We have four votes in our October 17 General Election - an historic occasion overshadowed by politicians’ misdemeanours and the global Covid 19 pandemic.

So Catalyst Trust has organised Your Votes – 2020, offering Queenstowners the opportunity to meet our five Southland Parliamentary candidates and to hear about both referenda on Thursday, September 3. The candidates are Jon Mitchell (Labour), Joel Rowlands (TOP), David Kennedy (Greens), Judith Terrill (One) and Joseph Mooney (National).

Candidates will have four minutes each to give their stump speech, followed by Q&A with Mountain Scene editor and Otago Daily Times bureau chief Tracey Roxburgh as MC. You are invited to submit questions - Queenstown Lakes focused - on our Eventbrite registration page. There will be opportunity for questions from the floor, though Covid and time restrictions mean these will be limited.

Dr Joe Boden, a member of the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor’s Expert Panel on Cannabis that produced the public report on cannabis, cannabis -related harm and cannabis law reform in July, will speak to the cannabis bill referendum.

Dr Boden has extensively studied cannabis use and its consequences among the Christchurch Health and Development Longitudinal Study cohort of 1265 individuals born in Christchurch in 1977.

Dr Jessica Young's PhD research explored the views of 14 terminally ill New Zealanders who would have considered choosing assisted dying, if it had been available to them.

She will share this research and discuss both New Zealand and international research on assisted dying, with reference to criteria and safeguards in the proposed End of Life Choice Act 2019.

Your Votes 2020 will be held In the Wakatipu High School hall from 6.30 to 8.45 PM on Thursday, September 3, with doors opening at 6 PM. Registration is required to ensure your seat and for contact tracing purposes. You can then also submit questions for candidates or referenda speakers. We will start sharp at 6.30 PM. Koha received at the door will be donated to Wakatipu Youth Trust.

Further information or Covid-required updates will be posted on Catalyst Trust’s website and Facebook when/if it becomes available. We will be going ahead at level one or two and will investigate online options should we be at level III.

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More About Joe Boden

Joe Boden is a Research Professor in the Department of Psychological Medicine at the University of Otago, Christchurch. He is the Director of the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS), a longitudinal study of 1265 individuals born in Christchurch in 1977, who have been studied from birth to age 40.

Joe is an experimental social psychologist and held academic positions in the US, UK, and Australia, before coming to New Zealand in 2002. He joined the CHDS team in January 2005, with research interests in the psychosocial causes and consequences of substance use, abuse, and dependence; mental health and substance use epidemiology; and the social and psychological determinants of maladaptive behaviour including aggression and violence.

In 2019 Joe was invited to join the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor’s Expert Panel on Cannabis, which was comprised of academics from a wide range of specialities. The purpose of the panel was to produce a public-facing report as a guide to research on cannabis, cannabis-related harm, and cannabis law reform.

The Panel’s report was published online on 7 July 2020. The invitation to join the panel was due to Joe’s extensive experience in studying cannabis use and its consequences among the Christchurch Health and Development Study cohort. Since 2006, Joe has been an author or co-author on 26 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters and editorials on cannabis use.

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More About Jessica Young

Jessica Young’s PhD research explored the views of 14 terminally ill New Zealanders who would consider choosing assisted dying, if it were available to them. With her research, she aimed to bring their views into the debate on assisted dying and add nuance. This has led to her involvement in a campaign (Yes For Compassion) that shares dying people’s reasons for wanting choice and aims to educate the public by providing trustworthy, evidence-based information on the End of Life Choice Act 2019 in the lead up to the referendum.

Jessica completed her PhD through the Dunedin School of Medicine, University of Otago. She holds an adjunct research fellow position in the School of Health, Victoria University of Wellington. Her research is at the intersection of sociology with medicine, death, health and illness. Jessica has published widely on assisted dying and received several awards for science communication as well as research excellence.