Looking back: Taranaki’s year in politics for 2022

It was a heady year politically in Taranaki, and history-making, when the local body elections rolled around in October.

For the first time, across the four local authorities in the region, Māori ward seats were on the voting ballot.

Clive Tongaawhikau, who won the Māori ward seat in Stratford unopposed in October, was still getting used to politics at the local body level, after years of working with his marae, hapū and iwi.

“It’s not a tokenistic thing, it’s a real thing for us, and we believe in it,” he said of the Māori ward structure.

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Confronted with hundreds of pages worth of council documentation, and a flurry of invitations to community events was one adjustment, but Tongaawhikau said people would still be at the heart of his decision-making.

While championing what’s right for his people was his “day-to-day walk”, the te reo and kapahaka tutor said he did feel the weight of responsibility now he was officially part of the Stratford District Council.

“The book’s never been written, so I’m taking my time to develop that,” he said.

On the leadership front, the most intense competition for the mayoral chains took place in New Plymouth, where incumbent, and eventual winner, Neil Holdom easily prevailed over a bevy of other contenders, including sitting councillors Dinnie Moeahu, Murray Chong and Sam Bennett.

The debates were well intentioned, as ever, but often got personal. Bennett’s attack on Holdom’s travel record to Wellington was fair game, if it had been valid, and it was a prime example of aggressive politicking falling flat.

The campaign was not without its controversies on the side. First time candidate Shaun Clare was barred from attending the Taranaki Daily News debate following his threatening reaction to the publication of an unflattering photograph, while Peter Hardgraves pulled out alleging threatening behaviour from a fellow candidate.

Stratford’s Neil Volzke was elected unopposed, while Phil Nixon won out convincingly in South Taranaki over political no-name Walter Smith.

Another political story which got people talking this year was the sudden resignation of Craig Stevenson in July from his role of chief executive at New Plymouth District Council, following a conduct complaint.

The details of the complaint have never been made public and Stevenson resigned in July, stopping any investigation – if there was even going to be one – in its tracks.

After nearly six months during which an interim chief executive was employed to fly in and fly out every week, Taupō District Council CEO Gareth Green was announced as the new CEO on December 22. He will take up the role on March 27.

Next year brings with it a general election, and competition for New Plymouth MP Glen Bennett, of Labour, comes in the form of ex-Taranaki Regional Council chairman David MacLeod, who was recently confirmed as National’s candidate for the seat.

Bennett was a largely unexpected winner in 2019, swept into the seat by some heart on sleeve campaigning and the red wave that saw Labour gain an unprecedented majority.

With MacLeod a well-connected businessman and local body politician, who has already signalled his ambition for a cabinet position, it promises to be a hard fought race.

Government reforms, in the shape of Three Waters and the emissions pricing scheme, have been the subject to public protest around the region this year.

While water reform is much needed with water infrastructure around the country failing regularly, the legislation is little understood and largely seen as a government grab of community assets, making it widely unpopular.

Despite that New Plymouth District councillors in September voted to take $7.9m of Better Off Grant Funding, available under the Three Waters reform, while maintaining a protest against the reforms.

Not long after that Taranaki farmers continued with their 2021 Groundswell theme that they are being over-regulated and once more brought their tractors to the streets protesting a scheme they say will cost them dearly.

Well known Tarata sheep and beef farmer Bryan Hocken, who was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, said the emissions tax was “bloody disgraceful”.

“The Government should have been listening to us,” he said.

Healing some of the social divisions left behind is on the top of Taranaki-King Country MP Barbara Kuriger’s list for next year.

“Being through such a tough time has tended to exacerbate stress levels and appears to have made people more aggressive towards each other which is not how us as Kiwis are naturally wired,” she said.

The National MP said 2022 had been a “difficult year” for many families and businesses in her electorate.

While the country still navigated through the phases of Covid-19, Kuriger said tourism and hospitality ventures were still struggling to get back to where they had been pre-pandemic.

“Though it has been a tough time, we have continued to rely heavily as a country on the food and fibre sector to keep the economy flowing.”

Kuriger has also had a tough year personally. In October she resigned from her agriculture, biosecurity and food safety portfolios over an ongoing dispute she and her family is involved in, a conflict of interest her leader Christopher Luxon labelled a “serious lapse of judgement”.

The Taranaki King Country MP, who has been in Parliament since 2014, said she should have managed the conflict of interest sooner.

Her family has been in a dispute with the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) since 2017, which she said had “created a blurred line with my portfolio responsibilities”.

“In order to continue to support my family, I am stepping aside,” she said in a statement in October.