Michael Laws will stand for New Zealand First in the Waitaki electorate in the upcoming election.
NZ First confirmed the news in a statement on Friday morning, saying the Otago Regional Councillor would be an asset to the team with his "wealth of experience, skills and leadership".
National's Miles Anderson currently holds the Waitaki seat, having won with more than 22,600 votes, far surpassing the 10,500 of Labour's 19-year-old Ethan Reille.
Laws moved to Central Otago in 2013, and has been on the Otago Regional Council since 2016, last year being elected as the leading vote-getter.
The Cromwell resident said he would love to be Minister of Broadcasting.
"I'd say Minister of Local Government, Minister of Broadcasting are two things I know about," the former Whanganui Mayor said.
"Education and tertiary education is another area that needs serious reform."
Laws is currently a host on The Platform, and he said he would not stand down from that role while campaigning, or potentially as an MP.
"I'm not a public servant... I've got no intention of according to whatever the Wellington expectations are. I'll continue to work for The Platform until Election Day and who knows, maybe even after."
He also described Prime Minister Christopher Luxon as "a technocrat at the end of the day," and "not a charismatic leader".
He started his political career as National's MP for Hawke's Bay from 1990 to 1996, after which he joined NZ First.
He resigned from Parliament that year after it was found that his Parliamentary secretary had forged a signature in the name of the non-existent "Antoinette Beck" to grant a poll contract to a company part owned by his wife.
He managed NZ First's 1996 election campaign, where the party won more than 13% of the vote, putting Winston Peters in a position to eventually choose Jim Bolger over Helen Clark.
Laws was mayor of Whanganui from 2004 to 2010, and was a councillor from 2013 to 2014 when he moved to the South Island. In 2016 he won a seat on the Otago Regional Council where he has remained since.
In Whanganui, he led a successful campaign to ban gang patches from specific areas of the district, and led efforts to stop the spelling of the town's name to include an 'h' though this was overruled by the Crown.
Laws hosted talkback radio shows from 2003 to 2013 - including when he was mayor - and on the Platform from 2022. He has hosted TV shows including Celebrity Treasury Island and Dancing with the Stars, and has written three books including Gladiator: The Norm Hewitt Story.
He has faced criticism for calling the late Tongan King Taufa'ahau Tupou IV a "bloated brown slug" in 2006, and calling Governor-General Anand Satyanand a "fat Indian" in 2010.
He was taken off air in 2011 after talking in his talkback show about wanting to shoot journalists over coverage of that year's election.
This story was first published on rnz.co.nz |  |
