Four gay community members and lots of notably gay-friendly folk have been voted onto inner-city Auckland community boards and the Auckland City Council, representing the gayest areas in New Zealand. In Western Bays, broadly including the Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, and Herne Bay suburbs, standing gay Community Board members Bruce Kilmister and Leigh Kennaway have been returned in a landslide which saw the left-leaning City Vision candidates take a clean sweep. The only other openly gay candidate Michael Coote polled well but was not elected. In Eden-Albert, representing the southern suburbs of the city fringe area, lesbian Lindsey Rea and gay man Christopher Dempsey were voted in convincingly. Meanwhile, on the powerful Auckland City Council some familiar friends and foes have returned. Longtime gay rights opponent Noeline Raffills is back representing Avondale-Roskill but long-standing deputy mayor and councillor Bruce Hucker has been returned to council as has his equally gay-friendly City Vision compatriot Penny Sefuiva. But the Auckland City Council, long dominated by aggressive moral conservatives like David Hay (who has transferred his attentions to the Auckland Regional Council) and Raffills with a strong majority of their like-minded Citizens and Ratepayers Now candidates has been stood on its head... nine socially liberal City Vision and Labour candidates are heading for the council chambers as against only six C
Credit: GayNZ.com News Staff
First published: Saturday, 9th October 2004 - 12:00pm