Media Release
28 July 2010

Auckland Super City candidates gather for lively discussion at Unitec

The seven candidates who have thrown their name into the hat to become the first mayor of the Auckland Super City will meet in what will be lively debate at Unitec Institute of Technology next Tuesday 3 August.

The candidates – North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams, anti-smacking protestor Colin Craig, former Waitakere City councillor and comedian Ewen Gilmour, Auckland City Mayor John Banks, Manukau City Mayor Len Brown, water campaigner and actor Penny Bright and fellow actor and theatre director Simon Prast – will participate in Unitec’s final Forum For the Future panel discussion around the impending Super City.

The three-evening series entitled “Super City – Win or Lose?” has attracted some of the country’s top local government experts as panellists who have taken the opportunity to inform the studio and online audience about the pros and cons of having the Super City.

The focus of each forum is tackled in a series of three lively 90-minute live studio debates bringing together the community, business leaders, academics and students in front of a live audience.

The first two sessions created a vigorous debate amongst the guest panelists and the live audience.

Rod Oram, business journalist, commentator and adjunct professor at Unitec’s Department of Management and Marketing, is facilitating the series of discussions.

“The Unitec Forum for the Future- Super City Win or Lose? aims to stimulate thinking and debate on how we can make the new Super City structure work for the community of Auckland and New Zealand as a whole,” says Oram.

“This is probably the first time all the mayoral candidates have come together to discuss their intentions for the Auckland Super City so it should make for some very interesting discussions.

“We are hoping the seven mayoral candidates can leave the point scoring and politicking at home and come to the forum and address some of the central issues that have come out of the first two sessions,” he says.

The event is streamed live on Twitter and the online live audience can tweet questions to the panelists during the event.

The first forum looked at why there was need to change regional governance structures, while the second forum held earlier this week looked at what could be done to make the new system work.

Next Tuesday’s discussion will focus around how the new Super City system can best perform for Auckland and New Zealand. The public is welcome to come along to the event but as places are limited, they will need to visit www.forumforthefuture.unitec.ac.nz and register their attendance.

To view video clips from: Super City -Win or Lose? Session 1 and 2, go to http://www.youtube.com/unitecnz#p/c/F273446EC432922A

To tweet your questions live this for the 3 August session, you can do so between 5 and 7pm on the following link: http://twitter.com/UnitecFTF

For more information go to: www.forumforthefuture.unitec.ac.nz

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