19 August 2025
Business Chamber: Economic talk lacking at council table
“I’ve only had one candidate reach out to me to talk about what business would like to see around the council table.”
Southland Business Chamber CEO Sheree Carey has been surprised by a lack of engagement from Invercargill mayoral candidates on what the council could do to help businesses in the city.
Carey also told The Tribune that the Business Chamber believed there had not been enough economic development discussion around the council table in the past.
She said the business sector was interested in what role the respective candidates could play in changing that, and they want to know what candidates could do to better enhance the city’s perception nationally.
“Even though we are overachieving, we are consistently represented as red neck, backward-thinking, and old school, so how would they, in a leadership role, work towards restoring the brand?
“All of that flows through to helping get new investment and getting new skilled workers.”
Carey was surprised that, to date, there had been limited contact from the various mayoral candidates wanting to better understand the business sector’s views.
“I’ve only had one candidate reach out to me to talk about what business would like to see around the council table,” Carey said.
“I am surprised, I thought more people would want to have a conversation. We represent over 650 businesses… I am surprised that there has only been one interested in what [Invercargill] needs from a business community.”
Carey declined to name the one candidate who has been in touch, preferring not to single out all the ones that have not yet organised a conversation.
“We have still got six weeks to go to the election, so people may still reach out.
“But before they started campaigning and talking about what they are planning and what their policies are going to be, I thought we might have had a few.”
Since this article was first published Alex Crackett has wrote on social media she had was the candidate who had reached out to the Chamber.
“I’ve been the only candidate who has raised the need for closer ties between Council and our business community,” Crackett wrote.
The local body election campaign has now officially ramped up with the first of the mayoral debates.
The Gore District Council enlisted the Southland Business Chamber to help put on a mayoral debate in Gore on Monday night.
The Chamber has also teamed up with the Invercargill City Council to put on a mayoral debate with the Invercargill candidates at the Ascot Park Hotel tonight [Tuesday].
Carey said the Business Chamber has gone to its members and asked what questions they wanted put to candidates.
“From a Chamber point of view, I’m interested to hear some of the responses to our members’ questions around what they can do for business, ease of doing business in the city,” Carey said.
A capacity crowd of 250 will be in attendance, with a waiting list of 70 of people also hoping to get in.
Award-winning broadcaster and fearless interviewer Duncan Garner will MC the night.
“I think everyone has been gearing up and putting their signs up, but [tonight] is the chance for everyone to hear about their views on some policies,” Carey said.
“It’s all well and good to put your name forward and put your name on a billboard, but do they actually have an understanding of central Government relationships, infrastructure reform, council spending, and things like that.
“We’ll get to see [tonight]. It will be interesting to see how informed the candidates are.”
Some of the topics that are expected to surface at the debate will be around potential council amalgamations, rate capping, infrastructure, water – amongst other things.
Mayoral candidates and council candidates will be involved in a “speed dating” session from 5.30pm to 6.30pm before the “big debate” involving the mayoral candidates starts at 7pm.
They will get two minutes for an opening statement before each candidate is drawn a random question that they will be required to answer.
They will have one minute to answer, before five minutes are allocated for other candidates to respond to the statements made.
The youth council will also put some questions to the candidates via video, and each candidate will have 30 seconds to answer those questions.
There will also be some quick-fire questions from Garner before the evening wraps up at about 8.30pm.
Source: The Southland Tribune – 18 August 2025