Rod Drury donates to Darren Rewi's mayoral campaign

Queenstown based entrepreneur Rod Drury has widened his financial support of QLDC mayoral candidates with a $5,000 donation to Darren Rewi. This follows a pledge of $10,000 to current mayor Glyn Lewers.

Speaking to Crux this afternoon, Mr Drury said that he was mainly backing Mr Lewers out of a desire for continuity around ongoing Regional Deals negotiations that include public/private projects involving Mr Drury.

“I think Darren’s doing really well. He’s a good communicator and a deep community thinker. So I know both of them quite well and I’m helping give them the resources to get out and drive the conversation at this key time.”

“Darren's got a lot to contribute and these mayoral debates have been really good. It's getting the community talking about the big issues while there's so much change going on.”

Mr Drury added that he felt that the departure of QLDC CEO Mike Theelen was a good opportunity for culture change, repeating his previous view that the council needed to have fewer staff and be more efficient.

Asked about community concerns that some of the Regional Deals under discussion could drive up prices to local residents as private investors recovered both their cash and their risk element, Mr Drury said he felt that would not happen.

“It's not public versus private. It's actually using the private sector skills to build infrastructure that's used by the public. A lot of this is venture philanthropy, and the thing with the proposed Queenstown hospital is it may not be owned by a private entity. It might be owned by a community trust which is how the model works around Southland and other places.”

Mr Drury also added that there was room for public/private medical facilities in both Wānaka and Queenstown.

“There'll be specialists over in Wānaka for sure. But the work we've done shows that we need a hospital in Queenstown. The district needs a whole lot of medical stuff. You need acute medical over in Wānaka. It's great the work that Mike's (Mike Saegers - Roa) doing over there. We're all kind of collaborating together.”

Mr Drury also listed another advantage of private medical services as being a plan to get Australian and other overseas visitors to pay for the local health services they use, instead of charging everything to ACC.

“We are talking to the Health Minister about that particular issue.”

Darren Rewi confirmed the $5,000 donation to Crux today but added that any Regional Deals negotiations with Mr Drury would be “a different kind of conversation.”

“I support the idea of Regional Deals and potentially getting private money involved for the future of the district, but everything has to be out in the open and transparent.”

“If I’m elected to be Mayor I can see no problem with the continuity of ongoing Regional Deals talks - but we have to bring the community along with us.”