Young and Rogers are a cut above the rest of the field in experience and political skill, and I would put my money on them both being re-elected. The real contest here is to see who will fill the seat vacated by Pannett. Here are my thoughts from the night:<\/p>\n
The crowd was very friendly to Nicola Young, and she worked the room well. She has a prim and proper speaking voice and a dry, Wilde-esque wit. She got a big laugh with her closing line: \u201cIf you don\u2019t vote for me, you won\u2019t see me again because I\u2019ll be home working out how to pay my rates.\u201d While it\u2019s a cliche for candidates to worry about affordability for renters or homeowners on fixed incomes, Young broke the mould by openly focusing on the concerns of the wealthy: \u201cThey\u2019re ones we don\u2019t want to lose because they\u2019ll go out to dinner. They have another house; they\u2019ll take their business elsewhere.\u201d\u00a0 David Lee, a former city councillor and current regional councillor, is seeking a political comeback, though it wasn\u2019t entirely clear why. He seems to be positioning himself on the centre right, though not as radical as Wong or Milward. \u201cApparently, I\u2019m a dinosaur according to my two daughters. I said you\u2019re confusing age for wisdom and experience,\u201d he said. (Does that mean he is\u00a0old but\u00a0isn\u2019t\u00a0wise or experienced?) When asked how he would engage with the community, he said, \u201cI\u2019m an introvert and an energy vampire. I\u2019m very open to having coffee and sucking the energy from people. \u201c After the local candidates, the mayoral contenders trotted up to repeat the endeavour. Alex Baker was unavailable, Josh Hartford of the Silly Hat Party had to leave early, and Scott Caldwell was missing because he \u201clives in Auckland\u201d.<\/p>\n Joan Shi told the audience \u201cI have a warm personality\u201d in a perfectly monotone, almost robotic voice. She said she built her own campaign website and \u201cin this way, I also reduced carbon emissions. In this way, the council should also save money.\u201d\u00a0 Karl Tiefenbacher is worried about his mum\u2019s rates bill and even more concerned about his own. He spoke at length about the structure of his ice cream business, Kaffee Eis, and the commercial rates he has to pay at his factory in Grenada North. \u201cI\u2019d be 30k per year better off if I was in Auckland,\u201d he said. He wants to \u201cchange everything about the council\u201d, but didn\u2019t say too much about what he would change other than the typical pledge to cut nonspecific \u201cnice-to-haves\u201d.
\nGeordie Rogers doesn\u2019t have the firebrand style of Tamatha Paul. He doesn\u2019t give bombastic speeches at the council table, preferring to take a more considered, collegial attitude \u2013 he\u2019s more Shaw than Swarbrick. Because of that, it\u2019s easy to forget what a genuine talent he has for political communication. He rose to national attention in 2022 when, as president of Renters United, he held his own in a live TV debate against Chris Bishop<\/a>. Even in a room that wasn\u2019t particularly favourable to him, he defended and promoted policies that others may have shied away from \u2013 decarbonising the council\u2019s swimming pools, the new organic waste facility and switching land value rates \u2013 often winning applause from an initially sceptical crowd.
\nStuart Wong, a member of Independent Together, and Dan Milward, who recently left Independent Together after Ray Chung\u2019s sex-gossip scandal and is now just a regular independent, were rhetorically indistinguishable from one another. They both have solid business experience, they both think rates are too high and want the council to cut nice-to-haves, but they didn\u2019t seem to have any particularly original policies or insights for what they want to do. But I suppose when your only stance is \u201ccut everything\u201d, you can get away with that.\u00a0
\nLabour\u2019s Afnan Al-Rubayee is running for a second time after narrowly finishing fourth in 2022, just 110 votes behind Pannett. This should be her race to lose \u2013 a party endorsement, a good team of volunteers, and some established name recognition. But she offered little to distinguish herself at the debate beyond being a generic Labour candidate. She spoke in a series of public sector buzzwords: \u201cI have worked alongside the community to set up initiatives from a grassroots point of view\u201d, \u201cThe gift of democracy is essential\u201d, \u201ccommunities shaping decisions\u201d, \u201cthe council should be constructive and transparent\u201d. She said she thought the new organic waste-processing initiative was too expensive, but after some mild jeers from progressives in the crowd said she supported it \u201cone hundred percent \u2013 no, one million percent\u201d.
\nI was impressed by Tim Ward, who is best known for running hospitality venues including Matterhorn, Good Luck, San Fran and Abandoned Brewery. He is unpolished as a politician, and openly acknowledged some areas of inexperience, but in a race where every candidate can kind of sound identical, he managed to make some fresh points. He thinks the council is focusing its events strategy too much on attracting big international shows \u2013 he wants to pivot that to local creative events like CupaDupa and Great Sounds Great, to help grow the sector from the ground up. When other candidates talked about keeping the streets safe, he emphasised that meant \u201ckeeping all our constituents safe\u201d, including the homeless community, with better social support. And he spoke at length about dismantling the council\u2019s procurement process \u2013 not exactly a policy with mass appeal, but it shows he\u2019s done his research.<\/p>\nThe Pukeh\u012bnau\/Lambton ward candidates answer a yes\/no question.<\/p>\n
\nZan Rai Gyaw, who ran in 2022 on a single issue of taxi-pooling (nope, I don\u2019t know what that means either) is running again, this time on the single issue of limiting voting rights to homeowners and renters who have lived in the city for at least six years. \u201cThere are too many students, public servants and national issue voters; it\u2019s not working,\u201d he said. He wants the council to \u201cremove the irrelevant matters from the agenda\u201d and \u201cdo the relevant things\u201d. When asked about organic waste processing, he said he had \u201clooked at landfills and it\u2019s actually quite complicated. It\u2019s not just burying waste under the ground\u201d. He didn\u2019t expand further.
\nOne-time My Kitchen Rules contestant Teal Mau<\/a>, a former refugee who moved to Wellington in 1975 and now runs a hair salon, laid out his policies by repeatedly echoing, \u201cI have a dream that one day\u2026\u201d In his final line, he seemed to promise better weather: \u201cI have a dream that one day we won\u2019t say \u2018you can\u2019t beat Wellington on a good day\u2019, we\u2019ll say \u2018you can\u2019t beat Wellington on any given day\u2019.\u201d
\nTony De Lorenzo sat next to Geordie Rogers, and most of his answers were, more or less, \u201cwhat he said\u201d. \u201cIt\u2019s always hard to go after Geordie,\u201d he said. \u201cHe keeps stealing all my words, this guy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nRob Goulden suggested Wellington should build a medical school, \u201cbut I see Waikato has jumped ahead of us\u201d. He wants New Zealand to have a standing civilian army.
\nKelvin Hastie really, really likes Simeon Brown\u2019s idea to build an $8 billion long tunnel underneath the CBD<\/a>.
\nDon McDonald tested out a couple of new campaign slogans \u2013 \u201cDonald: better than some of the others\u201d and \u201cMcDone waiting for the second coming\u201d. As in the Johnsonville debate<\/a>, he focused on his interest in reforming time to a system of six days a week and five weeks a month. \u201cMy special policy is calendar is stupid,\u201d he said. \u201cNo Thursday forever.\u201d
\nPennywize the Rewilding Clown said he would \u201cbe carefully listening to every single voice that supports my plans\u201d. He admitted he had \u201ca few skeletons in the closet. We all do. Mine just happen to be real.\u201d When discussing the government\u2019s Local Water Done Well initiative, he said his plan for water reform was to \u201creneg on the whole thing and save billions by not investing anything. The catch is that you won\u2019t have any running water. But it\u2019ll be fine, we can work it out.\u201d<\/p>\nPennywize the Rewilding Clown addresses the crown.<\/p>\n
\nDiane Calvert, in my opinion, has clearly established herself as the most credible contender on the centre right. Tiefenbacher will probably be a good councillor, but he isn\u2019t ready to be mayor (the Whanau saga has shown the downsides of jumping to the top job too soon). Ray Chung is a bumbling fool, but will continue to get support from the loudest, angriest voters, because he is the loudest, angriest candidate. Calvert has spent three terms on council and clearly has a stronger grasp of how things work than either of them. She has kept her campaign relatively simple (\u201cI haven\u2019t got a whole raft of policies because I think what we need is a plan for the next few years\u201d) but she does have some specific new ideas: creating a city engineering team, scaling back the Courtenay Place upgrade without scrapping it completely, and she has proposed a solution to the council\u2019s social housing that is more realistic than Chung\u2019s idea of hoping the government takes if off the council\u2019s hands for free. General dissatisfaction with council engagement is a big theme of the campaign, which plays into Calvert\u2019s hands well; it\u2019s a drum she has beaten non-stop ever since she arrived on council.
\nAndrew Little pitched his appeal to the Old Town voters in the room, complaining about the cost of rates and poor consultation \u2013 \u201cThey might see someone from the council for feedback but nothing seems to change,\u201d he said. (Personally, I\u2019m a bit torn on the legitimacy of this complaint, because it often comes across as a certain class of people \u2013 ie older, wealthier homeowners \u2013 who are used to getting their way suddenly realising that the world doesn\u2019t revolve around them.) But he stuck to his guns on housing policy \u2013 when the mayoral candidates were asked a yes or no question on whether they would vote to further reduce \u201ccharacter areas\u201d, which restrict high-density housing, Little and Pennywize were the only candidates who said yes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wellington mayoral candidates and contenders for the Pukeh\u012bnau\/Lambton ward faced off in an unexpectedly spooky debate on Thursday.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[492,14329,111,43,139,69,2114,135,52,14330,14331],"class_list":{"0":"post-11735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-comments-enabled","9":"tag-local-elections-2025","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-opinion","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-wellington","17":"tag-wellington-mayoral-debate","18":"tag-windbag"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}