On your marks, get set ... vote!

A rugby player, runner, distance swimmer and squash player are lining up for the same race. JULIE MIDDLETON reports on the personalities - and the issues pushing them into a new arena.

Some of Auckland's local-body wannabes aren't just standing for election - they're running.

Rugby great Peter Fatialofa, runner Dick Quax, endurance swimmer Sandra Blewett and former world squash champion Dame Susan Devoy are joining athlete and Manukau City councillor John Walker to contest local body elections in Auckland.

Fatialofa, whose father, Momoe, was a Samoan member of Parliament from 1965 until his death in 1980, is standing for the Manurewa Community Board.

Dame Susan announced her candidacy for the Auckland District Health Board last month.

The 37-year-old launches her campaign this Sunday at Ellerslie's Novotel, with other Auckland Citizens & Ratepayers Now hopefuls.

John Walker has earned his political stripes over the past three years looking after Manurewa's interests on the Manukau council, and is standing again.

Quax - Dick Theodorus Jacobus Leonardus to voters - can be spotted running around Manukau City, delivering leaflets. He hopes to become a councillor for Pakuranga.

Quax stood for Act in the last general election, but for Blewett, seeking a community board seat in neighbouring Howick is a new game.

What's in the water that sport and politics are suddenly mixing?

The Quax theory: "Sportspeople are highly motivated people for a start. To do well, you have to be.

"You need to be goal-oriented, and politics is a bit like that."

For Peter Fatialofa, it's simply DNA - "politics is in my blood".

A supporter of education and health projects, he wants to do more to get locals involved in them.

One relative, Manukau councillor James Papali'i, reckoned that Fatialofa, 42, should run for mayor.

The country's best-known piano mover decided "to start at the bottom. I'm just a new boy".



Sick of literally swimming in sewage and annoyed at the "lip-service" paid to disabled access, Blewett - "I'm not very political" - put her hand up.

If standing means focusing more attention on both, says the executive officer of disabled sports organisation Parafed, then all the extra work on top of her already-frantic schedule is worth it.

Quax' big issue is that fixed-income older people in Pakuranga "are almost being rated off their properties" by their council.

The 53-year-old will be saying so at old-fashioned street-corner meetings and welcomes "feedback".

But electoral officers say there's still a distinct lack of excitement on the hustings.

Auckland officer Dale Ofsoske, who has run elections since 1986, says this is one of quietest run-ups he can remember.

The major mayoral battle this year appears to be in Rotorua, where high-rating controversial cop-turned-travel agent Knocker Dean is taking on three-term mayor Grahame Hall.

British-born Dean - the story about the nickname is lengthy, but it's now his legal moniker - reckons that after three terms as a councillor, he's the one to lift Rotorua out of economic purgatory.

For some candidates, there's no drama. Postal voting closes on October 13, but in areas where places available and candidate numbers have matched, people have simply walked in to office.

Those to sidestepped the campaign trail included the four people elected to the Devonport Community Board, various Franklin district candidates, and members of community boards in Coromandel/Colville, Thames, and Tairua/Pauanui.

Feature: Local body elections 2001

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