Incoming Tauranga MP Sam Uffindell is promising to work hard to tackle the city's infrastructure "growing pains" and help police get more powers to crack down on crime and the gangs.
The National Party retained the Tauranga seat previously held by Simon Bridges, with a convincing win by Uffindell in the city's byelection.
With 100 per cent of the preliminary votes counted a little before 9pm on Saturday, Uffindell had more than twice as many votes as Labour's Jan Tinetti finishing the count with 10,931, 6038 ahead of Tinetti's 4893. A total of 19,403 preliminary votes were cast.
During an interview today with Newstalk ZB today, Uffindell said he was "really excited" about the challenge ahead of him.
"I'm really excited about getting down to parliament and doing what I can to deliver to the people of Tauranga and contributing to [National Party leader] Chris Luxton's team."
Asked whether he knew what he was in for, Uffindell said: "People say to expect the unexpected so I'm going there with my eyes wide open, and I want to learn as much as quickly as I can and do what I can to help people up here."
National Party candidate Sam Uffindell celebrate at the Tauranga Club with party leader Chris Luxton (left) and Peter Goodfellow. Photo / Alan Gibson
Among his top priorities was the private member's bill about crime and gangs and gang conveys he earlier talked about, he said.
The bill would empower the police to issue gang members riding in convey through Tauranga and the Western Bay of Plenty on the spot fines of $500 and take their bikes.
"We see a lot of that it around here, with gangs riding in convey intimidating people and taking over the roads.
"It happens everywhere in the country but it happens quite a lot here as we have got the highest number of gang members in the country in the Bay of Plenty. So it's about empowering the police and backing them."
He said Chris Luxton had also recently talked about cracking down on gangs around wearing gang insignias, consorting and firearm prohibition orders.
"We acknowledge that there is a significant gang problem in New Zealand, and the numbers are up by 45 per cent I think since Labour came into power.
"Assaults, violent crime and obviously we are all familiar with the nightly shootings involving gangs in Auckland and around the country.
"So what they [Labour] are doing is not working and this soft-on-crime approach has been clearly failing. So we have been talking to our police and we are going to give them the powers they need so we can crack down on crime and gangs."
Uffindell also talked about making Tauranga the tech capital of New Zealand.
"So I'm really keen to work with the commercial property owners, the council, the technology sector and the University [Waikato] to see how we could work together to incentivise tech companies to set up in some of the vacant sites in the CBD."
Uffindell also said he would continue to advocate strongly for the Port of Tauranga's third berth consent to be "fast-tracked".
"It's a really important piece of infrastructure not just for Tauranga and our region but for New Zealand.
"We need to invest more heavily in infrastructure. We have been the fastest growing city in New Zealand and that growth is going to continue, but we need to make sure it's sustainable and we retain the unique beauty of our city."
Asked to comment about the by-election result, Uffindell said the "amazing dedicated team of volunteers worked tirelessly since he was selected had done "a great job".
"I also have to make a shout-out to the honourable Simon Bridges, there is a fantastic [electorate ] infrastructure in the National Party in Tauranga which made my life a lot easier."
"We all worked hard for this and stayed humble through the process. We were very disciplined and stayed on message and together got the result we looked for."
"I'm really looking forward to getting down to parliament to meet the rest of the team and our caucus and working with our high-powered team to deliver for Tauranga. "
