A busy 24-hours in Wonderland. It sounds like we have one Councillor off the Green’s Christmas Card list, a new candidate appears in the Lambton Ward, and the good ship Shelly Bay reappears on the horizon.
A source tells us that David Lee, a current Councillor in the Southern Ward did not get the Greens nomination for the Greater Wellington Regional Council. That same source also tells us that the Greens will be endorsing Laurie Foon for the Southern Ward this time around. We couldn’t verify the rumour, but it makes sense.
Laurie ran in the by-election in the Southern Ward after the departure of Paul Eagle and got a tidy result but was pipped at the post by Fleur Fitzsimons. Interestingly, she fell well short (hundreds of votes) of David Lee’s previous winning ways in 2016. The Greens are not well-liked in Island Bay (don’t mention the war), and I don’t fancy their chances this election at all.
Neither do I fancy Labour candidates in the ward. The cycleway (oops, mentioned the war), has seen the rise of the independent candidate with the Labour Hack Pack seen as a problem and the Greens as pro-bicycle, both parties are accused by locals of not listening to the community and legal action is ongoing.
Generally, Southern brings a good spread of candidates, so watch this space. The muttering from that ward is that David Lee is largely invisible, so if the rumour is true, it’s unsurprising.
Meanwhile, Victoria University Students’ Associate President Tamatha Paul has launched her campaign to become a Councillor in the Lambton Ward.
She appears to be independent, that gets a tick, and the promises are unsurprising. She’s playing on her age and saying “that much of Wellington City and the Lambton Ward were made up of young people and students and their voices were not represented.”
Tamatha Paul’s focus areas:
- Making Wellington New Zealand’s first living wage city;
- Getting Wellington central’s waste system working again;
- Investing in community building to help with local wellbeing, mental health, and resilience;
- Making Wellington a city for the future, one that is safe, green, and moving that will last for the youth of today.
She goes on in the same article to say;
Paul says the city needs a fresh voice, telling Newshub: “There’s no reflection of young people in the Council, there’s nobody that looks like us, there’s nobody that rents their house or know what it’s like to catch public transport.
“From what I’ve seen in the last three years, no one’s really focussed on making commitments to saving the planet and issues that young people care about. I want to see that reflected and who better to do it than someone who’s already representing 22,000 young people.
I don’t think she’s met Iona Pannett. Iona has tirelessly pushed the climate agenda, often to her detriment, and is so Green I think she scares the Greens. As far as I know, she uses public transport to travel pretty much everywhere in the city.
Then there is Brian Dawson, who’s had his hand in every Living Wage discussion there has been, pushed hard for increased wellbeing of the city’s vulnerable, and sits firmly on the left.
It’s tough competition, and Tamatha is going to have to rely on getting the youth vote to vote and vote for her. That’s hard because that age group is generally not at all engaged or interested in local politics and as we know, they have a wide range of political views.
Tough gig.
Finally, the good ship Shelly Bay reappears on the horizon with fresh resource consents lodged.
The new consent will be assessed by independent commissioners; something the court told the council to consider given the extent to which it had defended its original decision.
Wellington City Council has confirmed those commissioners are Gary Rae, Helen Atkins and Ray O’Callaghan. – Source
You can read the raft of documents attached to that application here.
We’ll be analysing those reports over the coming days as I am sure will all the interested parties.
Inside Wellington 