Gisborne council candidate Grant Brown pledges support for working residents

Gisborne District Council general ward seat candidate Grant Brown.

Grant Brown has tasted “the gang life”, scrub cutting, single parenthood, the dole and struggling to make ends meet.

The Gisborne District Council general ward candidate says he has a common-sense approach and can talk with “everyday people”.

Brown is a skilled tradesman with his own successful business, Autoslave Panel and Paint and has been an Elgin resident for 26 years.

He said he wanted to do something positive to reverse what he saw as the decline in the community around him and help uplift it as a councillor.

“I want to represent the working man and woman; the ratepayers and renters of Gisborne currently facing a cost-of-living crisis,” Brown said.

He believed councillors need to be more aware of what the ordinary people were up against when setting their rates.

“From a mechanic’s point of view, my analogy of council spending is like getting an expensive custom-striped paint job on your car when it just needs new tyres.

“Let’s cut back on pet wellbeing projects and get back to basics.”

He believed the council’s nearly $38 million project bill for employee salaries and wages projected in its 2025-26 annual plan was unacceptable for a population the size of Tairāwhiti.

Brown wanted to see a cap on rate increases, which have increased recently at greater than the rate of inflation.

He was concerned about slash maintenance on Gisborne’s beaches, and believed it needed to be prioritised more.

He looked forward to changes in the Resource Management Act, which he hoped would simplify red tape facing people wanting to do positive things.

“We need to grow this awesome place we live in, but to get ourselves out of the doldrums we need to keep a lid on overheads and unnecessary bureaucracy.”

Brown supported the retention of Māori wards, which will be decided by a binding referendum held at the same time as the local body elections.

Brown is on the newly formed Neighbourhood Watch committee.

He saw his role there as speaking with everyday people to understand their aspirations and rope them into being part of this community support network.

He was disturbed by what he perceived as a sad downturn in the community’s spirit and wanted to do something positive to help uplift it.

In between labouring and playing rugby league, he also established several businesses, including a kina processing plant in Southland, the BroMix ready mix concrete plant with his father in Mahia, Rustbustas panel shop and Autoslave, a panel and paint shop in Gisborne.

Brown, of Rongowhakaata/Te Aitanga a Māhaki descent, said he had strong Tūranganui-a-Kiwa DNA. His great-great-grandfather, William Brown, jumped ship to become one of the first six Pākehā settlers in Tūranganui a Kiwa.

Brown said he was new to politics and “nervous as”, but promised to get better at it.