Don Brash and John Tamihere to launch political campaign

Wednesday 17 August 2016

Don Brash and John Tamihere to launch political campaign on Monday.

The coming together of “iwi/kiwi”

On Monday 22 August former Reserve Bank Governor and National Party leader, Dr Don Brash, will get together with former Labour Cabinet Minister John Tamihere to launch the campaign for Auckland Council candidate David Rankin.

Mr Rankin – who is standing for the Waitakere Ward – predicts that West Auckland will be “a battleground” in the election. He was motivated to stand by a growing sense of frustration with the way Waitakere has been treated:

“For too long, the area has played poor cousin to other parts of Auckland and we are in desperate need of catch-up. The key issues I see affecting us are a multi-billion dollar rail loop that we won’t see any benefit from, planned road tolls which will penalise us for where we live, the refusal of council to zone land in our area for employment, the unbelievably slow rate of widening the north-western motorway, a shortage of housing land, and red-tape obstructing home renovations.”

Mr Rankin, who is a businessman and consultant, says that for the solutions, the new Council will need to:

“halt all work on the rail-loop until its financial viability has been proven, ban tolls outright on any Auckland road, introduce international construction practices to complete all roading projects in the next twelve months, open up hundreds of hectares of land for genuinely affordable housing, and guarantee a three-week consents approval process.”

ends

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