Written By:
- Date published:
7:48 am, January 10th, 2026 - 7 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, local government -
Tags:
Tim Shadbolt’s passing shows what it’s like when a bona fide radical activist gets into power for long enough to make a permanent difference.
Tim Shadbolt in 1971
You can see the full life in pictures at The Post.
Way back in the 1970s Tim Shadbolt was one of the activist core that declaimed against all kinds of power. That hadn’t happened in this way outside of the union movement in nearly a century. He swore in public and back then swearing in public was actually illegal. In the later 1970s he was part of a commune in Huia in western Auckland, back when the western periphery of Auckland was still a place where vagrants, criminals, dope growers and outsiders found a less regulated life. When the very idea of the city was near-synonymous with The System, and local periodicals like Mushroom magazine helped networks to form well outside the then-heavy hand of the state in housing, education, transport, bringing up children, networking, and living a properly alternative life. As a concreting contractor in the west he actually laid our driveway in the old family house in New Lynn.
Do check out Dirty Bloody Hippies to get the full context of the times of this kind of radical.
He was by no means perfect.
But this isn’t the obituary.
This is the political bit where we measure what difference his civic leadership made when all those ideals got to have to work in the hard world of governance of a city.
We can measure it on this question:
What does Invercargill have in 2024 that it didn’t have in 1993?
The Southern Institute of Technology started its fees-free policy in 2001. Thanks to a very, very friendly Minister of Tertiary Education who also happens to be the person who used to run SIT, this institution is far stronger and has a far stronger impact in the south than it ever had. Many others have failed or are failing. The Southern Institute of Technology is one of New Zealand’s largest institutions of technology, with 12,579 enrolees in 2021, contributing to a total of 4,768 Equivalent Full-Time students (EFTs), 3,989 domestic, 933 International. It is now a powerful part of the dynamism of Invercargill.
Invercargill City Council continues to own its own electricity generation and lines company in Electricity Invercargill Ltd. That is a massive income-generating asset for the Council, and enables a high degree of indirect accountability to citizens. Very few entities local or central have retained this degree of democratic control over electricity. Aucklanders would surely look on in envy while Mercury and Vector continue to screw them over.
In 2016 Mayor Shadbolt and Prime Minister John Key opened the new Invercargill Airport. Part of this was to form massive coastal and river flood defences to provide strong resilience against the kinds of floods that had run right through the terminal and airport runway in 1978 and 1984. Most importantly it upgraded its capacity for aircraft to come directly from Auckland, which helped break open the massive latent Fiordland and Stewart Island tourism markets which have never looked back.
Invercargill city centre has been completely rebuilt. Invercargill Central Ltd is a successful partnership between the Council, private developers, and the licencing trust that still operates in the Invercargill area. It was completed with far less of the disruption experienced by Auckland or Wellington in equivalent transformations, and in faster time. It’s the biggest transformation Invercargill has gone through in a century.
Invercargill has been lucky to have been buoyed by the expansion of the dairy industry, and by the retention of the Tiwai Point Aluminium Smelter with confirmation in 2024. But it has also enabled the region to branch out of this with Great South, and direct council investment into things like satellite tracking business and other initiatives.
To give a sense of its social cohesion, in the past year, housing affordability in Southland has improved by 3.5%, the public housing waitlist has dropped, double the number of building consents have been issued, and at the end of November 2025, there were no Southlanders in emergency accommodation. Their public housing is still chocka, granted, but a whole lot better than most other cities in New Zealand.
It’s also one of the last areas of New Zealand to have a licencing trust. The Invercargill Licensing Trust delivers back to the community over $225 million per year.
I haven’t got space to go into the stronger mana whenua impact especially in Bluff, the upgrades to multiple kinds of infrastructure particularly wastewater and flood defences, the cycling Velodrome, the museum upgrades, and more.
There is no reason not to have ideals and state them as a manifesto when you decide to try for public office. Granted it also helps if you have charisma and determination in spades as Tim did.
All leadership trajectories are different. Few are as long and have such clearly measurable results as that of the leadership life of Tim Shadbolt. Few started as hard-radical left and got into power.
He made a difference. The 1971 Tim Shadbolt would have been proud.
I Voted for Tim early on, but not his last couple of terms. Was time for a change, he clung on too long sadly. Would still have been better than Knobby though ….
As much as anything it has been the faith of local business people like the H.W. Richardson Group (CBD rebuild) and the Distinction Hotel Group owner Geoff Thompson to invest their own money into the city and support progress going into the future.
https://whatsoninvers.nz/new-hotel-of-distinction-in-the-south/
They also have SBS.
.I knew him like we all did if we were around in Auckland sometime in the 1970's. There are so many memories. I missed his stint as Waitemata Mayor in the 1980's because we were living up North or overseas. Tim and Invercargill always seemed to me to be a strange fit. A really conservative town, National held for years since Mark Peck and now that horrible MP/Minister Penny Simmonds. But he also stood for NZ First in 1994 ; remember the time when Winston was saying only NZ First can get rid of National? A mix in my view but should always be celebrated for the counter culture movement he motivated in Auckland with Jumping Sundays, leading to anti Vietnam and racist movements like PYM and the Anti Apartheid movement.
.I knew him like all we young rebels all did if we were around in Auckland sometime in the 1970's. There are so many memories. I lived up the street from 17 Gibraltar Crescent and walked the Ho Chi Minh trail (as Tim named it) every day across the rail to the domain and to the hospital where I worked. On morning, a few years later, we woke up to see him sitting on the end of our bed. He said "Giiiddday". I missed his stint as Waitemata Mayor in the 1980's because we were living up North or overseas but I liked the concrete trailer. Tim and Invercargill always seemed to me to be a strange fit. A really conservative town, National-held for years since Mark Peck and now that horrible MP/Minister Penny Simmonds. But he also stood for NZ First in 1994 ; remember the time when Winston was saying only NZ First can get rid of National? A mix in my view but should always be celebrated for the counter culture movement he motivated in Auckland with Jumping Sundays, Bullshit and Jellybeans and leading to anti Vietnam and anti racist movements like PYM and the Anti Apartheid movement.
Delete comment 3
I went on a protest (against the American Project Longbank) with him as a speaker.Owen Wilkes organised us , we camped down by the river and marched to the RNZAF Woodbourne base the next day.
Tim was an inspirational speaker, very funny, and entertained us for much of the evening.He had the slightly Mick Jaggerish looks popular back then
Those days were pretty sexist I seem to remember, women didn't get much of a look in except as an accessory
Tim was around at Auckland Uni when I was in the early 1970s, a couple of years older than me. One of the larger than life characters around there then. He had a big lovely German shepherd whose name I cannot remember now.
He lived in Grafton near Carlton Gore Road. I lived near Carlton Gore Road.
I came to know him quite well in the times when to have a flat with a phone cost an arm and a leg and long wait. So there was a telephone box near to both our flats.
My former husband was in the Navy and when he was on duty I used to ring him from this telephone. Then he was made a QM and so we could talk for ages as he had one of the ship's phones near him.
Tim also had someone he wanted to phone frequently at night so the first time he arrived and I was cosily ensconed in the phone wrapped in a blanket he was a bit amazed/annoyed….we came an arrangement about who was to use the phone and when.
Somehow we both were able to get our callers to ring the phone box. Most odd actually hearing the phone in phone box ring….
‘Jumping Sundays, Bullshit and Jellybeans and leading to anti Vietnam and anti racist movements like PYM and the Anti Apartheid movement.’ From Darrien. Thanks….. I remember Jumping Sundays..all those things actually. We used to march frequently up Queen Street on anti Vietnam marches. A friend used to work at the PYM bookshop.
What I had forgotten was his voice….part Fred Dagg part nice well educated person…he played the dope at times with his Fred Dagg voice and it disarmed people.