Mayoral candidate Jason Smith displays a graph he says shows plummeting satisfaction with Kaipara District Council. Photo / RNZ, Peter de Graaf
By Peter de Graaf of RNZ
Roads, rates and Māori wards – those were the three big election issues debated at a meet-the-candidates event in rural Northland on Monday night.
About 50 people turned out in Tangiteroria, midway between Dargaville and Whangārei, to hear from four would-be mayors vying to lead the Kaipara district for the next three years.
The settlement, which straddles State Highway 14 and nestles below the Tangihua Ranges, is heartland New Zealand where almost everyone lives on an unsealed road and makes a living from the land.
The venue for Monday night’s meeting was the sparkling new Tangiteroria Community Complex, built with an insurance payout after the old hall was destroyed in a suspicious fire.
Kaipara is by far the smallest of Northland’s three districts but it is the only one guaranteed a new mayor, because incumbent Craig Jepson – the self-declared “Trump of the North” – is only seeking a council seat.
The four candidates hoping to take his job could not be more different in personality or vision.
Four-term councillor Jonathan Larsen, from Topuni, just north of the Auckland border, is a former professional firefighter, the current deputy mayor and Jepson’s choice of successor.
Ash Nayyar, of Dargaville, is a first-term councillor and former commercial banker running on a platform of zero rates rises and increased transparency.
Jason Smith, of Matakohe, is a farmer and two-term former mayor promising to use his experience to fix a “malfunctioning” council.
Snow Tane is an iwi leader, former supermarket manager and sports coach who now heads the Dargaville-based Te Roroa Development Group.
Each was given three minutes to answer a series of questions including their reasons for standing, how they would make Kaipara successful and where they stood on Māori wards.
Unlike other election meetings around Northland in recent weeks, there was no heckling and no interruptions, just polite applause.
The only sparks were between a couple of candidates jostling over Māori wards and council satisfaction polls.
Larsen pledged to continue the current council’s work, which included “straightening out various things” and catching up on crucial, but previously neglected, road maintenance.
Successes included exiting a Northland-wide roading authority that was not answerable to the council, and bringing the work back to local contractors.
Brandishing a graph of the council’s approval ratings, Smith vowed to turn around its “lamentable” 45% public satisfaction rating.
As evidence the council was “malfunctioning”, he cited an “extraordinary” news report about a top law firm distancing itself from a Kaipara District Council document.
The document, which claimed to set out councils’ legal obligations to Māori, had been commissioned at a cost of $52,000.
Smith said he would seek a balance between the east of the district, where the main issue was rapid growth, and the west, where crumbling infrastructure was the biggest challenge.
Every one of the five major roading projects in the council’s current long-term plan was in the east of the district, Smith said.
Tane said his priorities would include unlocking Kaipara’s potential and ensuring equity across the district, so everyone benefited from the east’s rapid development.
He also wanted to “rebuild trust in the council”.
Tane said he understood people’s concerns about rates rises because his own rates bill had gone up by 180%.
That was reduced to an only slightly more affordable 120% after he complained to the rating tribunal.
Nayyar said he was standing “to protect your wallet and fix the roads”.
He pledged to freeze rates for three years and increase transparency, saying too much council business happened behind closed doors.
Larsen, however, cautioned against zero rates rises, saying such promises might be vote-winners but they risked running down infrastructure such as roads.
Instead, he pledged a line-by-line review of all council spending.
On the issue of Māori wards, Tane said all voices, Māori and non-Māori, needed to be heard – and the council needed to encourage all groups to participate in decision-making.
Larsen said it had been a “very divisive topic”.
“I think as a district and as a country we need to move forward as one people … Coming from a platform of unity I do not support Māori wards.”
Smith said the council had denied Kaipara people a say on Māori representation.
“The decision was made to cancel the Māori ward, not put it on hold and ask the district, which is what all the other councils in the country are doing.”
Under the Māori ward system, it was still one person, one vote, whatever opponents claimed to the contrary, Smith said.
Questions from the floor, before the promised “tea and sticky cakes”, focused on amalgamation – whether Northland’s one regional and three district councils would be forced into one – and candidates’ practical plans for fixing the district’s roads.
Tangiteroria resident Murray Matson told RNZ roading was his number one issue.
At times, he could not get to work because of flooding, and the council’s “solution” had been to put up signs warning motorists that the road flooded during storms.
Even after the meeting he was undecided about who to vote for.
“I’ve got to chew this one over big time,” he said.
Colin Knox, of Ōmana, said it had been interesting to hear different candidates’ views on how well, or not, roads had been maintained in the past.
He questioned where his rates money went.
“Where we live we don’t get rubbish collection, we don’t have a need for wastewater infrastructure, we don’t have stormwater, the only thing we get for our rates is roading ... and when that’s done, it’s not done well and it’s done very infrequently.”
Brett Stewart, of Tangowahine, said his main concerns were getting the best value possible out of staff and contractors at the council, and “making sure the small amount of money the Kaipara gets compared to other councils is spent wisely”.
He had been “reasonably confident” about who would get his vote, and that had been confirmed after hearing what all four had to say.
Stewart said the crowd had been attentive and gave everyone a chance to speak.
That was partly because it was a reserved, conservative farming community, but also because they had seen what had gone wrong with politics overseas, and even in Wellington.
“The beauty of places like Kaipara is that we still have some values. It’s about playing the ball, not the person. We don’t want to get into some of the things we see in other places because that doesn’t get us anywhere.”
Voting papers will be delivered from September 9. Voting ends on October 11.
- RNZ