Wattle you do about hay fever?

While most pre-election debate meetings talk about rates and infrastructure, the town of Picton talks about sniffing out hay fever.

About 150 members of the public burst into cheers when a businesswoman asked Marlborough’s mayoral and Marlborough Sounds ward candidates if they would cull wattles, at a preelection debate at the Waitohi Whare Ma¯ tauranga/picton Library last week.

Diversion Gallery curator Barbara Speedy sparked the biggest reaction of the night when she asked if hopefuls would ‘‘take leadership’’ and get rid of the wattle trees that triggered her hay fever.

Sounds ward candidate Rebecca Woledge took to the mike and said wattle eradication was being trialled in Waikawa Bay.

If successful, she said, it could be rolled out to other areas of the Marlborough Sounds.

Ward candidate and current councillor Nadine Taylor, who is standing again, joked that the wattle tree issue would ‘‘be [her] undoing’’.

‘‘I understand that people want to get rid of them but these wattle and pine trees are all over and a lot of them are on private property,’’ Taylor said.

‘‘We need a working group working with communities so they can go in and poison trees ... believe me, if council started going into people’s property with a chainsaw, you would be yelling at me in a different way.’’

Trialling wattle eradication was ‘‘the right way to do it’’, she said.

Ward candidate Jane Briggs said that if all Sounds residents went out with their chainsaw, it was possible the wattles could be gone within a year.

Speaking after the meeting, Speedy said the ‘‘fine and pervasive’’ wattle pollen presented a ‘‘big health issue’’ to Sounds residents.

‘‘I have talked to others in Picton about it, and there are so many people suffering from respiratory problems due to the invasion of the wattles.’’

The Picton resident of 22 years said the wattle population had got worse over the decades, from just a few trees to ‘‘hills of yellow’’.

When she came back to Picton after visiting family in the North Island, she noticed the pollen affected her sinuses ‘‘immediately’’.

‘‘We need a call for action, and I think you could tell that by the rousing response of everyone there [at the debate].

‘‘It is obviously one of those issues everyone talks about but doesn’t know what to do about it, and it would be great to see the council take some leadership.’’

Waikawa resident Glen Richardson said the wattle pollen triggered ‘‘horrendous’’ hay fever issues in his family, including ‘‘months of headaches’’.

He also thought it caused rashes on his children.

‘‘There is a time when our property is covered in yellow,’’ he said.

Richardson said he supported chopping the wattles down, as they were one of the biggest issues to public health in Picton.

Nick Martin, who also lives in Waikawa, said while wattle pollen caused his and his wife’s nose to run, he felt there were more important issues the council could address, like freedom camping.

‘‘We have got much more urgent issues. Wattle eradication is important but not that important. We need toilets at freedom camping areas.’’

Waikawa resident David Mcbride said the wattles, whose pollen gave him a chesty cough and a yellow roof, should ‘‘all come out’’.

‘‘I have to walk around wattles here and hold my breath,’’ he said.