McVicar selected to contest Napier seat

Conservative Party Napier candidate Garth McVicar (left), with Conservative Party leader Colin Craig at Salt and Pepper Club, Napier, yesterday. Photo / Duncan Brown

The Conservative Party has selected Sensible Sentencing Trust founder Garth McVicar as its Napier candidate and law and order spokesman.

The announcement came after he was chosen to run for the party in this year's General Election last week.

He resigned as chief executive of the Sensible Sentencing Trust, after 13 years as the country's most vocal law and order lobbyist, advocating harsher sentences for criminals and higher thresholds for name suppression.

About 100 people gathered at Salt and Pepper Club, Napier, yesterday afternoon.

Conservative Party leader Colin Craig, who introduced Mr McVicar, said he met him at a march in Auckland four years ago.

"I realised then I'd met an exceptional individual.

"He's a man who frankly scares the pants off the PC brigade."

Mr Craig said Mr McVicar would also act as the party's law and order spokesperson.

Mr McVicar, who was wearing a sling because of a shoulder injury, said the "tipping point" for his standing for the Conservative Party was the Director of Human Rights Proceedings taking legal action against the Sensible Sentencing Trust on behalf of a convicted paedophile, after the trust listed the offender on a database.

"I refuse to live in a country that allows our most vulnerable to be abused, but our laws and politicians have underwritten and sanctioned the abuse."

He said he was "taking a stand on police cuts in Hawke's Bay".

"I won't let the police be decimated at the expense of public safety.

"When a young rugby player like Stephen Dudley gets assaulted and dies of his injuries it shouldn't matter if he had a bad heart - the simple fact of the matter is if those thugs had not assaulted him he would be alive today."

Mr McVicar considered his bid for the Napier seat "a new direction, a new challenge".

"Ladies and gentlemen, I have served my apprenticeship. I have done my 10,000 hours.

"To have gone with any other political party would mean I'd sold my soul and buried my principles, and I will not do that."

Mr McVicar has previously courted controversy by claiming that legalising gay marriage would lead to an increase in crime rates, in particular child abuse and domestic violence.

Conservative Party Tukituki candidate Stephen Jenkinson also attended the announcement.

The Conservative Party plans to have a candidate in every seat for the election.