Minto for Mayor in Christchurch

By
John Minto
-
46
7

john_minto
Today I’m announcing plans to stand as the KOA (Keep our Assets Canterbury) candidate for the Christchurch City Mayoralty.

Christchurch has become a city strangled by corporate control foisted on the city by the National government in the form of MP Gerry Brownlee and assisted by the Mayor – former Labour MP Lianne Dalziel.

Dalziel has led the charge to sell city assets beginning with the council works division City Care which is currently on the block. She is still implementing the failed 1980s Labour government policies which enriched the wealthy at the expense of the rest of us.

The culture of corporate greed and council impotence is such at the council recently gave a $300,000 grant to multi-millionaire developer Antony Gough for an energy-efficient heating system for his $150 million apartment development.

So while low-income residents can’t afford to turn on the power to keep warm in winter Gough will be able to reap that much more profit from the tenants of this development.

Here is the media release from KOA this morning

Keep Our Assets Canterbury

KOA candidate for Christchurch Mayor announced
At 10am this morning KOA (Keep Our Assets Canterbury) announced that well-known political activist John Minto will be standing as the KOA candidate for Christchurch City Mayor in the coming local body election.

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We are standing a candidate because we want to stop the council selling our city assets.

The proposed, imminent sale of City Care is a betrayal of Christchurch residents who have NEVER voted for asset sales.

We will have the debate the city should have had but was denied by the current council.
As well as stopping asset sales we have developed a series of bold policies to address the big problems faced by city residents. More details of these policies will be announced in due course but they include:
· Free and frequent public transport to all parts of the city

· Building a minimum 1,000 extra council houses in the next three years.

· The living wage as the minimum pay rate for all council work – to be paid from reductions in senior management salaries.

· Ending the corporate stranglehold on the rebuild with steep rate increases on undeveloped land in the CBD

· All Canterbury rivers to be swimmable (rather than “wadeable”)

As part of the announcement today we emphasised we are not standing a candidate to “wave the flag” on asset sales. We are standing to win the mayoralty.

The success of this campaign will depend on how many activists and supporters are able to give time and energy to support this campaign leading up the election on 8 October.
We are inviting all KOA supporters and those in the wider progressive movement to come to a campaign planning meeting on Saturday 23 July, 10am to 12noon at the WEA building, 59 Gloucester Street. EVERYONE WELCOME.

At the meeting myself and John will speak about the campaign and we welcome your ideas and energy.

We are looking forward to seeing you on Saturday 23 July.

Murray Horton
KOA Convenor

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46 COMMENTS

  1. Good on you John – something has to be done. Christchurch City Council shouldn’t even be paying toward the rebuild. The Green Party had the right idea in arguing for a short term tax on all New Zealanders to fund the rebuild.

    • The rest of NZ has already piled some billions of $$ into ChCh, sucking oxygen out of “the regions”. Enough already!

  4. Excellent. All the best for your run for the mayoralty Mr Minto. Flogging off assets is a the worst, crazy thing to do. I hope you are successful.

  6. Great news John – Christchurch needs more positive energy focused on the people and healthy plans rather than the building industry and greedy corporations and crooked two faced politicians.
    The workers down there deserve better representation having to deal with those landlords interested only in profit and not the well being of their renters.
    All the best to you and will pass the word on and help in garnishing support.
    Now if we could just get rid of — Jerry Brown-nose and his buddy – the serial lying and unethical elitist PM – our very own jonky donky.

    Good luck John ! !

  7. All right you lot.

    You’ve definitely got my vote but I am enough of a realist to know the kind of power you’re up against and how the odds stand. New Zealand is a very conservative country and Christchurch must be about the most conservative city of them all.

    But it would be nice to change all that…

  9. Excellent, best wishes. We will benefit from a strong counter to the current set of vested interests, the somewhat wishy-washy centrist current Mayor, and to the likes of Mr Brownlee with his arrogance and his silly and expensive ‘anchor projects’ (which we pay for but his business mates benefit from). However people will ask (and I think justifiably) – how are we going to afford this set of policies? Borrow more? It seems like the whole world is borrowing money – which makes the global economy a Ponzi scheme which must fail at some point.

  10. That’s the best news I’ve heard for fucking ages! Kia kaha indeed @ John Minto.

    Is this the beginning of The Revolution ! ?

    I have more to write about gough and dalziel a bit later on .

    Brilliant !

  12. Kia kaha indeed @ John Minto

    You could then go into Parliament, as we reckon we do need some sensible Politicians outside the money tree beltway.

    If only to give a real in touch common Kiwi aspect.

    Good luck.

      • Yes 100% In Vino, he climbed out from under a rock, brain-farted, then retreated back into the dark right-wing recesses of ignorance.

      • I agree.
        Daves heart and eloquence are missing in action — Intellect too ! !
        An obvious angry joker and it is a waste of our time and energy even responding.
        Of course the right wing; narrow minded ; biased Donkey supporters are angry at the likes of John Minto. It is a compliment.

  15. Finally someone with a socialist perspective and a civil conscience to look after the East of Christchurch, the inhabitants who have been called “SCUM” by right-wing policy adviser Mr [sic] Whaleoil.

    The re-build has been an unequal disgrace – great for those rich who wanted a $60 per hour inside-outside paint job, with hairline cracks above windows – but others, less fortunate or “connected” or “less celebrity” who got $40 per hour shonky patch job. Earthquakes were a concrete reminder about the systemic inequalities existing because of neoliberal politics.

    John Campbell was a victim of right-wing media gagging. Maybe John Minto can redress the inequality imbalance in Chch, underwritten by National, ACT, Maori Party and United Future’s coalition of evil.

  16. [Go john/The truth, I have asked you before to use only one pseudonym. If you persist, your posting privileges will be rescinded for a month. – ScarletMod ]

  18. “Minto for Mayor” has a nice ring to it, remember John got over 10,000 votes in the Auckland supercity Mayoral contest last time with near zero budget and ignored on purpose by the msm–and less than 40% (36% in fact) of Aucklanders could be arsed sending in their postal ballots

    so lets use the networks and boost John Minto into a fighting chance position in Christchurch, Murray Horton is a battler from way back too and knows a thing as KOA Convenor

    the Canterbury upper crust obviously find Dalziel acceptable, therefore it is not a “lesser of two evils” situation, so all support to “Minto for Mayor”!

  19. The only contribution Minto has made to society is to have a bot of police equipment named after him – See Wikipedia. His Fight all racist tour involvement was simply a Juvenile anti establishment protest. Conservative Christchurch I suspect requires a people person, a mediator, a diplomat, not some egg that spits at people.

    • “dirty Dave” tries his luck again, but gets it wrong on every level possible

      John Minto’s achievements are many and varied in teaching and community activities across the years

    • So, Dave, your support apartheid then? Are you by any chance an Afrikaaner? That would explain rather a lot about you.

    • So true. He was nowhere to be seen when the All Blacks played Argentina while their govt were throwing political prisoners out of planes, or when they played Romania while Ceausescu was ruthlessly ruling with an iron hand. To be fair Minto probably idolised crazy old Nicolae.

  20. If idiot paid trolls get money ( ? ) for every response to their dribble ? ( dave etc.) then I suggest we consider not responding to him and just submit a comment that is not an official response to his nonsense ? Wouldn’t want the baby boy to make any money off of our sharing.

    • Just a swinging voter who does not like the extreme left, or right , I think they are both counterproductive. I believe in an effective opposition and the fact that the left, and right both have some good ideas. If you really thing I am a troll, earning money for every response please feel free not to respond.

    • YEP THAT’s THE WAY TO KILL ALL TROLLS.

      SO SCARLETMOD CAN THEN MONITOR THEIR DRIBBLE AND EXCUSE THEM WHEN WE GET to many posts of repetitious behaviour!

  21. If i lived in CHCH i would vote for you John.
    I think your ideas for the region are spot on and i hope you get people motivated to look at your policy ideas seriously and realise it could be so much better and that there is an alternative.
    You have always showed courage and belief in advocating for whats right all the way back too 1981 with the springbok tour that John Key didnt have an opinion on at the time !!
    Good luck.

  22. C’mon guys, you have your Minto’s your Hone’s and your Sykes that are all your ‘flavour’ in politics, but they get annihilated via the voter booth! is it because of ‘the man’, or because of the ‘new world order’?…either way it’s NEVER that their philosophy nor far left views that are to blame eh?

  24. Good luck John.

    Lianne Dalziel has been no better than Bob Parker. Kinda shows you what Labour would be like if they were in power!

    I think you’ll do a lot better vote-wise in Christchurch than in Auckland. Despite weird views of Christchurch as some kind of middle-class English garden city, historically it has been a centre of working class struggle and was where the anti-Vietnam War and anti-apartheid movements were strongest.

    Philip Ferguson

    • Yes, well said Phillip. We can see the left history in Chch by the amount of social housing and assets held by the city council – quite different from most city councils.

      Dalziel and Parker have not protected this, and Labour has also let Chch down in their hour of need. I don’t think Minto can win, but he’s got my vote and support.

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