Former Tiwai Point aluminium smelter general manager Campbell is standing for a seat on the Invercargill City Council at the October local body elections [file photo].
Tom Campbell reckons the Invercargill City Council is an embarrassment to the city.
A former Tiwai Point aluminium smelter general manager who headed the Southland Regional Development Agency, Campbell says new faces are needed around the council table.
He wants to be one of them, so is standing at the October local body elections.
“I am standing for the council because I think it has been an embarrassment … we need to restore pride and confidence in council,” the 70-year-old company director said.
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Campbell is one of the eight candidates who will stand as a ticket alongside mayoral hopeful Nobby Clark in October, with its stated aim to get new blood on the council.
Campbell said he would have stood anyway, but was attracted to the ticket because it was the best way to get “significant cultural change” by getting new people.
He would be his own man if voted on, he said.
“If elected I will vote with my conscience on every matter and the ticket ends on the day of the election.”
Currently utilising about “one third” of his time as a director on three company boards, he would have time to devote to the council and would being experience in senior management, project management and governance.
The former chairman of council asset Electricity Invercargill, Campbell said: “The council needs experience on how it governs itself, it’s embarrassing advisors were appointed to tell them how to do the job.”
He believed the council was moving too slowly.
“Invercargill needs to get moving, everything seems to take forever”, he said, singling out the museum project and Anderson Park developments as projects that had lagged for years.
He wanted councillors “working as a team”, improved efficiency within the council’s executive and staff and less spending on external budgets and advisors.
Campbell, from Scotland, moved to Southland in 1981 and lives in Otatara.
“My life has been transformed since I emigrated to Invercargill. I love the city, it’s been fantastic for me and my family. I have been disappointed by the pantomimes at the city council in the last few years … and I want to give something back.”
The other candidates on the ticket alongside Clark and Campbell are current councillor Allan Arnold plus Grant Dermody, Andrea Arango, Karl Herman, Kevin Brown, Bevan Smith and Kerry Hapuku.
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