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Sue Wells

New Zealand politician

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 13, 2025
Entity authorityQ7634331
Source-derived summary

Sue Wells (born 29 September 1965) is a media personality and former city councillor in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Wells received her education at Heaton Intermediate (1976–1977) and Christchurch Girls' High School (1978–1982). Wells is the author of a novel called Nearly Twelve and appears on The Panel, a discussion programme on Radio New Zealand. She is a presenter on Canterbury Television, as host of her program, Susan Sells. She was previously a presenter for radio station Classic Hits 98FM. On the 24 May 2007 edition of The Panel, she requested her own Wikipedia page be made to complement those of host Jim Mora and fellow panel member Clive Matthew-Wilson. The page was up before the end of the programme.

She was first elected onto the Shirley-Papanui community board in 1995. In 1998 and 2001, she was a city councillor in the Heathcote ward. After the numbers of city councillors were reduced from 24 to 12 and the number of wards reduced accordingly, she successfully stood in the Spreydon-Heathcote ward in the 2004, 2007, and 2010. Early in 2012, she called on the government to replace the Christchurch City Councillors with commissioners after they had become dysfunctional, a call that was rejected by the Minister for Local Government, Nick Smith.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Sue Wells” is new Zealand politician. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wells, Zealand and politician, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965, 1976, 1977, 1978—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-09-29. For this dossier, Wells, Zealand and politician is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “new Zealand politician” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 13, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q7634331. VIAF identifies the subject as 12244184. The Library of Congress control number is nr2002029142. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1976, 1977 and 1978.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Sue Wells”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Sue Wells primary sources, Sue Wells archive and Wells research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sue Wells”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Sue Wells” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.