Who's running? Neil Wyeth

I'm going to run a series of profiles on the other candidates standing for Environment Southland (Invercargill/Rakiura).
Prompted by a letter in today's Southland Times from Neil Wyeth, here's the first of the series.

Neil Wyeth

Neil was appointed as a Trustee (Community Trust of Southland) in 2000. He is Chair of the Trust's Finance Committee.

Neil is currently a company director and a commercial dispute mediator and arbitrator - he had previously been a partner in a major local firm of chartered accountants.

Neil's present community activities largely revolve around the Anglican Church for whom he is a board member of the Dunedin Diocesan Trust Board. Past interests include the Invercargill YMCA of which he is a past president and life member. Neil enjoys regular walking and golf.


Neil's letter to the editor:

Nominators not named


As a candidate for the Environment Southland elections, I was very disappointed when the names of just two of my five nominators were published.
Two of the three, whose names weren't in the paper, John Prendergast and Wayne Harpur, were people I had worked alongside, for nine years, when I was the chairman of the finance committee, of the Community Trust of Southland, and the other was Ken Connell, a prominent Invercargill businessman and long-time friend.
I wrote to the Electoral Officer and asked him why only two names were published and his reply was, "We only show the first two qualified nominators as this is all that is required under the local electoral act to have a valid nomination. This stops candidates from having potentially hundreds of nominators if they wanted to make a point."
I note that the Electoral Officer for the Invercargill City Council names all nominators and many have more than two and none have hundreds.
I also asked the Electoral Officer, for my election if, when there is no requirement to do so, the names on the ballot papers will be listed alphabetically, and he confirmed that this would happen. This is to the obvious disadvantage, when there is a big number of candidates, to those "at the end of the queue".

Neil Wyeth, candidate for Environment Southland