by Geoffrey Churchman

Last night about 150 people showed up to the Waikanae Community Centre for the Grey Power meeting to hear the District-wide candidates, Mayoral candidates, Waikanae Ward candidates, and the Greater Wellington Regional Council candidates.

There was a full attendance by all candidates and unlike the highly biased ‘It’s in the Ballot’ meetings, candidates could give their own pitch in 3 minutes each, and then questions of them were asked by members of the audience. With such a big slate of candidates, speaking time for each had to be truncated to fit them all in. I didn’t stay for the Maori Ward candidates, as only a small number of Waikanae people are on the Maori roll, nor the GWRC candidates — WW has a questionnaire to e-mail them.

Fortunately, this time there was no contingent of Jacinda regime devotees who in 2022 showed up wearing their face nappies and only wanted to know if candidates were in a libertarian group opposing the tyranny of their Dear Leader.

The two most important things everyone should want to know about candidates are:

1. Personal qualities — how astute, analytical, diligent, reliable and pleasant are they?;

2. What are their major policy objectives?

A month ago I knew nothing about some of the newbies, but now have more of an idea. It’s clear that the double-digit Rates hike last year and the prospect of that recurring has shocked a lot of people. In the District-wide stakes Gavin Welsh has returned after losing the mayoralty in 2016 to Guru and made clear that stopping many more millions of public money being squandered is his main motivation. He is a good speaker and seems to have what is required to take on the bureaucratic machine that treats the public as docile peasants.

Rob McCann, like Gavin Welsh is very concerned about the prospect of the foolish “economic development” $31 million+ plan the present council has set up. Cr Nigel Wilson, Cr Glen Cooper and Paekakariki-Raumati candidate Bede Laracy are also fierce opponents of it. If all 5 are there after October, it may get ditched.

Of the newbies for the Waikanae Ward, I like what Phil Byrne has to say and think he would make a good replacement for the awful Prvanov. The same can be said for Martin Frauenstein who Eva and I spoke to in 2022 when he was a candidate in the Paraparaumu Ward. But I’m concerned that both have left their runs too late.

We met historian and now candidate Chris MacLean in early 2016; his main penchant is conservation and has written books on it.

The undesirable Plan Change 2 which has provided for “pack and stack housing” received a lot of criticism from everybody, as did the KCDC’s failed pop-up container shops on the Main Road. More comment on that tomorrow.