Independent Together looking to rebuild after candidates quit ticket
Friday, 18 July 2025
A remaining member of embattled Wellington political group Independent Together is promising the bleeding has stopped and saying two more mystery candidates may join the ticket.
Following a week of damaging revelations about the Ray Chung-led group, Lily Brown, Dan Milward, and Andrea Compton announced they were breaking with the group and running as independents in the upcoming Wellington City Council elections.
It took what was originally a group of 13 down to six. The loss of the final two ‒ Compton and Milward ‒ meant, even if all IT candidates got elected, it would be short of half the 16 votes on council.
Paula Muollo, running in the Paekawakawa/Southern ward, said the remaining members found about about Milward and Compton’s defection about 6.30pm on Thursday.
The remaining met online at 8pm and all remained “100% committed” to the team, she said.
They are Ken Ah Kuoi, who confirmed to The Post on Friday he was “absolutely” committed, as well as Chung, Muollo, Michelle McGuire, Guy Nunns and Stuart Wong. No other candidates responded on Friday morning.
“I believe we can turn this ship around,” Muollo said.
She said there were also two potential new independent Together candidates considering throwing their hats in the ring. If confirmed, that number would take the ticket to back to potentially holding the casting vote on split council decisions, if all candidates were successful.
IT’s implosion started when one of its now-defected candidates, Lily Brown, admitted to sharing misinformation about Labour mayoral candidate Andrew Little. Then came news of a dossier of research on opposition members. This was followed by mayor Tory Whanau releasing a lewd 2023 email Chung wrote about her. She said she only recently received the email.
It resulted in a range of Parliamentarians sharply criticising Chung. These are some of the same people he would need to go to to deliver on a promise of zero rates, which seems predicated on the central government taking over council social housing.
In a statement on Friday, Independent Together talked of “experienced political agitators” at events and alleged they threatened Milward’s wife at a recent event. Milward, in his announcement, confirmed this sparked his defection from the party.
“The accompanying media coverage and the scrutiny on the team has been intense,” the statement said of the recent revelations.
“As one very experienced media commentator has already stated, he has never seen such prolonged and vicious media attacks used in the lead up to local body elections before.
“The extent of it has been unnerving on our business and community minded candidates. While the team feels the loss of both Andrea Compton and Dan Milward, we acknowledge the impact this is having on both of their families. Politics is extremely challenging for the inexperienced.”
But one of those “agitators”, Lo Aleen, said any talk of threats was “made up” ‒ as were claims previously made by IT that they were a co-ordinated group of protesters backed by Labour and Green parties.
It was them that felt threatened with chants from the crowd for security to physically eject them and yelling insults, Aleen said. Her friend had a drink intentionally spilled on her, she said.
Aleen said she and her friend had attended to ask questions about IT policies she understood the group opposed ‒ Māori wards and having Ramallah as a sister city to Wellington. She also wanted to ask about IT’s apparent opposition to new cycleways and Chung’s email about the mayor.
“The response we got from the crowd was quite abusive,” she said.