A couple of months ago, when we were only eight weeks out from our original election date of September 19th, I wrote a piece on who might be worth voting for in the Southland electorate. At that time, just three short months ago, National hadn’t named a successor for the true blue seat that had been vacated by Hamish Walker after he sacked himself as punishment for listening to Michelle Boag.
In that article, I opined that it wouldn’t matter who National put up as they would win the seat anyway and I nominated the handsome and talented GOAT for the seat.
Commentator Arthur perhaps said it most succinctly when he suggested that it could be a new slogan for National, Getting Our Act Together.
Well GOAT never made the cut and a few days following that post, National did indeed get their act together, by nominating Joseph Mooney as their new aspiring politico for the region. And a pretty good choice that seems to have been.
I met Joseph briefly on the day that Lockdown 2.0 started. He and a small but dedicated team were frantically racing about town trying to get his new billboards erected before the 12 noon move to Level Two, so I wasn’t able to spend much time with him, but in the months since, Joseph seems to have been pretty busy.
Joseph is a lawyer, but don’t hold that against him. He’s also a man of the land, a licenced firearms owner, a husband, and a strong family man. In fact he is such a strong family man, he let his kids keep an orphaned lamb, and anyone who has ever done that, knowing that it will be you getting up all through the night to feed the jolly thing, just to please your daughter, must be a good bloke.
What’s more, for the obligatory ‘here I am voting’ Facebook shot, he not only had his Mum along, he even had the damn lamb!
Joseph mentioned to me that one of the reasons he feels so passionately about New Zealand is due to his Grandfather, who suffered greatly in the Second World War after fighting in North Africa and Greece. Despite being a prisoner of war, having his back broken in two places and having to learn to walk again, and with shrapnel in his brain, his Grandad still managed to build a company that was eventually listed on the stock exchange.
As Joseph says, “[He’s] Quite a hero of mine for his resilience and determination never to give up“.
Joseph has been very active since his nomination and may well be up for the award for most kilometres travelled while campaigning. He is certainly getting about, whether it be helping with lambing in Gore, driving a tractor to the recent Town and Country Hui in Invercargill, announcing a new maternity hospital in Lumsden and visiting all number of local businesses, farms and enterprises etc.
One thing is for sure, Joseph is a very strong advocate for the farming sector and he is naturally getting a very positive response down South highlighting the idiocy of some of the current government’s new laws and policies around farming, such as a recent post of his in regard to their new ‘Freshwater Reforms’.
So from what I’ve seen, the Southland electorate will be in good hands come October 17th. It will remain to be seen just how much of Hamish Walker’s 14,354 vote margin will be changed, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was to even grow a little.
Looks like GOAT will have to go out to pasture for a while yet.
If you would like to see more of what he is up to, here is Joseph’s Facebook page.
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