I feel for Dunedin, especially for people on lower and fixed incomes who will now continue to suffer both of our bloated bureaucracies, interest on DCC Billion-dollar debt, compromised Council companies with another Billion-dollar debt, and a Council with re-elected activists and political party puppets pushing Palestine and planet-saving instead of good local government for Dunedin. 
Good new Councillor blood will make a positive difference, but spendthrift Mayoral direction and control by bureaucracy make real change unlikely.

The vital importance of the Mayoralty and the myth of Mayoral teams and teamwork has again been laid bare, this time with the team’s purpose of massively getting around the $50,000 Mayoral campaign spending limit to get its leader elected being especially obvious. 
The legal lack of any early campaign spending limits needs urgent Electoral Commission action, as does the complication and confusions without scrutiny of the modified STV voting system used by Dunedin and a minority of NZ Councils, which has contributed to lower voter participation. 

I also feel disappointed personally for losing the chance of leading the reversal of Dunedin’s long decline from being New Zealand’s greatest city to being its poorest, but I am happy to again have strong voter support as a Councillor to continue pushing for the hopes and dreams of many Dunedin citizens who still believe in Dunedin’s extraordinary potential. 

My heart-felt thanks to all of my campaign supporters and volunteers who worked so hard to distribute the campaign message to most Dunedin addresses and on social media, and who made our Win or Lose Party last night such a positively memorable one.
Our volunteers’ map of extensive Dunedin street campaign coverage along the smaller newsprint ads that they paid for personally, shows the commitment so many volunteers had to the range of major structural and policy changes that I have long been promoting for Dunedin.