Joe Gilfillan: GABA mayoral forum MC

COMMENT

Your Worship, Fellow Candidates, our Media Guests, GABA Members, Takatapui, Ladies and Gentlemen - Kia Ora, Good Evening, Welcome to the GABA Mayoral Candidates' Forum for the 2004 Local Body Elections.

Your GABA executive this evening continues the tradition of staging the first public meeting of Auckland's Mayoral campaign that puts all the candidates on stage together, making sure once again that in this arena too it's OUR team that's first up and best dressed.

The candidates themselves chose the order in which they will address you in a few moments. I'll then introduce other people here tonight offering to serve on various community and health boards. The Mayoral candidates will then have right of reply to each other, and after that we'll invite your questions.

Gridlock, The Corridor, who started it, who'll finish it, how much it's all costing, will it work, who'll pay for it, will it be a multi-laned multi-purpose affair, or what one Herald letter-writer calls a mere donkey track? It's a safe bet you will hear more about that from our candidates.

Your interest might involve V8 Supercars, Liquor Bans, Arts Funding or the state of the footpath Nana and her friends walk on to their bus stop.

Or your interest could stop at the front gate - is the rubbish being collected, when's the next inorganic pickup, what's happened to your rates and why does the ARC now want so darned much when your wages seem to be frozen!

Young Aucklanders don't seem to be interested: the Auckland City Registrar of electors Mere Kingi told Harbour News young people couldn't be bothered with the local body elections because they were too busy living from hand to mouth. At that stage - late August - only half the 51,000 18-24 year-olds living in Auckland had registered to vote.

Gay Issues? Well, this time round it's probably down to which candidate most genuinely embraces the total diversity that is now our city's rich tapestry, and of which our often fragmented community is part.

Alongside that, which candidate is most likely to foster a suitable council endorsement of AK05, thus enabling support for a Hero Festival?

And don't overlook the council response to Prostitution Law.

The way the local Brothel bylaw is drafted, your favourite sex on site venue and the adult supplies stores where you have your toys on layby and charge your party pills are also hit.

Now imagine the cost to you as ratepayers when the council scrambles lawyers to deal to these enterprises, and the owners line up our lawyers in defence. It will be a definitive court case, one of course that we are ready for: our community has outstanding legal expertise - some of it here this evening.

You are one of this evening's audiences. Each of these candidates is well aware of the media here with us, with the potential to deliver anything that goes on in the room to a far greater slice of the electorate than we number. We're in for a great performance, so lets get to it - and let's give them the floor for a fair hearing: you'll have your chance to challenge them later.

CHRISTINE FLETCHER

If your choose your Mayor soley on a proven track record of friendship toward, service to and support for OUR community, here she is.

One of the many billboard nests around the city is next to that new pebble mosaic near John Radford's Sunken Buildings in Great Western Park on Ponsonby Road. I was walking past on my way home the other night when I saw a woman in orange and black up a ladder hammering away at one of the billboards. My eyesight being what it is I was quite close before I realised it was not just a supporter, but Mrs Fletcher herself. And she gave me this: