Alezix Heneti is one of six vying for a seat on Hastings District Council. Photo Duncan Brown
Six candidates have put their hand up for a seat on Hastings District Council ahead of next month's byelection. Victoria White chats with them.
Eileen Lawson
1) What's the one trump card you can bring to council?
Enthusiasm, energy, and a proven record of taking action and making a difference in the community. I have already shown this through my role as chair of the Heretaunga Womens Centre where we empower and create strong women in our community. This has a positive impact on not only their family's lives but the community as a whole. Also, recently I worked with the Hawkes Bay Regional Council to initiate the riparian planting of the Te Mata Mangateretere pond and stream in Brookvale Road which was implicated in the campylobacter outbreak. I believe being elected to council would give me the opportunity to build on my experience to effect greater change and deliver more to the community.
2) Name the top three priorities for Hastings in the next 10 years.
Employment: Creating employment is about providing the right infrastructure, environment, and spaces where business wants to set up here, expand and employ local people. This will require a strong joint vision with local councils and lobbying central government.
Social Issues: By developing strong strategies, collaborating with and supporting community initiatives that address issues such as affordable housing, drug use and unemployment. Our young people and their families need to feel they have a viable future here by giving them the opportunity to take advantage of what this beautiful and thriving district has to offer through support and training into employment.
Environment: Looking after the environment in a sustainable way, whether it be managing water quality and quantity, waste, effects of climate change such as coastal erosion, protection of productive land and iconic and culturally significant landscapes. The council has a moral obligation to represent the people of this district.
3) What's the biggest risk you've ever taken
Tandem paragliding when I was in my twenties and Investing in business and property as a young single woman.
4) By-elections typically have a low voter turnout. How can this be upped and what will you do to entice the younger vote?
By-elections are a costly exercise and I understand that the community may be feeling disengaged as a result of questioning whether this is an effective use of money. I want to re-engage the community and particularly our young people to assure them their vote is significant. I will do this by taking a keen interest in their concerns and listening to what is important to them. In future an on-line voting system needs to be seriously considered along with the traditional paper system.
5) Who is your most admired New Zealand politician and why?
I admire any politician who has integrity, is dedicated and takes the honour of representing the people who voted for them seriously.
However, if I had to pick one thing that stands out in my life time, it would be the legacy David Lange left of keeping New Zealand nuclear free.
Rion Rueben
1) What's the one trump card you can bring to council?
I communicate freely and easily. I have good business experience which is useful but a councillor is a community role first and foremost, so being approachable is hugely important as it enables you to be a better advocate for your neighbours.
2) Name the top three priorities for Hastings in the next 10 years.
I think the number one issue is water quality. Not just clean un-chlorinated drinking water, but rivers and streams as well.
Second is the protection of the environment. As a region rich in agriculture our fortunes are tied to mother nature.
The third is a long term and robust solution to the housing crisis, not just for first home buyers but also renters. We need to address this issue now to prevent future generations living with a larger crisis.
3) What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
Running in the previous by-election. Running for office is a process where you open yourself up to the judgement and criticism of others. The whole experience can be terrifying, but having interaction with the community and actively participating in democracy is extremely rewarding.
4) Byelections typically have a low voter turnout. How can this be upped and what will you do to entice the younger vote?
Being a father of a young family I feel more in tune with the issues facing today's families.
I am also the youngest candidate which I think makes me more relatable to younger voters. Leading up to the election I will be out in the ward meeting people face to face.
Hopefully I can convince people to vote, even if it's not for me.
5) Who is your most admired New Zealand politician and why?
For me it's Tim Shadbolt. He was once the voice for the youth and an activist for what he thought was best for everyone, not just a few. He has served as mayor for two cities and is New Zealand's longest serving mayor. He has had a controversial career but I believe he has always had the community's best interests at heart. To some he may seem quirky or eccentric but I think he's as sharp as ever and a living legend.
Alezix Heneti
1) What's the one trump card you can bring to council?
Love is the trump card I can bring to council. I was born in Love in Hastings. Raised in Love,19 years, in Hastings before leaving to get married.
And it's love that has brought me back to Hasting after 38 years in Northshore Auckland, USA and Australia. I love my first cousin Kim Thomson nee Neho. I've dressed and fed her for 10 years for no pay.
She's survived six strokes, no working right arm, little bit working right leg, severe aphasia, severe apraxia, four years wheelchair full-time, then walking slowly five years with her walker, and now four weeks back in manual wheelchair. Cousin Kim is smiling, friendly and gutsy at 57 years.
2) Name the top three priorities for Hastings in the next 10 years.
Our top three priorities for Hastings forever, not just 10 years, are loving our elderly, our infirm, our disabled, our stroke survivors, our weakest people.
The strong have a duty to uplift the weak, a civic duty, a heart duty and a kindness duty. Because we are human beings.
Loving our youth and giving them powerful, fun and exciting money-making careers. But not just our youth, loving our 20 year olds 30 year olds and our 40 year olds and definitely all those over 50, ( me) and particularly our 60-90 year old locals.
Why bother? Because all these wonderful people are us. We are one people, one day we will all die, and in the ground we are one colour, dead.
3) What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
I would have to say it's loving those who don't love you back. It hurts, it's risky, it's painful and you feel foolish, but it takes guts and I'm glad I tried.
The key is to keep loving yourself and get up and carry on. And to look at amazing people like Cousin Kim, who keep smiling and fighting and get back up.
4) Byelections typically have a low voter turnout. How can this be upped and what will you do to entice the younger vote?
To increase byelection voter turnout and get the younger vote is simple. Make it a game like halo.
I clock several games each, online in 2 hours and 48 minutes. Voting is a game and it's fun and you have the power.
5) Who is your most admired New Zealand politician and why?
Most admired NZ politician, Mark Mitchell, National MP because he was kind to me, after my Mayoral candidate speech, 2016, to Orewa Ratepayers.
Stuart Perry
1) What's the one trump card you can bring to council?
Creative imagination, I'm a lateral thinker with a vision for the growth of the district which needs a new brighter direction for the future. I'm also one who speaks his mind and will stand up for the residents and their rights.
Ratepayers have been regarded as a bottomless pit of money and that's not good enough.
My trump card is that I'll be a bold and determined councillor working for the people, keeping the bureaucrats under control and protecting the interests of the community.
2) Name the top three priorities for Hastings in the next 10 years.
Clean chemical-free safe drinking water. We had safe chlorine-free water for the last century and we will have that again.
Getting back to basics. Providing key services to Havelock North and Hastings ratepayers before getting involved in central government issues. Dealing with poverty and housing is a serious challenge but that's what we pay our taxes to Wellington for.
A hotel for the centre city to help grow the event, tourism and function market. The visitor industry will play a key role in growing the districts wealth and create more jobs for our youth. My vision is for Havelock and Hastings to claim a bigger slice of the visitor market.
3) What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
Spending 18 months working in a third world country. With safer options in NZ and Australia, I took on a role to help grow the economy and create jobs for impoverished villagers through tourism growth – and succeeded.
4) Byelections typically have a low voter turnout. How can this be upped and what will you do to entice the younger vote?
On-line voting is inevitable and that will increase voter turnout in the future. In the meantime, while young voters are important, so are the seniors and families.
The complacency is because the average person doesn't realise how critically important local government is.
The challenge is to raise everyone's interest and make them want to fill in the voting papers. I wonder if compulsory attendance at the polling booth would improve democracy? Every vote counts.
5) Who is your most admired New Zealand politician and why?
There are many great reformers who have made a significant positive impact on changing society but one who is often overlooked is Sir Dove Myer Robinson, Mayor of Auckland who had the vision in the 60s to know an efficient transport system would be critical for the growth of the city.
'Robbie's Rapid Rail' was 50 years ahead of its time. The lesson for us all is to make sure we build the infrastructure today as a legacy for tomorrows generations. Vision and reform will ensure a strong district for the future.
Chris Perley
1) What's the one trump card you can bring to council?
I have a vision of what Hawke's Bay could be. I have worked, written, presented and researched within two competing regional strategies.
A home-grown and creative strategy that focuses on the potential of people and place, long value chains, start-ups, and high wages – where realising the potential of our people and environment is our economic friend – is the only one with a future.
The currently dominating alternative – commodity, corporate, polluting, with people as obedient cogs – is a road to Mordor.
2) Name the top three priorities for Hastings in the next 10 years.
Our unrealised potential, low wages, poor infrastructure and planning, etc. has deeper roots. We need to focus on those roots, not just the symptoms.
Vision: We need to build upon a vision that realises our urban and rural potential. The provinces are suffering – our people, our homegrown creative enterprises and our environment – from thinking of low commodity value and scale, of people as unthinking work 'units' rather than as creative beings, and the environment as something to exploit or pollute.
Redesign and Infrastructure: We need to upgrade our infrastructure to meet the needs of tomorrow - rethinking how we do urban development to create resilient neighbourhoods not soulless commuter suburbs; building multifunctional spaces, that lift the heart, provide environmental services and are creative spaces for start-ups. No more silos and single-function thinking.
Culture: We need to transform the culture within the council and ourselves from bureaucratic to partnership. We need to prize judgment, adaptability, listening, creativity and working toward a greater vision far above obedience and pedantic box ticking within silos. That culture should extend to ourselves in communities and commerce; working in partnership to build homegrown enterprise and always build value, attractiveness, legacies and resilience for our future.
3) What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
I've voluntarily left two high paying and responsible jobs without another to go to.
4) Byelections typically have a low voter turnout. How can this be upped and what will you do to entice the younger vote?
Our people need hope. Hope and the energy it brings is essential to realise the outstanding life potential of every one of us, whether in community, the arts or in commerce. We have had decades of treating people as costs and cogs in a machine instead of unrealised potential. That nonsense can change if people vote for those that want to see it change.
5) Who is your most admired New Zealand politician and why?
Marilyn Waring. As a politician she demonstrated a care for our country over personal aspirations that I don't think we have seen for decades. She stood by her principles, and went on to do some incredible research on the value of unpaid work.
Bruce Bisset
1) What's the one trump card you can bring to council?
I have no ties to vested interests, so voters know that if I back something it's because I believe it really is for the best. And with my journalistic training and my common sense I'm able to get to the nub of things; I won't be fooled by double-speak or dodge asking hard questions.
2) Name the top three priorities for Hastings in the next 10 years.
Accommodating growth without taking highly-productive land; better connecting the CBD with the Megapark to ensure both thrive; making pragmatic decisions about climate change to protect the best of what we already have. Yes, council is working on these issues already, but it needs to be bold and forthright in promoting solutions.
Being an environmental activist I will always put the environment first, but I am very aware people are as much a part of our environment as anything else. The challenge is to enable people to live well in an environment that sustains them without ruining it, and man's impact on climate tells us we are currently not doing that. So some major corrections are needed – and we must plan for those.
Reducing landfill rubbish by composting greenwaste, promoting electric vehicles and charging stations, and backing a commuter train between Napier and Hastings are all "easy-do" first steps.
3) What's the biggest risk you've ever taken?
Publishing my first book of poetry and hitting the road as a full-time performance poet, Xmas 1979. I made it my living for six years. Deciding (twice) to take over an ailing café/venue and make it succeed comes a close second.
4) Byelections typically have a low voter turnout. How can this be upped and what will you do to entice the younger vote?
Online voting would help, especially with the young, but people generally need to better appreciate what councils do for them – that it's far more than "roads rates and rubbish". Councils must find new ways to connect and take citizens on the journey with them – so as to deliver what they need. Interacting with school programmes could be a good start.
5) Who is your most admired New Zealand politician and why?
Jeanette Fitzsimons (former Green Party leader). She quietly but firmly kept her vision and her principles to the fore, and was a model of surety and integrity in everything she did. Even the Nats respected her.