Does familiarity breed content?

Right place, right Tim? Stay the pace with Trace? Keep calm and Gary Tong? Sorry. Perhaps we’ll leave the political sloganeering to those better at it.

But the news Southland’s three territorial mayors will each seek a further term is welcome for coming so far in advance of next year’s elections.

If they already know their minds it’s only right that Invercargill’s Tim Shadbolt, Gore district’s Tracy Hicks and Southland district’s Gary Tong should give their communities the heads-up.

Not only does it confirm that stay-the-course options exist, it also gives potential challengers the chance to firm up their own intentions. And voters the chance to assess their own satisfaction levels with the future in mind.

For onlookers further north the big news will be that Shadbolt, now 71, and New Zealand’s longestserving mayor, is seeking to extend his historic record.

It’s understandable he should feel that way and unguarded of him to say so. But mayoral campaigns must be fought on far more consequential matters than personal legacies.

Shadbolt’s assertion that he has put Invercargill on the map and wants to keep it there can be accepted as a reflection that he does have a personal brand.

When the campaign period starts in earnest each of the mayors will have a record to defend, existing issues to demonstrate they’re on top of, and – we trust – plans for the future to set out.

With that in mind, it’s not too soon to be thinking about specific election issues.

And, we might add, issue-based specificity hasn’t always been a strong point of southern elections. Or further north, for that matter.

Watery cod-inspirational evocations do tend to commonplace. That’s a point Massey University’s Andy Asquith made when we hit him up for comment before the 2016 elections.

He had no trouble rounding up the campaign cliches we could expect to hear: ‘‘Independent voice . . . voice for the community . . . lots of candidates saying they’re going to cap rate increases, cut spending, cut waste, cut bureaucracy.’’

Throw in a few community and family credentials and it adds up to . . . what was it again, Mr Asquith?

‘‘Malarky. Yabba dabba do. It means nothing.’’

It’s true that a candidate, mayoral or otherwise, can be admirably exact in his or her campaign pledges, make themselves as accountable as they reasonably can, and then find that circumstances change and they need the ability to reassess, react and re-prioritise.

But voters get that.

The possibility these might arise is no excuse for campaigners to get away with not being pinned down on what, exactly, success or failure would look like in three years’ time. If recalibrations become necessary, the public is perfectly capable of keeping up.

So then, we might start with a few questions.

Like what’s the Southland Regional Growth Strategy achieved lately? How many of those 10,000 jobs have eventuated. Where’s that new co-ordinating agency for it that is incapable of coming together?

And speaking of coming together, we are a provincial community of fewer than 100,000. Are we still entirely sure we couldn’t possibly get by with any fewer than three territorial authorities?