There’s less than two months until voting opens in the local body elections up and down the country, and the candidates are all starting to come out of the woodwork aren’t they?

They include ex-MPs too. I saw this morning that former National MP Maurice Williamson is going to try and get elected to the Auckland Council. Another one of his ex colleagues, Nick Smith, announced yesterday he’s going to run for mayor in Nelson.

In Invercargill, there’s a former NZ First MP running for council. In Wellington, they’ve got Aaron “do you know who I am” Gilmore trying to get elected and current Labour MP Paul Eagle wants to be the mayor of Wellington.

As far as I’m aware, so far we don’t have any former MPs trying to get elected to councils here in Canterbury, but we have had a former Labour MP as mayor of Christchurch for the past nine years.

Before becoming mayor, Lianne Dalziel had been in Parliament for 23 years. She started off as Christchurch Central MP, and then she served as a list MP before becoming Christchurch East MP. During that time she was also a Cabinet Minister.

And it was 2013 when she quit Parliament to run for mayor. And when she leaves council HQ in October, she will have served three terms. So quite a political career.

But has being a former MP necessarily made her a good mayor? And if Maurice Williamson and Nick Smith and all the other ex-MPs get elected to their local councils in October, will the fact they’ve been MPs make them any better than anyone else putting themselves forward?

I don’t think it will. In fact, I think someone having such obvious political affiliations is a hindrance when it comes to local government. And, to be honest with you, whenever I see an ex-MP trying to get involved in local body politics, I either think to myself ‘can’t you let go mate’ or wonder if they just need a job.

Because, let’s face it, being in local government is a bit more lucrative than it used to be. That’s why council meetings used to be held at night, because all the people around the table had day jobs as well.

I remember as a young reporter in Dunedin sitting through endless meetings at Mosgiel and Green Island borough councils. And they’d go well into the night.

But these days it’s all different. Here in Christchurch we pay our councillors over $100k each and they have their meetings during the day.

So, if you’re an ex-MP, you probably look at your local council and see that you can make a decent crust doing what you probably know best. Especially if you’re someone like Lianne Dalziel who, as I said just before, was in Parliament for 23 years before she became mayor.

Same too for Maurice Williamson and Nick Smith who seemed to be central government politicians forever.

But does it make them any good? I don’t think it does. For the simple reason that, when someone is an MP, their politics are so black and white that I think it’s impossible for them to be objective - even after they’ve been an MP. And once their political leanings are ingrained, I think it’s impossible for them to think any differently.

Lianne Dalziel is a case in point. As a former Labour MP, she was so anti-government because she disagreed with how the National government pretty much took over Christchurch - with the whole ECAN saga but especially after the earthquakes - and she was hell-bent on getting the Government out of Christchurch ASAP.

It started when she became mayor in 2013 and continued even after Labour was elected in 2017. Which meant that when the Government offered to take over the stadium project in 2017 and 2019, she couldn’t bring herself to do it, because she was so obsessed with this “get the Government out of Christchurch” thing.

Which backfired big time didn’t it. Because if Christchurch had accepted that offer back in 2017 or 2019, we’d have more than big holes full of water down there on Madras Street.

And what started as an anti-National thing - because she was ex-Labour - just kept going. Even after her Labour mates became government.

Once someone has been an MP, it is impossible for them to change their colours. And while that might work when you’re up at Parliament, it doesn’t work at local government level. If anything, it creates division around a council table when we actually elect and pay these people to think about the greater good - not the party manifesto.