First candidate: 'I couldn’t sit back this time and just vote'
“I’m a middle-aged white guy with grey hair, so I’m not going to look different around the table, but I have different views.”
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Eighteen days after the Invercargill City Council first called for nominations for the looming by-election we’ve finally got our first candidate.
The council is holding a by-election to fill the seat at the council table that was vacated by second-term councillor Nigel Skelt.
Election day is August 4.
The council’s nomination period opened on May 11 with David Hicks the first person to officially be confirmed as a candidate on Monday.
Hicks is largely a stay-at-home Dad at the moment who also runs a pop-up burger business called Rad Dad Burgers.
“I have a burger pop-up at home, and we get a lot of people through every Thursday and Friday. Politics comes up quite a bit in conversation.
“I get - you could say - a bit frustrated with what’s been going on the last couple of months in town and it just seemed to me there is a huge section of our community that maybe don’t want to put their hand up because of the people that are there [at the council] currently.”
“I thought if I can spend two years encouraging other people to run at the next election, or at the very least allow some people to be heard."
“I couldn’t sit back this time and just vote, I had the itch. There are some of us that don’t feel like we are heard at moment.”
Hicks believes he would bring a different voice to those at the council table at the moment.
“I’m a middle-aged white guy with grey hair, so I’m not going to look different around the table, but I have different views.”
Included in the frustrations Hicks alluded to was what he felt was some sort of “cover up” and “hush, hush” in relation to an employment complaint involving now former councillor Nigel Skelt.
“It’s up to us men to hold each other to account, it’s the only way it’s going to change.”
The Stadium Southland board has instigated an independent review into how the complaint was handled.
Hicks was also frustrated by some of the commentary from an angry section of the community about the changing room use at Invercargill’s Splash Palace Pool.
Earlier this month a number of people expressed anger at the Invercargill City Council’s practice of allowing anyone who identified as female to change in the female changing rooms at Splash Palace.
“It’s all a bit ridiculous,” Hicks said of that outrage.
“And I know it’s all the anti-vaxers getting on board and Voices for Freedom, you see it in all the conspiracy theory stuff.
“That sort of thing plays on my mind, and in makes me think there are certain sections of our community that feel underrepresented. My ideal would be to try and encourage a more diverse part of our community to run at the next election.”
Hicks and his wife Lucy immigrated from England to New Zealand in January 2016.
They initially lived in Wellington for a couple of years before employment saw them shift to Invercargill.
They now have two children, a three-year-old and a five-year-old, and feel Invercargill is a good place to bring them up.
Hicks has an understanding of how councils operate given he worked for councils back in England and also for a time at Environment Southland. He has mainly worked in environmental management.
“I know how the governance works; I’m not going in completely blind.”
So all he does is complain about the current council and write off people's genuine concerns as being "antivaxxers"? How exactly is he going to benefit Invercargill on council?
Seems like he could be a good candidate and good on him for putting his hand up. My suggestion would be to focus more on the skills and experience he would bring, and the opportunities he sees, rather than criticising those that are there now - it will make it much harder to work with them to achieve what he wants if his campaign has primarily focused on criticising existing councillors.