Labour's Grant Robertson is remaining coy about his decision to contest party leader David Cunliffe's position if all goes sour on September 20, but says he will 'see what happens after the election”.

The opposition MP downplayed the results of a recent survey showing Grant as the preferred leader over David, during his visit to Tauranga yesterday.

Labour MP Grant Robertson reading SunLive while visiting No.1 The Strand yesterday. Photo by: Tracy Hardy.

The survey asked 112 chief executive officers nationwide who they felt would make the best leader if Labour loses next week's election.

Thirty two per cent said Grant would make a better leader, while 13 per cent said David would. Despite this result, Grant played down any thoughts of contending the leader role post-election.

He lost the position to David after the party's first primary election in September last year.

But he did say this: 'Being the leader of the opposition is the hardest job in politics”.

'I'm not thinking about that at the moment. We've got eight or nine days to go and it's a pretty full on time – we'll see what happens after the election.

'Everybody knows I did run for the leadership but David won that contest fair and square and we've just got to all work hard.

'We'll wake up in the morning on the 21^st of September I really hope we've won but if we haven't that will be another process we'll have to think through.”

The survey also asked CEOs to rank MPs performance of National and Labour MPs, scoring Grant 3.11 out of 5.

David ranked the lowest at 2.45 out of 5.

'I think those CEOs interact with government ministers a lot more than they do with opposition MPs. As time goes on they'll get to know me and David and others better when we're in government.

'I think it's just a reflection to the extent in which they know us.

'Also that's a survey of one group of New Zealanders – as somebody said on Twitter: ‘I'd like to see the mood of the staffroom at a school or the mood in the smoko room at a factory' – then you might get a slightly different rating.”

Turning his attention to the Bay of Plenty, Grant believes the region has the strongest team of candidates the party has ever seen.

He also says Rotorua candidate Tamati Coffey one to watch out for on election night.

'Rachel Jones has a very good chance of being a Tauranga Labour MP,” says Grant, who believes Labour hasn't always had a big presence locally.

'The really great thing this time is with Rachel here, Clare [Wilson] in the BOP, Rawiri in the Waiariki electorate and even stretching over to Rotorua with Tamati. We've got a BOP Labour team that's the strongest I've ever seen.

'We're feeling really optimistic about that and I'm really impressed with the campaign.”

Going by what residents told him yesterday, Grant says the biggest issues facing the city are employment, wages and education.

'The phrase ‘$10 Tauranga' came up two or three times from people. We were approached by a lot of young people asking about our minimum wage increase that we're proposing.

'I had a couple of people talking to me about education issues. One person was asking about the balance between more teachers, but also making sure we were going to be doing what's called professional development.”

Grant says something he's greatly involved in is the party's commitment to having people aged under 20 in work educational training.

'We've got around 24,000 people in New Zealand at the moment under 20 who aren't in work education and the rate here in BOP is about 12 per cent of the young population is in that category.

'That's around about average for the country but it's still quite high.”