Invercargill Deputy Mayor Changes Tune On Nobby Clark

Tuesday, 25 June 2024, 8:17 pm
Article: Matthew Rosenberg - Local Democracy Reporter

24 June

Invercargill’s deputy mayor has seemingly changed his rationale for why he requested the mayor to step aside from public speaking engagements.

On Friday, deputy Tom Campbell put forward a motion at an extraordinary council meeting strongly recommending Mayor Nobby Clark delegate all public engagements moving forward.

It followed a code of conduct complaint against Clark about comments he’d made at a United Fire Brigades' Association (UFBA) event in March, where he's accused of belittling the female MC and disparaging young people in positions of authority.

At Friday’s council meeting — held specifically to discuss Clark’s conduct — Campbell said it was important to protect the council moving forward.

“I do think that there is a need to provide some mechanism or protection that we don’t find ourselves in the same situation again in a couple of months' time, following another public speaking engagement,” he said.

One way to provide that protection was to delegate all public engagements to either the deputy mayor or another councillor, he said.

On Saturday, a leaked email to media revealed Clark would not accept a restricted role, and planned to continue his mayor duties as usual.

Campbell told Stuff he was “very disappointed” by that decision, believing Clark would again falter in the coming months.

But following a Monday afternoon announcement from the mayor that he would take a month off to “refresh” — made shortly after a meeting with Campbell — those fears seemed to subside.

Campbell said it was now “pointless” to discuss the mayor’s lack of willingness to step back from speaking engagements, saying the time off would give him a chance to reflect.

"The intention of that (Friday) motion . . . was to reduce the number of hours he worked, take him out of the evening public engagements that he was doing."

Campbell said the mayor was doing 60 hour working weeks, which was leaving him "overwhelmed".

“This is a bit of a timeout for him to get better and think about things.”

Serving in his first term as a councillor, Campbell was a former Tiwai Point aluminium smelter general manager who entered the chambers under Clark’s ‘Let’s Go Invercargill’ ticket.

Included in that ticket was existing councillor Allan Arnold and new councillors Grant Dermody and Barry Stewart.

On Friday, all four voted against councillor Ian Pottinger’s failed motion requesting the mayor step down.

The motion narrowly lost six votes to five — hindered by the lack of voting privileges available to the council’s mana whenua representatives who were vocal about the mayor’s actions.

Mayor Clark had previously blamed “brain fade” for his comments at the UFBA event, a condition he said he had been told could last two years following open heart surgery.

In a statement released Monday afternoon, Clark said he had apologised for the “banter” at his table and beginning of his speech.

He believed the main concern was focused on his claims about volunteer firefighters at the event.

UFBA did not wish to comment further on what had happened.

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