Wānaka in many voices: "The status quo has to go"

For almost as many different reasons as the hundreds strong audience, Wānaka and the Upper Clutha appears to be in the mood for change.

Even incumbent mayor Glyn Lewers, perhaps sensing the mood, also called for change at this evening’s candidate debate. In truth it was more a collection of 60 second sound bites – but that’s what the audience got.

So, in many ways the local election outcome in this part of the Queenstown Lakes District depends on what flavour of change the voters like most.

And there were many flavours of change on offer spread across the mayoral, the council ward and the community board candidates.

Glyn Lewers offer of change was betting on the still vague Regional Deal that will shift costs from the ratepayer to private investors.

John Glover wants to see “growth pay for growth.” Nik Kiddle agreed saying that he wanted to see a “tourist economy become a paying economy.”

And Nik Kiddle also wants Wellington to pick up much more of the tab for our overwhelmed infrastructure, environmental and housing challenges.

Marginal candidate Daniel Shand just wanted his binding referendum idea to take off.

Mayor Lewers probably got the least enthusiastic applause in response to his opening remarks. There was a clear view within the Lake Wānaka Centre that this part of the district did not get its fair share of QLDC cash, care or attention.

Local council candidate Barry Bruce probably was the closest person to getting booed in the entire evening when he claimed that Wānaka was well treated by QLDC and got its fair share of everything. It was an unusual angle for a Wānaka candidate to take – but the audience was too polite to boo, throw rotten fruit or stamp their feet in protest.

Mayoral candidate John Glover got the warmest and loudest applause for his answer on where a new hospital should be built. He promised to listen to the community and that the decision “should be based on need.”

That answer preceded a question to Glyn Lewers from Trish Fraser of Health Action Wānaka on why he’d decided on Queenstown as a location for the district’s new “Regional Deal” public/private hospital – not Wānaka.

His answer did not go down well with the Wānaka audience as it featured Queenstown tourists not Wānaka locals – with the 3 million annual Queenstown/Wakatipu tourist numbers referred to by Mayor Lewers as “visitor load.”

John Glover got huge applause for his point that the future of Wānaka airport should be decided by Wānaka locals not the French consultants currently being paid $250,000 by QLDC to do the same job.

He also won points for his basic statement that he knew and liked Wānaka.

One of the new QLDC councillor candidates Nicola King, summed up the views of many speakers by referencing “change from the top” being necessary to address trust issues in the current council.

Community Board chair Simon Telfer called for “short term action and long term planning.”

Deputy mayor Quentin Smith got the best laugh of the evening.

Speaking from his wheelchair, he told the audience: “I’m not Standing or Running for obvious reasons (laughter) – but after nine years I think you all know how I roll. I want to rebuild trust in this council.”

The audience loved that, and Quentin was clearly amongst mainly fans and friends.

In summary it was Mayor Lewers “tough love” attempt (I won’t deceive you – rates will have to go up) and (we can do better with trust/transparency, but we’ve already done a lot) against virtually everyone else saying that fundamental change is required and needs to come from the top.

The theme of the evening – the status quo has to go.

Darren Rewi was not able to attend due to a long standing overseas commitment.