Thanks to Jack Yan for tak­ing the time to answer our ques­tions. 

1. You have 30 seconds to con­vince someone to come to Wel­ling­ton. What’s your pitch?
You’ll nev­er find a city with a bet­ter work–lifestyle mix. If I’m elec­ted, it’ll be the most for­ward-think­ing city in the world.

2. How do you think traffic flow to the hos­pit­al and air­port could be improved?
By redu­cing the traffic. Part of why I am pas­sion­ate about free wifi will be allow­ing more tele­work­ing and flex­ible hours.

3. Where do you stand on the issue of open­ing up gov­ern­ment data?
 I’m the only can­did­ate with ideas about trans­par­ency and open source. The more these data can be opened, the more we can col­lab­or­ate.

4. What plans have do you have to improve recycling/composting facil­it­ies?
 Get people involved via a city blog, and being trans­par­ent about our issues. People can learn about set­ting up their own com­post­ing bins, for example.

5. What is your policy on street alco­hol­ics?
 Work­ing with police on enforce­ment. We need to get to the root cause. If it’s eco­nom­ic, it fits with why I’ve talked about job cre­ation.

6. Do you sup­port ped­es­tri­an­iz­a­tion of the Golden Mile? Why/Why not?
I sup­port great­er ped­es­tri­an­iz­a­tion but not the Golden Mile—yet. I’ve pro­posed a car­less week­end in sum­mer 2011, as a pre­lude for the World Cup.

7. What’s the last loc­al mar­ket you went to? What did you buy?
The Sunday one at Chaf­fers, and a huge bunch of bana­nas.

8. Describe your bicycle, or your favour­ite bus route?
 The Air­port Fly­er goes past my street. Com­fy seats, free wifi, and friendly drivers—I’d vote for any route the Fly­ers go on.

9. When did you last use the lib­rary, a com­munity centre, or a coun­cil-run sports facil­ity?
 I used the lib­rary two months ago, and the Kil­birnie Com­munity Centre one month ago.

10. Would you wel­come a cent­ral gov­ern­ment driv­en “super-city” amal­gam­a­tion of loc­al author­it­ies?
If not, why not? Not in 2010. The region is gov­ern­able; Auck­land was not. Look at the San Fran­cisco Bay Area: the cit­ies there didn’t need to amal­gam­ate.

11. Do you think the coun­cil has a role in fos­ter­ing com­munity web­sites? If so, how?
 Yes, but it needs to sort its own door­step. The city needs to web­cast coun­cil meet­ings. With the demise of WCN, many com­munit­ies found altern­at­ives.

12. Where do you stand on water privat­iz­a­tion, and why?
I oppose private, cor­por­ate con­trol and 35-year leases of the one resource that is com­pletely and indis­put­ably owned by the pub­lic.

13. What city over­seas inspires your vis­ion for Wel­ling­ton? How?
I don’t need to look over­seas. I need to look at Wel­ling­to­ni­ans. We forge a joint vis­ion, and the Wel­ling­ton brand encap­su­lates what we believe.

14. Is the concept of demo­crat­ic rep­res­ent­a­tion import­ant to you? How so?
Vital. This is why I’ve pro­posed that city blog, get­ting com­ments from cit­izens. If our ideas are sharp enough, why shouldn’t we level with people?

15. What do you think about com­munity gar­dens on pub­lic land?
 In total sup­port. Hataitai is doing one, for instance. We need com­munity gar­dens and free pub­lic orch­ards, to give us com­munity-based solu­tions.