Martin Gibson – East Coast

My family have lived peacefully on the East Coast for seven generations, and it's been about 130 years since any of us sought public office.

When the opportunity arose to stand as a candidate on the East Coast for United Future I knew it was time to stop watching from the sidelines and get involved with a centrist party that has been a trusted stable coalition partner for almost 15 years.

United Future have great common sense ideas to make New Zealand the best place in the world to live work and raise a family. They have a vision for the way New Zealand might look in 2020, and how we can achieve it, and I really loved the idea of embracing the future instead of being afraid of it.

For too long, provincial areas like the East Coast have been managed on puppet strings coming over the Wharerata Ranges with indifferent outcomes for the tax payer's hard-earned dollar. Instead of splitting the country and our communities into left and right, red and blue, or brown and white, we want to build agreement within communities about the future we want and how we might co-operate to get there.

We believe every child should have a good chance in life, regardless of their family circumstances. We also believe that our environment is something borrowed from people who are not yet born and we owe them a healthy environment, economy and society.

I'm really looking forward to building on the great work done by United Future party president Judy Turner, and getting out around the rohe and hearing ideas and concerns of our people.