Local Focus: Tukituki candidates have wildly different views on the environment vs business

Labour candidate for Tukituki, Anna Lorck, puts the environment first.

Tukituki candidates were asked in this Local Focus video whether they favour business or the environment, and the responses can't have been more varied.

"We won't be able to generate good businesses without protecting our environment," Lorck said.

National's Tukituki candidate and sitting MP Lawrence Yule said the opposite.

"Right at the moment, I would argue that business is more important," he said.

"Post Covid, we need to export as much as we can because we have got a lot of people out of work, we have got a lot of borrowings of this government and we need to fund that."

And the Green candidate expressed another view. Chris Perley said business and the environment actually have strong links. He pointed out New Zealand's lack of diversity when it comes to what we grow.

"What that does is it smothers potential," he said. "So you screw the environment, but you also smother all that economic potential within the patterns, the high-value potential.

"One of the more diverse areas of New Zealand is the Esk Valley. And then you'd look at something like the middle of France, and it's got this absolute modelled beauty. There are vineyards attached to olive groves. There's all this potential realised.

"They have a very strong environment, as well as a strong community, as well as a strong economy. There's tourism there, as well."

Also standing in the Tukituki electorate:
• Jan Daffern for ACT
• Nick McMinn-Collard for New Conservatives
• Melanie Petrowski for ONE
• Carl Peterson for Advance NZ
• Allister Tosh for Future Youth
• Romana Manning for the Legalise Cannabis party

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