Poneke is our home and there’s so much to love about it – our beautiful natural environment, our vibrant culture and creativity, and our great people and communities.

Like most cities, we have challenges – unaffordable housing, job cuts and rising costs, and infrastructure and transport that doesn’t quite meet our current and future needs.

I’ve taken those challenges on and celebrated those strengths in my two terms on council. Two of my greatest achievements on council have been on housing and with our libraries.

I led a planning process that will enable thousands more homes to be built across our city. This will allow older Wellingtonians to downsize but stay in the communities they love, give younger Wellingtonians the hope to come back or to stay and make their lives here, and give us all greater choice in cost, location and type of homes in the future.

I made our library services fines free – overdue fines drove so many people away from our wonderful libraries. In the three years since this change there’s been a 30% increase in library borrowers, especially young people.

We increased funding for water and got on top of the leaks that had been plaguing the city, added bus and bike lanes to give everyone better and safer transport choices, and are reducing waste (and emissions) with an organics collection system.

There’s much more to do – to achieve our vision of a liveable, affordable and beautiful city in a pragmatic, cost effective way to ensure future generations can be grateful for the Wellington we built together.