Five candidates vying to win the Nelson seat addressed a Tāhunanui audience on Wednesday evening with their plans for the beachside suburb if elected.
The event, which was hosted by the Tāhunanui Business and Citizens Association at Tāhunanui School boasted around 60 audience members.
Incumbent Rachel Boyack of the Labour Party told the audience her plans if reelected included continuing to support people living and working in Tāhunanui, the planned Rocks Rd walking and cycling route, and campaigning against the Waka Kotahi planned southbound lane at Tāhunanui Dr and Bisley Ave.
“Tāhunanui is an area of Nelson that people actually don’t know is home to some of our most vulnerable people… who live in some of the poorest condition housing and have some of the lowest incomes across our region,” she says.
“So it’s important for me that we continue to do everything we can to support the people who are living and working here in Tāhunanui.
“I’m really proud that we’ve announced that we will take the next steps along the new walking and cycling route that we need around Rocks Rd… and I have been very clear that we do not support the southbound lanes… I’m very pleased that it hasn’t happened, and I’ll continue to advocate strongly that it shouldn’t happen.”
Rachel also says Tāhunanui “desperately needs” more investment.
“We do have a challenge around ongoing financial stability for the [Tāhunanui Community Hub] to ensure it can continue to provide very good community services,” she says.
“We have been looking at some options and I think that it’s very important that we utilise the collective wisdom of other community organisations that we have in Nelson like Victory Community Centre to ensure we have an organisation here that can provide the social services that we need for our community.”
National candidate, Blair Cameron, says he had knocked on the doors of “hundreds” of Tāhunanui homes and almost every tenant had told him cost-of-living was their biggest issue.
He says one couple with two young kids told him their mortgage had increased by around five per cent and were now struggling to buy weekly groceries due to those rising costs.
“That is a story that has played out across this community and it’s something that the government has to be doing absolutely everything it can to stop… the first thing we’re going to do is rein in wasteful government spending, because that fuels inflation,” he says.
“We’ve had huge amounts of money go into these ideological projects, instead of giving people more than what they earn and that’s what our policy is designed to do, it will give families more of what they earn back in their pocket.
“For that [Tāhunanui] family that’s going to be another $200 extra a fortnight, that’s going to be the difference between them being able to cope with that new high interest rate and still being able to buy food for their family.”
ACT Party candidate, Chris Baillie, says increased property and violent crime in Tāhunanui needed to be addressed.
“Between July 2017 and July 2020 in Tahuna there were 131 property crimes and last year between July 2022 and 2023 there were 118 property crimes,” he says.
“Same years, in 2017 to July 2020 there were 23 violent crimes and last year, 2022 to 2023 there were 43 serious crime victimisations in Tāhunanui.”
Greens candidate Jace Hobbs says Tāhunanui was the epicentre for ongoing diminution of land mass and mitigation and adaptation was critical.
“I lived here three years ago and we had that massive wind driven flood, it almost flooded up onto Bridge St that day but next time it will, and it’s going to flood The Wood, lower Queen St and parts of Stoke, this is almost a scientific certainty,” he says.
“The way the certainty was given to us 20 years ago in which National completely ignored, saying it would be too expensive to make any kind of provision, at this point we absolutely need the mitigation and adaptation to these events.”
NZ Loyal candidate, Peter Vaughan, who is one-week into his candidacy, says he had the tools to solve the toxic sawdust issue at Tāhunanui Beach.
“I did some research on it and sure enough with the background I have in technology in furnaces, we’re looking at getting furnaces to take away that kind of toxic material,” he says.
“Reducing the cost of even your guy’s rubbish collections, we’re looking at taking all your rubbish away, as well as that toxic material, and it gets totally destroyed without any danger to the environment.
“We’ve now got the plans drawn up for it, we have what it takes to get it done.”
