People's voice needs to be heard - Conservative Party Napier candidate

EXPERIENCE: The Conservative Party's Laurence Day is Napier's newest candidate. PHOTO/SUPPLIED.

Holding politicians to account, and ensuring people's voices are heard is the aim for Napier's newest candidate - the Conservative Party's Laurence Day.

Although a newly-minted candidate, Mr Day is not new to politics.

He was involved with the National Party for about 30 years - including working as the electorate chairman for Hamilton East - before switching his allegiances to the Conservative Party about five years ago.

Although he lives in Hamilton, he was standing for the Napier electorate to help the party build its profile.

"It helps to have candidates in electorates as well as list candidates so we just looked round at who might be willing to put their hand up and stand in an electorate.

"Even though I'm out of town I was willing to stand up and be counted."

While "no expert" on the Napier electorate, his experience covers a range of areas - he started out in agriculture, as a farm consultant, before moving into the "business side of things", working in sales and marketing.

Starting his own business importing computer products from the United States in the 1990s then led to him starting private training company Quantum Education. His share of the company netted him more than $10 million when it was sold in 2014.

Given his background, he did have an interest in education: "A country really is only as good at its education of the next generation. So I really like seeing people lift their game, educationally."

But the reason he became involved with the Conservative Party was the principle of binding referenda - with his "biggest motivation" promoting a true democracy, where the wishes of the majority counted.

"I haven't got a particular desire to get into Parliament myself, but I do have a desire to have the voice of the people listened to.

"I'm a very strong advocate for binding referenda, let the people actually be listened to for a change."

Mr Day's concern was that the Government could call a referendum on issues the minority were interested in - such as the 2015 flag referendum - but was "only too happy to ignore" any citizen-driven referendum.

"We can get a majority of the people who will sign a petition, get a referendum going and the Government ignores them, that just doesn't seem right.

"When the Government can ignore the majority of the people, that's a very puzzling situation."

His party's policy was that to make a referendum binding, 66 per cent of voters would have to voted for the change.

"Those who get into power, they usually start out with the best of intentions but once they get there they tend to do whatever it takes to entrench their position. It often means they don't need to listen to the voice of the people."

"The voice of the people is very rarely stupid, unfair, wrong."