Turns out the solenoid was all gummed up, when the car was getting tuned this week the tuner pulled it out and gave it a good clean then rapidly energised and denergised it a few times to loosen it up. Wired it up to my eboost street to turn it on between 1500 and 4500rpm and it gives a solid 12kw and 15nm gain across almost the entire midrange!
Certainly a cheap and easy way to get it going for people who are running an R32 computer, eboost streets tend to go for around $400 brand new, decent boost controller as well.