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?
    Dr Rus­sel Nor­man, Ron­go­tai can­did­ate, Greens Co-lead­er:
    100,000 new jobs in a clean green eco­nomy, 100,000 chil­dren freed from poverty, and clean rivers – our people and our coun­try mat­ter.
  2. You have 30 seconds to con­vince someone to come to Wel­ling­ton. What’s your pitch?
    Wel­ling­ton is lively, urb­an, fun, com­pact, cre­at­ive, polit­ic­al, col­our­ful, and friendly – nestled amongst hills, rimmed by beau­ti­ful beaches and the wild south coast, a place to enjoy and call home.
  3. Where do you stand on the issue of open­ing up gov­ern­ment data?
    The Greens have chal­lenged the degree of secrecy around data that should be in the pub­lic domain. Account­ab­il­ity means freely avail­able inform­a­tion.
  4. Describe your bicycle, or your favour­ite bus route?
    Avanti Blade. I enjoy walk­ing and cyc­ling over the hill from Hataitai and round the har­bour to Par­lia­ment. Favour­ite bus route would be head­ing home to Hataitai.
  5. When did you last use the lib­rary, a com­munity centre, or a coun­cil-run sports facil­ity?
    We bor­rowed DVDs from the loc­al lib­rary last month, and I’m reg­u­larly involved in pub­lic meet­ings held in com­munity centre ven­ues – essen­tial com­munity space for com­munity activ­it­ies and act­iv­ism.
  6. Would you wel­come a cent­ral gov­ern­ment driv­en “super-city” amal­gam­a­tion of loc­al author­it­ies?
    I want to pro­tect loc­al demo­cracy and iden­tity, and amal­gam­a­tion can threaten both.
  7. What city inspires your vis­ion for Wel­ling­ton? How?
    A city that’s easy to get around and is ped­es­tri­an-friendly with a light rail sys­tem, as an attract­ive loc­a­tion to do busi­ness, work, study, raise a fam­ily and enjoy …
  8. Is the concept of demo­crat­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion import­ant to you? How so?
    I urge every­one to vote to keep MMP. Whatever your col­ours, MMP is good for demo­cracy – MMP means more diversity, more women, more young people, and every vote counts every­where.
  9. What achieve­ment for Wel­ling­ton are you most proud of?
    Warm­ing Wel­ling­ton homes as we con­vinced the gov­ern­ment to rap­idly scale up our home insu­la­tion pro­gramme – this helps keep every­one warm­er, health­i­er, lowers house­hold energy bills, and helps our envir­on­ment.
  10. What role do you think cent­ral gov­ern­ment should play in loc­al roading/public trans­port issues?
    Cent­ral gov­ern­ment must ensure loc­al coun­cils can adequately pro­tect house­hold budgets from escal­at­ing oil prices and sim­ul­tan­eously rap­idly reduce trans­port emis­sions. Bet­ter fund­ing of real pub­lic trans­port solu­tions is essen­tial.
  11. How can we make Wel­ling­ton more envir­on­ment­ally friendly?
    Stop the fly­over! Motor­way mad­ness means a fly­over mon­stros­ity to des­troy Wellington’s com­pact urb­an char­ac­ter. There are much smarter trans­port solu­tions to save money, time, health – and our envir­on­ment.
  12. What will you do to ensure diverse rep­res­ent­a­tion on gov­ern­ment issues?
    I will con­tin­ue to push for open and diverse con­sulta­tion in devel­op­ing policy, reas­on­able con­sulta­tion time­frames, adequate time for select com­mit­tees to read sub­mis­sions, and for par­lia­ment to con­sider legis­la­tion.
  13. What’s your per­son­al his­tory of liv­ing in Wel­ling­ton?
    Wellington’s been home for a dec­ade, Hataitai for six years with Katya, and now our son Tadgh. I enjoy Wellington’s con­trasts, from urb­an polit­ic­al life to south coast snor­kelling.
  14. What policy of your party do you think will have the most impact on Wel­ling­ton?
    Set­ting a clean green eco­nom­ic dir­ec­tion that makes sense for this century’s chal­lenges, gen­er­at­ing real jobs with decent rates, which means a pros­per­ous caring coun­try and qual­ity pub­lic ser­vice.
  15. Do you genu­inely believe you have a chance at win­ning the seat you’re con­test­ing, or is this more of a party cam­paign?
    We’re very focussed on the party vote because that’s how we get more great Green MPs.