Hawkins announces bid for city mayoralty

AARON Hawkins has joined the Dunedin mayoral race.

The twoterm Dunedin City councillor said in a statement last evening the Dunedin branch of the Green Party had endorsed his candidacy for both the mayoralty and city council in October’s elections.

The council made a lot of progress in the last five to eight years in taking environmental, social and cultural wellbeing seriously as a city, he said.

He described himself as having the political experience to work both locally and nationally to continue building momentum on that front. Cr Hawkins, who has stood for the mayoralty in the past three elections, joins Scout BarbourEvans and Carmen Houlahan as confirmed mayoral candidates. Mayor Dave Cull has yet to announce his intentions.

The announcement comes as the Otago University Students’ Association launched a new campaign to get the city’s population of more than 20,000 students enrolled to vote in local body elections.

The student union will be looking at working with any interested candidates who aligned with its ‘‘student, and community, friendly’’ policies, to be released later this year.

OUSA president James Heath said the association was ‘‘excited to kick off our Valid Voter campaign’’ to harness the clout of the student population.

‘‘Our wider campaign aims to have student voices and issues at a local government level, just as much as any other large demographic in our city.’’

The local body elections will be held on October 12.

Mr Heath said student interest in climate change, te ao Maori and city conditions had been ‘‘steadily on the rise’’.

‘Mr Heath did not answer when asked if OUSA was fielding any candidates itself, but said the organisation was willing to work with anyone who was aligned with OUSA’s policies.

Generation Zero Dunedin coconvener Adam Currie said the youth climate advocacy group would be preparing a scorecard for each council candidate to rate them on environmental issues — and OUSA was holding two debates, for council and mayoral candidates, to give them a chance to discuss issues relevant to students.