Local Focus: No more jokes about Hamilton if young candidate becomes mayor

Twenty-six-year-old Louise Hutt is running for mayor of Hamilton because she wants to see the council stop providing material for jokes on 7 Days.

"We had one city councillor who used gay slurs in a meeting, we had one city councillor who wore an anti-vax shirt to an autism fundraiser, we had another city councillor who sexually harassed a journalist and another councillor who said refugees were scum and we shouldn't publicly mourn the victims of the Christchurch shooting.

"That's pretty bleak ... to have people representing us behaving like that."

Hutt is fed up with the current council and says change is desperately needed.

"Nearly 70 per cent of Hamilton didn't vote last election, so the status quo of politics doesn't work for us. Historically, that voting is getting worse year after year. So something has to change, new people have to run."

Hutt has impressive credentials. She is the CEO of electricity social enterprise For Our Good and a member of the governance board for GoEco. She is also a candidate for a role as councillor in Hamilton's West Ward.

Hutt says the biggest issues facing Hamilton are inequality, housing, transport and climate action.

"We are going to grow by 30,000 people in the next 10 years. Where are they all going to go?"

Her answers to this and other problems are in the Local Focus video interview above.

She is up against current Mayor Andrew King, and councillors Paula Southgate, Angela O'Leary and James Casson, who are all running for mayor. If voting is similar to last election, it promises to be a tight race.

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