Clyde Graf grew up in and around the Te Urewera National Park, where his father Egon was a commercial deer hunter spanning more than 30 years. This exposure to one of New Zealand's most beautiful national parks made a lasting impression and proved to be a great training ground. 

Completing secondary school by correspondence, Clyde then moved to Australia and eventually trained in ceramic tiling. Clyde returned to New Zealand in 1995.

In 1997 Clyde and his brother Steve began filming and producing hunting DVDs. By 2005 they had released 5 DVD titles, including an instructional DVD for NZ Police and NZ Mountain Safety Council.

In 2006, concerned members of the public approached the brothers, requesting a documentary be made on the use of 1080 poison in New Zealand. The result was A Shadow of Doubt (2007). This was a soft introduction to the indiscriminate use of the deadly poison 1080; it played twice on Maori Television.

However, the naive approach was largely ignored by the poison users, and later in 2007 the ERMA review into 1080 returned a decision that shocked many of the rural communities around New Zealand.

While filming in the Kahurangi National Park in 2008, Clyde and Steve filmed and photographed an endemic (found nowhere else in the world) weka feeding on a possum carcass. This incident precipitated the making of the informative, and disturbing documentary, Poisoning Paradise - Ecocide New Zealand.

To date, Poisoning Paradise has won 3 international film awards, and is in the pipeline to win more. However, due to the impact of the film, national TV stations in New Zealand have refused to broadcast it.

With his brother Steve, Clyde is now working on a 10 episode outdoors series called Wild Weekend Adventures. The show is family viewing, combining New Zealand wildlife with the great outdoors and is scheduled for broadcast on TV3, early next year.

Clyde Graf is running for UnitedFuture because he believes UnitedFuture may be able to make a difference in regard to the use of 1080 poison in New Zealand, which is a matter of urgent attention.

Top 5 Issues

1. Outdoor Recreation
   UnitedFuture believes that all New Zealanders have a birthright to enjoy our unique, diverse landscape. Our strong outdoor heritage is central to what it means to be a Kiwi.
   Our key policies to achieve this are:
   • Enshrining public access to all public resources, including game, waterways and coastline, in law.
   • Establishing a robust National Environmental Standard for all freshwater waterways.
   • Curtailing the application of 1080 poison and replacing it with new and more environmentally friendly forms of pest-control.
   • Imposing a moratorium on new hydro and irrigation schemes for rivers without existing dams and still regarded to be ‘wild’.
   • Prohibit heli-hunting, herding or hazing from helicopters except for legitimate animal management operations when numbers warrant it.
   • Make sure the Game Animal Council Bill, currently before Parliament is passed, and the Game Animal Council is established as a statutory body.
   • Work with the recreational fishing sector to establish a public consultation process regarding the future of inshore fisheries management. This will include whether a statutory management organisation 'run by fishers for fishers' should be established.
2. Asset Sales
   Kiwibank, Radio New Zealand and the water supply should be ruled out of any future asset sales programmes
   Kiwibank is in every sense now a national institution, whether you bank with it or not. And in a market full of Australian-owned banks, and an increasingly fraught and troubled globe, it is both a symbolic and practical statement of our economic sovereignty. Collectively, it is ours pure and simple. It must stay that way.
   Radio New Zealand exists in an increasingly commercial media marketplace, and it is more important than ever to have a voice that does not bend to the dollar, to ratings, to external forces. Every nation needs its own voice and we need to afford that voice our collective protection.
   Water. UnitedFuture does not intend to wait until it is on the asset sales agenda. New Zealanders would never – or should never – accept a sell-off of the supply of the water, or any of the aspects around it.
   In addition, with regard to Asset Sales, UnitedFuture will insist that:
   - The New Zealand Government retains majority control (51%)
   - Shareholding by private investors be capped at 15%
3. Flexible Superannuation
   New Zealanders should be able to take superannuation at reduced rates down to 60 or increasingly enhanced rates if they hold off until between 66 and 70, alongside making KiwiSaver compulsory.
4. Income Sharing
   UnitedFuture believes the tax system should work in the interests of those raising families and it should empower family and community self-sufficiency rather than creating dependency. Income sharing recognises that the spouse or partner who has chosen to work part-time or has opted out of the paid work force in order to raise their children is making a vital contribution to our society.
5. Caring for Elderly
   UnitedFuture has two key policies to keep older New Zealanders warmer and healthier. Both are about making New Zealand the kind of country it should be and make economic sense.
   • Subsidise the power bills of over-65s by $50 per month for the three coldest months of the year – June, July and August – so our seniors can afford to keep warm
   • A free ‘Warrant of Fitness’ annual health check for those over-65 to identify health problems and illness early

Personal Profile