Stuart Nash during the launch of Nga Ara Tipuna, a significant cultural heritage project in Waipukurau. Photo / Paul Taylor
Stuart Nash during the launch of Nga Ara Tipuna, a significant cultural heritage project in Waipukurau. Photo / Paul Taylor
Labour’s Stuart Nash says he is not taking his Napier seat for granted heading into an election year, and believes he has “a lot of work to do” to retain his seat for a fourth successive term.
Nash, who is Tourism Minister and Minister for Small Business, said 2022 hadbeen a tough year for New Zealand, and there were several key issues to rectify in his electorate in 2023.
“It’s been a tough year for everyone, let’s be honest about that.
“We started the year in lockdown and we are a tourist town, and we had no international tourism here.
“But we kept people safe and we’ve always said the best economic response to Covid was a health response.”
“At the moment they are coming in at about 1000 per week.”
He said about 40,000 working holiday visa applications had been processed, which was positive.
He said a lot had been done in the region this year including council and community projects supported by government funds, and more homes being built across Napier and the Bay, for those in need of housing.
“So far across the region, there has been about 300 new public homes built [in the past five years] across the Bay, and another 500 in the pipeline.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Tourism Minister Stuart Nash (on the video screen) during an announcement this year regarding border reopenings. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“So that is a total of 800 new homes.”
He said he wanted to see more people out of emergency housing motels and into permanent housing.
“I don’t think it is ideal that anyone lives in a motel or a hotel, particularly if you have kids.
“So the sooner we can get people out of the temporary transitional accommodation and into houses the better — no doubt about that.”
The Housing Register, which has ballooned in recent years, is the wait-list for people deemed in need of social housing but for whom there are no homes available.
The wait-list was at 2049 applicants (one applicant can include an entire family) in October, coming down from a peak of 2376 applicants in March for the Hawke’s Bay and Gisborne region.
For 2023, he said he was looking forward to building a close working relationship with the next Napier City Council chief executive to make sure available government funding was put to best use in the region.
He said when the council was under the leadership of Wayne Jack, it was his opinion that available government funds had not always been utilised as well as they could have.
Nash will run against the likes of National candidate Katie Nimon during next year’s election for the Napier electorate, aiming for a fourth successive term as Napier MP.
A poll released in November by political blogger David Farrar suggested National was slightly ahead of Labour for the preferred candidate to represent Napier.
But an even higher percentage of people were undecided in that poll.
”It just shows that I have to work very hard, and I don’t think in this day and age anyone can take their seat for granted and I certainly don’t take my seat for granted,” Nash said.
“I saw that poll and it concerned me. But it just showed that I do have a lot of work to do.”
He said he was looking forward to getting out on street corners next year and speaking to constituents, a practice he had enjoyed prior to Covid disruptions.
He said Hawke’s Bay also had the most police it had ever had on the beat.
