I was going to vote for Paul Eagle in the Wellington Mayoral race, but then I read a story in the paper today and now I’m not going to.
Because he broke his word and no politician who breaks their word deserves my vote.
It wasn’t for the media. This is what’s happened. Everyone in Wellington has known for years that Paul Eagle was considering running for Wellington Mayor. So at the last government elections in 2020, he was challenged on that. Why was he running for parliament if he wasn’t planning on being there for the whole term? If he was just going to quit after a couple of years and force a by election which will cost the whole country $1.2m-odd and then go off to be the mayor. So the media asked him and he dodged the question and they pushed him and finally he ruled it out. He said ”Yes, I will [rule it out].”
And now he’s doing exactly what he said he’d ruled out. He’s running for Mayor. And good on the media for drawing attention to this. Because now Paul Eagle is costing taxpayers a lot of money, potentially two years of a MP’s salary for a job that just tided him over, and then the cost of a by election if he wins the Mayoral race.
Now you might wonder why this matters, given politicians break their word all the time. But that’s the exactly the problem, they shouldn’t do it.
Labour- 2017 election, no new taxes then they bring in the Auckland fuel tax. And again last election, no new taxes but then they bring in the ute tax, the landlord tax , the amazon tax, they try on the retirement tax and duty’s planning and the unemployment tax. Grant Robertson said he wouldn’t extend the Brightline test, and then he did exactly that and excused it by saying he was ‘too definitive’.
Paul’s excuse doesn’t wash, he says he’s been forced to step up because Wellington is going backwards. That’s BS, because Wellingtons’ been going backwards for years and we all knew two years that he was going to run for Mayor. Nothing much has changed between then and now. I reckon he just worried that if he fessed up and told the truth, he risked doing badly in the Rongotai electorate.
Ahead of an election the only thing we can rely on is the word of a politician. Their promise, it’s all we’ve got. So they have to be honest. They have to keep their word. And if they don’t, we cannot reward them for breaking it.
The Wellington Mayoral race is awful. It’s talentless. But I would rather vote for no one than vote for someone who breaks their word. Because is that really what you (A) want in your mayor and (B) want to reward?
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