Flynn Nisvett, who says if he becomes mayor he'd rather be called 'King of Dunedin'. Photo: Supplied / Silly Hat Party
As ballot papers land in letterboxes around the motu, some mayoral candidates are doing away with traditional priorities - and asking voters to consider carpeted streets and tuna-based transport.
Vampires and clowns are among the scattering of eclectic nominees bringing novel personas and perspectives to this year's elections.
In Dunedin, the Silly Hat Party's 'King' Flynn Nisvett said he had decided to vie for the top job because he was interested in making a real difference to the temperature.
"It's really cold. Twenty percent of the population are students and we're out in the mornings, in the evenings and even during the day ... and it's still really cold, like my fingers are freezing. It's not fair that we've had the mayor in for 11 seasons and it's, if anything, colder," he said.
"We've got a three-point plan, which is to carpet all the roads, [make] warmer weather - which would also in turn bring in more chocolate-growing conditions, so we get to grow our own chocolate and ideally tropical fish as well. And then, there's heaters on every street. Except maybe Castle Street because there's so much glass."
Nisvett said he also intended to regulate sandflies and take away their wings, "similar to the gang patch ban".
He also had the long-term vision of replacing money with chocolate fish - which he said would effectively eradicate generational wealth.
"It will entirely be gone if we have chocolate fish, because obviously you can't just keep them. They go off. They go yuck," he said.
Another Dunedin hopeful said he wanted to flip the temperature dial in the other direction to Nisvett.
Ruthven Allimrac of the Radical Action Faction emerged from the shadows to present his vision for Dunedin. Photo: Supplied / Creg Hilton
Ruthven Allimrac of the Radical Action Faction had emerged from the shadows to present his vision for keeping the city cool, and tackling climate change by speaking up about its impacts on his fellow vampires.
"Our food sources could go extinct, our coffins could be flooding. We still have to live in this country. If everything goes underwater, goes up in flames, we're still suffering," he said.
Allimrac said his 200 years had taken him from fighting Confederates to Nazis - and now he was dreaming of a harmonious Dunedin that celebrated diversity and difference.
"The beautiful array of human and vampire experience, the wonderful tapestry that people weave with their lives and their own unique perspectives on the world, should be celebrated," he said.
Further north, in the capital city's mayoral race, Labour's Andrew Little had pledged a commitment to cheaper buses and trains.
Pennywize the Rewilding Clown, who has revealed a bold plan for Wellington. Photo: RNZ / Nick James
Fellow candidate Pennywize the Rewilding Clown felt voters deserved much more.
"We can utilise our many poorly neglected scientists, by our current coalition government, and resurrect the moa and genetically engineer giant tuna, which we will use as our public transport," he said.
"You will no longer sit in a traffic jam of buses on the Golden Mile, on Courtenay Place. You will be zooming along on the backs of resurrected moa. And you will no longer rumble down Adelaide Road. You will be zooming down on the back of a giant tuna on the Waitangi Awa."
He proposed cutting all maintenance for roads and water infrastructure so the city could "rewild itself".
"Anyone who sees the Basin Reserve on a misty or rainy day knows that that swamp is trying to turn itself back into a swamp. And with the climate crisis, we're going to have heaps of water. And that needs to go somewhere," he said.
Josh Harford of the Silly Hat Party, who says at 19 years old he is fully qualified to be Wellington's next mayor. Photo: Supplied
Meanwhile, Silly Hat Party Wellington candidate Josh Harford believed the city's leaky pipes could be used to build fishponds.
His policies took aim at agapanthus, slow walking and general "bad vibes", and said he intended to redirect the wind to Upper Hutt, "where it belongs".
"This election is a cavalcade of clowns. We have Andrew Little bringing left-wing vibes. We have Diane and Ray and Karl and Rob, a lot of them bringing right-wing vibes. Ultimately, only I will bring good vibes," he said.
Harford denied his ideas for the city overlooked any basic functions of council.
"These ideas are a bold and ambitious agenda on top of an agenda on rates and on housing. So, I have a housing policy. It involves taking houses from Auckland, stealing them from Ponsonby and Epsom and Tamaki and all those places and bringing them down and putting them in Wellington as gifts for the people. I will take six of the Prime Minister's seven houses and I'll put them in Wellington," he said.
"I've got a very decent rates policy. We're going to get rid of rates and replace them with a certain number of chocolate fish per year, and any sort of rates hikes will involve the council physically hiking the entire length of the Northern Walkway, up and down Wellington, and having rotten fruit and other such things thrown at them by residents who don't want their rates hiked."
A long tradition in politics
When it came to the decidedly different approaches of candidates like Nisvett, Harford, Pennywize and Allimrac, political commentator Grant Duncan said the presence of satirical or outlier candidates had long been part of politics.
He said the role of the fool could be traced from the court jester in Shakespeare's King Lear to the McGillicuddy Serious Party of New Zealand's 1980s and 1990s general elections.
"They saw themselves as playing satire in a way that would hold up a mirror to society - although they were never successful in terms of actually winning any seats, they nonetheless played a valid satirical role," he said.
McGillicuddy Serious Party founder Graeme Cairns. Photo: Supplied
As for the chances of a vampire or clown winning a top seat in this year's local government election, Duncan said they were slim - but not zero.
"There's always a risk that a character who's essentially a comedian or a comic ends up in an office. The most famous example of that, really actually at the moment, is Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine, who was a comedian prior to entering politics ... famous for his role in Servant of the People, the Netflix series, where he goes on to become president, but it's a sort of slapstick comedy."
In New Zealand, he said the closest an unorthodox nominee had come to winning was when a McGillicuddy Serious Party candidate made it to second place behind Winston Peters in the 1993 Tauranga by-election.
Ultimately, everyone on the electoral roll had the right to stand, Duncan said.
"The electoral administrator is not in a position to judge who is serious and who is not, and to rule certain candidates out. Every eligible person has to be treated equally by the administrator," he said.
That meant it would be up to the voter to determine who they were going to take seriously, and who was just clowning around, he said.
"People who say 'oh, they're all clowns in politics' need occasionally to see a real clown running for office to actually really understand the distinction. And so I think in that sense, they kind of serve a serious role," he said.
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