, your enrolment may not have moved with you.

Overseas at the moment? You can still vote, online, by post or by phone.

We are not telling you how to vote

Only that you should.

Enrolling is not picking a side. It is making sure you are allowed to have one.

If you are reading this, chances are you make things, either for a living or because you cannot help yourself. Go and get counted. Then check in on one creative mate and make sure they are on the roll too.

Five minutes. www.vote.nz