Court breaks ranks with the council

Mayoral candidate Ann Court broke ranks with the council she has been part of for the past nine years when she addressed a candidates' meeting in Kaikohe on Monday night.

The current deputy mayor said the council's unitary authority proposal should never have been lodged, but only she and Cr Tom Baker had voted against it. The proposal had been delivered to councillors by email at 11pm the day before they were expected to make a decision.

"You've been denied the opportunity to have your say," she said.

"We will have to demand a poll (when the Local Government Commission announces its favoured option), and then you will get your democratic right."

On the subject of unitary authorities, incumbent Wayne Brown favoured one for the Far North; John Carter undertook to provide possible information so voters could decide (but undertook to fight a Whangarei-based authority tooth and nail); Mita Harris said the Far North should control its own destiny but would wait to hear what the Local Government Commission came up with; Rueben Taipari Porter said incorporating the Treaty of Waitangi into local government was more important than the current reform process; and Sarah Watson harked back to the days prior to the amalgamations of 1989.

Meanwhile Ms Court also claimed the council needed to rebuild relationships that had been damaged "of late". The Far North needed government subsidies for water, roads and sewerage; and policies made in Wellington were hurting the district, and the Far North needed the ability to open doors to influence those policies.

The six mayoral candidates generally followed common themes, although there were differences in their top three priorities.

For Mr Carter they were restoring a community focus, creating employment; business and regional development; for Ms Court empowering the community boards, collating a 30-year infrastructure plan, rebuilding relationships; for Mr Harris restoring stability to the council, economic development, developing a youth policy; for Mr Porter recognising the place of the Treaty of Waitangi, creating "good' communities, encouraging Maori participation; for Ms Watson working to achieve purity of land and water, innovative ideas for dealing with (and exploiting) rubbish, addressing youth issues; and for Mr Brown lifting the district's economic performance, youth employment, working better with Maori.

There was common support for enabling communities to pursue their aspirations, Mr Harris saying he believed the council's role should initially be hands-on, then hands-off, benefiting communities and saving money in the process.

Mr Porter said Northland was one region and all who lived there were connected. He also saw investing in children as a means of building strong communities.

Ms Watson wanted to restore community involvement to the council, pursue innovative means of attracting investment and creating jobs, easier access to sport and an end to threatening tourists.

Mr Brown described the coming election as a very important one. The unitary authority proposal could be seen as a threat or an opportunity, but either way it needed to be discussed. The benefit for Kaikohe, particularly if Dargaville was incorporated, would be that it would once again be the district's hub, while a unitary authority would compel Wellington to see the Far North as an entity in its own right.

There was an urgent need to get the district's youth ready for jobs and to get jobs ready for them, a task that would be addressed by a regional development fund, a prospect that a major New Zealand bank and another in China were showing interest in.

Ms Court spoke about communities helping themselves, with encouragement but not necessarily funding from the council, as Kerikeri had done. She also recalled leaving the council offices in tears after seeking help as a solo mother who could not pay her rates, and promised that no one would be reduced to tears or made to feel like a second-class citizen under her mayoralty.

Mr Carter spoke of restoring pride and respect within and for the council and the people it served, and of a council that would work with communities to help them achieve their aspirations. Six weeks' campaigning had revealed that communities throughout the district were finding the council less of a help than a hindrance; what they wanted was a council that would work with them.

He also feared that the council had a hidden deficit by way of roads that were failing, a general lack of asset maintenance and deferred capital projects.