Farmer joins race for SDC mayoralty
A high country farmer and former Federated Farmers president has announced he will stand for the Southland District mayoralty.
Geoffrey Young joins current councillor and businessman Rob Scott from Lumsden and Te Anau businesswoman Kirsty Pickett in what is looming as a wide open race for the mayoralty in October. More candidates may yet come forward.
Young, the president of Southland Federated Farmers from
2018-21, said the district needed a strong rural voice.
Southland batted above its weight in exports led by the primary sector and someone associated with that sector needed to be speaking on its behalf, he said.
The owner of a high country sheep and beef farm near Balfour, Young said his son would run the property if he became mayor.
He would be a strong voice for the district and would promote it as a tourist destination and a place to work, ‘‘because there’s a vast array of work here that we need people for’’.
But he also wanted to see people unified again, pointing to the divisiveness over the mandates and the Government’s Three Waters legislation.
On Three Waters, Young said he was fundamentally opposed to the co-governance model.
‘‘We are all New Zealanders, and it’s time to unify people rather than divide them.’’
He had the ‘‘greatest respect and admiration for Maoridom’’ and believed the vast majority of people with a Maori heritage would not support co-governance.
Young, aged in his late 60s, has never been on a local body council. But he has held chairmanships on various organisations over the decades. These included inaugural chairman of the Tuatapere Maternity Hospital Trust, the area he was born and raised in, and fundraising chairman and president of the Gore Musical Theatre.
The Southland District mayoralty race is wide open, with current mayor Gary Tong stepping aside and instead standing for the Invercargill mayoralty.
Candidate nominations for this year’s local government elections open on July 15 and close on August 12, and the election will be held on October 8.