Character actors

Character actors

Council election candidates were forced to take positions on some curly issues, as part of a public meeting held in Mt Victoria.  Jane O’Loughlin was there.

The question ‘Would you vote to remove more character or heritage protections?’ was posed at the Mt Victoria Meet the Candidates event, hosted by the Mt Victoria Residents’ Association, and candidates were asked to hold up either a YES or NO sign.

Mayoral front runner Andrew Little said he would support the removal of more character protection from Wellington’s inner city suburbs. He was one of only two mayoral candidates at the event to support that idea, along with Pennywise the Rewilding Clown.

72% of Wellington’s character protection has already been removed as part of the District Plan process, including 63% in Mt Victoria.

Ray Chung, Diane Calvert, Karl Tiefenbacher, Kelvin Hastie, Joan Shi, Donald McDonald and Rob Goulden held up NO signs, indicating they would not vote to further reduce their size.

Mayoral hopefuls Alex Baker, Josh Harford, and Scott Caldwell were not present at the meeting.

Of the candidates running for the three positions of councillor representing the Lambton/Pukehīnau ward, Geordie Rogers and Tony de Lorenzo said they would support more character protection removal.  Afnan AL-Rubayee later said she had misunderstood the question and should have said yes.

Another question that had the audience straining to see the answers was around support for a proposed new Mt Victoria tunnel.  All of the front runner mayoral candidates present at the meeting (Little, Calvert, Tiefenbacher and Chung) said they did.

Of the candidates for Lambton/Pukehīnau, AL-Rubayee, Rodney Barber, Tony De Lorenzo, David Lee, Teal Mau, Dan Milward, Nicola Young, and Stuart Wong were supportive of the new tunnel, whereas Rogers, Zan Rai Gyaw and Tim Ward were opposed.

Mayfair unfavoured

While the subject of the controversial Mayfair apartment block was not raised at the meeting, the neighbourhood group opposed to the development canvased the views of the candidates standing for Lambton/Pukehīnau and supplied these to The Local.

Of the eleven candidates standing, seven expressed their opposition to it in its current form (David Lee, Dan Milward, Nicola Young, Rodney Barber, Zan Rai Gyaw, Tim Ward and Teal Mau). 

Incumbent councillor Nicola Young said it was “the first sign of how ill-conceived the new District Plan is – allowing a scattergun approach to large residential developments, rather than focusing on Kent and Cambridge terraces which still have car yards dotted along them.”

Afnan AL-Rubayee, Tony De Lorenzo offered qualified support, with AL-Rubayee saying there were “understandable concerns about this particular project”.  De Lorenzo said his support was “contingent on a commitment to due process and community engagement.

Geordie Rogers said he remained supportive of changes made to enable higher density living across the central city and the inner-city suburbs and noted councillors had no power on individual resource consents. Stuart Wong did not take part.