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.