We invited all can­did­ates in Wel­ling­ton elect­or­ates to con­tact us with their answers to fif­teen crowd­sourced ques­tions. Answers are restric­ted to 30 words each, and we pub­lish them exactly as we receive them.

  1. Who are you and what do you want?
    I’m Charles Chauvel, Labour’s Justice and Envir­on­ment Spokes­per­son, and I want to be the next MP for Ohariu (Wel­ling­ton’s North­ern Sub­urbs and the West­ern Hills of the Hutt).
  2. You have 30 seconds to con­vince someone to come to Wel­ling­ton. What’s your pitch?
    New Zea­l­and has the best qual­ity of life of any coun­try in the world, and Wel­ling­ton has the best qual­ity of life of any city in New Zea­l­and.
  3. Where do you stand on the issue of open­ing up gov­ern­ment data?
    With the right pro­tec­tions for people’s indi­vidu­al pri­vacy, it’s a no-brain­er and it needs to hap­pen. Yes­ter­day. At loc­al and region­al gov­ern­ment level too.
  4. Describe your bicycle, or your favour­ite bus route?
    I walk a lot. I take the John­son­ville line from Par­lia­ment to my Ohariu office. And when (too often) it isn’t run­ning, the 54 bus runs between the two.
  5. When did you last use the lib­rary, a com­munity centre, or a coun­cil-run sports facil­ity?
    I was at the John­son­ville lib­rary today, and the Tawa one last Fri­day. More often I down­load the online audiobooks avail­able on the Wel­ling­ton City Lib­rary web­site.
  6. Would you wel­come a cent­ral gov­ern­ment driv­en “super-city” amal­gam­a­tion of loc­al author­it­ies?
    No. But Auck­land now has 1.4m people. We need to find effi­cien­cies between the 8 coun­cils rep­res­ent­ing our 400,000 people or mer­gers will simply be forced on us.
  7. What city inspires your vis­ion for Wel­ling­ton? How?
    We don’t need to look else­where. We already have all the basic ingredi­ents – dra­mat­ic, highly live­able geo­graphy; good pub­lic trans­port back­bones, learn­ing insti­tu­tions, clev­er people. We just need to make it work.
  8. Is the concept of demo­crat­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion import­ant to you? How so?
    My par­ents were immig­rants who came to NZ partly because our coun­try is free of large-scale cor­rup­tion and we can have a real say in how we gov­ern ourselves.
  9. What achieve­ment for Wel­ling­ton are you most proud of?
    New trains and trol­ley buses the last Labour Gov­ern­ment bought for Wel­ling­ton as part of our 15-fold increase in pub­lic trans­port invest­ment. Thank good­ness Nation­al did­n’t can­cel them.
  10. What role do you think cent­ral gov­ern­ment should play in loc­al roading/public trans­port issues?
    First, require decent ser­vices now. Integ­rated tick­et­ing. Decent park and rides. Reg­u­lar peak hour ser­vices. Secondly, plan for a low-emis­sions future. Bio­fuels. Elec­tric cars. And always, bet­ter pub­lic trans­port.
  11. How can we make Wel­ling­ton more envir­on­ment­ally friendly?
    The single most import­ant con­tri­bu­tion is con­tin­ued invest­ment in bet­ter pub­lic trans­port that people are actu­ally will­ing to use, in order to get our green­house emis­sions down.
  12. What will you do to ensure diverse rep­res­ent­a­tion on gov­ern­ment issues?
    Con­tin­ue, as long as I have the pas­sion – I’m gay, I’m Labour, I’m Pasi­fika, I come from a busi­ness back­ground, I’m com­mit­ted to the envir­on­ment and to inclu­sion.
  13. What’s your per­son­al his­tory of liv­ing in Wel­ling­ton?
    Vic­tor­ia Uni­ver­sity – LLB(Hons) 1989; Judge’s Clerk that year; Crown Coun­sel, Crown Law Office 1994; Part­ner, Minter Ellis­on Rudd Watts, 2000; Wel­ling­ton-based MP 2006-
  14. What policy of your party do you think will have the most impact on Wel­ling­ton?
    When I was on the Meridi­an board we built West Wind to provide for Wel­ling­ton’s elec­tri­city needs. To con­tin­ue those invest­ments, we must keep our power com­pan­ies in kiwi hands.
  15. Do you genu­inely believe you have a chance at win­ning the seat you’re con­test­ing, or is this more of a party cam­paign?
    In Ohariu, people have an MP who’s been there for 27 years and rep­res­en­ted 4 dif­fer­ent polit­ic­al parties. It’s time for fresh energy and firm prin­ciples – that’s what I offer.