Do you have any plans on how you will do that?
I think people will understand that National is a party that believes in quality and excellence in education and will invest in that,and I think in the economy, again there are some people that have a sense that we are the party that manages that better and ensures a more vibrant economy where there are jobs or roles in areas like ICT, space technology, horticulture, and manufacturing, and it’s creating an environment that will, you know, ensure that post university people can fulfil their dreams and ideals in NZ. Something I am concerned about with younger Kiwis again starting to move offshore, especially across the ditch to Australia, cause that’s where the economic opportunities might be seem to be.
Are you going to keep the three years free tertiary education policy of the Labour Party if you win the next election?
We haven’t decided that yet, but you know the students I’ve talked to are pretty sceptical about it and it is fair to say I am too. Because at over $2 billion, you’ve gotta ask yourself what other things could you do in education to raise quality, maybe at the early start when we know children’s brains are literally being knitted together and that’s a crucial time for helping them fulfil their potential. Through to university where we have seen our universities across the board not get worse but certainly slip down the international rankings, as other universities rise up. And so, investment in that is required. So there is difficult choices need to be made about what you do about that but I come back to it, students I talk to and I myself are sceptical about the benefits of the free fees, or be it I understand the need for support around allowances which we’ve seen happen.

Are you a feminist?
Yes, cause I have an amazing young daughter that I expect to be able to reach her potential every bit as much as my sons.
Would you have called yourself a feminist before you had a daughter?
I probably would have, because I am surrounded by strong women who I admire and want to see them fulfil their dreams and whether it’s my mum, my sister, my wife, close friends, my senior colleagues. You look at the top five MP’s in my party, three of them a strong effective women, Paula Bennett, Amy Adams, and Judith Collins. But I’m definitely a feminist for my daughter and for them, and because it is right.
What is the naughtiest thing you’ve ever done, in Parliament or during your younger years?
The naughtiest thing I’ve ever done won’t be told about in Salient magazine, but it hasn’t been in Parliament. Like everyone I did a few stupid things in my youth and that’s part of growing up.
Who would win Dancing With the Stars, you or David Seymour?

I’d back myself on the dancefloor.

Thoughts on veganism? Would you ever go vegan?
Look I’ve tried it before, and primarily for health benefits and so not adverse to it. The truth is it does take a lot of discipline, and at this space in my life I possibly don’t have it as I go to a lot of functions and the like, and meat and dairy slip into my diet. But I wouldn’t discount the possibility of me becoming vegan in later life.

Pro-choice or life?
I think the truth is it’s a complex one, and I’m a bit of both. I recognise the challenges as there are different views across a community. I make sure as the leader of the National party where there is broad swathe of views, everyone is entitled to theirs and to have their vote in parliament as a conscience vote. What we’ve got coming on abortion is a law commission report and I want to read that and really think about what that means in terms of, as you say, life and choice. I probably categorise much more on the pro-life side of things but that’s a bit of a cartoon view as I recognise the complexities.

Have you smoked marijuana?
No, and I appreciate that is not a cool answer and there will be plenty of people out there who feel that maybe I should have, I just never have. In fact I’ve never done any illegal drugs of any kind.
Jacinda kinda stole the “face of generational change” idea, so what are you going campaign and promote yourself as? How are you going to stand out?

I think as just someone who cares and has New Zealanders’ best interests at heart, and ultimately gotta be focused on things that aren’t always the trendy things or the cool stuff, but are things that really matter to you in terms of getting your education and having opportunities here in New Zealand, the economy, health, our environment and the like, I’m caring and focused on you as a New Zealander.
What do you want Salient readers to know about you and your party?
I think I’d just like Salient readers to challenge the stereotypes, which are Labour as sort of for the students and the cool party when it comes to this stuff, and actually we care as well. We’re a strong team focused on you now, but also your future here. I’d encourage Victoria University students to think not just about right now, but where they’re going and which party is going to deliver that future for them.

Which NZ PM is your inspiration?
Well I suppose it is John Key, because I’ve worked closely with him and I’d like his leadership style of being inclusive and thoughtful.
Who’s your favourite NZ PM who isn’t in the National party in terms of inspiration?
*lots of umming and long time spent thinking* I think I admire various bits and pieces of a number of MPs, David Lange’s wit, Helen Clarke’s strength and no nonsense approach, so I think there are things you can learn from most Prime Ministers we’ve had in New Zealand, and Labour ones as well as National.

Have you always considered yourself a good leader? Why?
No, because I don’t think leaders are born, I think they are created. I think everyone can be a good leader if they put their mind to it. My style of leadership is to listen deeply to people and try forge consensus and agreement where that can’t be done, ‘cause sometimes you’ve got to make a stand.
Have you ever considered a career as a drummer rather than in politics?
I did at university for a while, when I was at university I played a lot of gigs as a drummer. And there was a brief time there where I was tossing up music, politics, or law. Look in the end I decided to get a haircut and a real job, I don’t know if it was the right decision but that’s the way it’s gone.

VS

Bethany Paterson (22): 5 year of law degree – ecology and biology BSc; Christchurch; No political affiliations

The two candidates for the VUWSA presidency in 2019 – Beth Paterson and Tamatha Paul – have a lot in common: they’ve both been in VUWSA for two years, and they’re both passionate about helping students.
Policies aside, what really makes them tick? What will they be like as leaders, and as changemakers for Vic? Tam, as the first person in her family to go to university, says that she’s running for President because “students should only be worrying about one thing at uni – getting a degree”. She talks fast and with intent – there’s a “take no shit” aura around her.
Beth answers with her personal experience: she’s running for President because “when I came to uni, there were a load of issues I struggled with that I didn’t specifically connect to being ‘student problems’”.
There’s genuine enthusiasm behind her words when she says she wants to reconnect VUWSA with the community. “You shouldn’t need to wait until you’re on the VUWSA exec to know about it.”
As the connection between the students and the university, the President will have to front the inevitable conflict between the two. Beth assured me that she was no stranger when it came to conflict with the university: “the uni and the exec has not always seen eye to eye on the topic of sexual violence prevention, especially when we’re asking for resources. There’s always tension when students are pushing at a faster rate than the institution is willing to go, so I’ve been in some pretty tense meetings. I’ve got a good poker face, so I think I’ll handle it fine.”
Tam talked about the importance of having the two work together: “the President’s job is to frame the problem in a way to the uni why looking after the student’s wellbeing is so important, and the easiest way to do that is to hit them in the pocket. That means talking about how all these things – mental health, sexual violence, means students are dropping out, means less fees being paid.” She credits her time on the VUWSA exec (as the longest serving member out of the current executive, and staff, having been involved since the end of her first year in 2016), as having allowed her to build up a good relationship with the senior leadership team, and that she respects them as peers. “But in the end when it comes down to it – I will hard ground always have the students’ back, and I won’t be lobbied. I’m not afraid to call out bullshit.”

Both candidates are extremely well qualified, so it’s looking to be a pretty tight race. Their willingness to share their stories — Beth on sexual assault, and Tam on mental health, show the great strength behind both the policies and the person. Tam’s a powerful orator, unapologetic in her beliefs. The image of a Māori wahine, first-in-her-family-to-attend-uni at the helm of the student body, is some pretty strong symbolism, and she talks with the confidence of one that knows her worth. And judging from the very accurate and official method of counting the FB “Going” on their campaign event pages, she’s well in the lead (Currently 263 for Tam and 105 for Beth). But Beth’s style — although of the less showy sort than Tam’s — will resonate with many too. Her law school background would stand her in good stead for the nitpicky policy sides of student politics. And she’s nice. “Nice” sounds like those shitty fill-in adjectives, but the role of President requires you to form many positive relationships. Having tact, patience, and diplomacy will go a long way when change doesn’t come as fast as you hope.

SPICY HOT TAKES

What’s your opinion on the name change?
T: Personally not totally for or against name change, but I’m concerned with the amount of money that’s been spent – it could be put on better things like uh, maybe the fact that there are students literally dying? The only good thing that’s come out of it is that it’s shown how shit the uni is at consulting students.
B: Everyone I’ve talked to is against the name change, and feels pretty strongly on that. It’s more the question of whether the university has consulted properly on this, and asked what the thoughts of students are. I support the change with the Māori name, but nothing else.
If you could ask anybody for some advice on how to be a great VUWSA President, who would it be?
T: Maybe Marlon? He’s done a really good job to bringing VUWSA down to the student level. You’ve got Rory with his memes, of course, and Geoff Hayward the first and only Māori president. I’d love to ask him about identity and managing the role, and the role of Ngāi Tauira as Treaty partners.
B: I just watched Lord of the Rings last night, so I’m gonna say Samwise Gamgee – I bet he could give some real practical advice about friendship and love. A big problem in the VUWSA exec is burnout – I’d love to bring in some of Samwise’s kindness.

Three words to describe yourself?

T: Strong, steadfast, determined

B: Friendly, driven, passionate
Three words that other people would use to describe you?

T: Hmmm…. A word that’s popped up loads of times on this campaign has been Mana wahine. And I’d say strong, genuine as well.

B: Hardworking, stubborn, introspective
Which one of the seven deadly sins do you most relate to?
T: Um… oh god. Probably wrath? I dunno, a lot of the reasons I do the things I do has been connected to the way people like me having been treated. I’ve learnt to use that anger to motivate me.
B: Lust!!! Probably because I’ve been so involved with Sex in the Hub so sex positivity is on my mind right now.
What do you think is your opponent’s strongest point?
T: Beth’s very meticulous – she’s really aware on how to read and write policies, and how to be strategic. Yeah, I’m super upfront. Open book, no poker face – what you see is what you get.
B: Tam has a lot of really great qualities – but I think I admire her most for her bravery. She shared her story with the exec at the beginning of the year, and she’s really got guts.
Finally – what’s your campaign tagline, and why should people vote for you?
T: “Tam’s got your back” – I don’t care about internal bullshit. It’s about what we can do for the student community.
B: “Together let’s be big” – it’s all about going down to the community and building up. Without the people you can’t have effective campaigns or engagement and everything just falls apart.

Haz: Post-Trump.
C: Wait, did someone call us that?
H: No, I’m just being a dick. Post-New Zealand gothic! Georgette: Emo!
C: I think you forgot that we’re really bad at answering questions!
S: So, with the new album being more textured, were you aiming towards a fuller and more experimental sound, especially looking at playing with vocal samples on “Feeling Like Helium” and that sort of stuff?
H: I don’t think we had an intention necessarily in mind, it’s just kind of the product of us recording together live, where all our instruments are being recorded at the same time. I guess that’s just from playing live shows together, cause we all enjoy that and the energy that’s involved in that. So we had that as the foundation, but Charlotte really enjoys the home recording stuff, and being able to reiterate different things and go over and do lots of editing, so the live recording is kind of a fusion of those two things.
C: Yeah, the home recording becomes an obsession, like “oh, let’s do another vocal take” even though it probably doesn’t need it that much. It’s just really fun to do.

G: Maybe we’re intuitively texturally motivated.
S: Rad! So, obviously, you’re a family, you’ve been playing together for a while — was there an epiphany kind of moment where you were like “wow, we’re super magical together”, or was it just a gradual and kind of organic process?
C: Well, we all went travelling separately at the same time in 2015. I think Womb was still just me at that point, and it came to the point where like, that can only go so far. Then I feel like when we all got back, it just kind of happened. We played a show, and then we were a band! It did feel like the natural thing to happen, because I always feel quite musically shy around other people. Like I had jammed with other people and it was really cool, but it wasn’t like the sound was very different. Whereas with Hazzie and Georgette, it’s like they do just exactly what I want and I don’t even know I want it.
H: I guess it would come from like, cause Georgette used to play music for us when we were way younger, and now we all show music to each other. Although Char just listens to The Weeknd now.
C: Yeah, I listen to The Weeknd. You can definitely quote that. I would go out with him in a heartbeat.

G: We do have our own separate music tastes as well, but there’s also a lot of crossover, and I feel like what we do brings each of our unique tastes in.
S: Following on from that, I remember being out on the balcony at a show you were playing at San Fran a while ago. I’d had a few little puffs of a joint, and then ended up super inexplicably blazed and started freaking out, anxiously trying to get off this packed balcony that I thought was going to fall off the side of the building! Then I finally got inside and you guys were playing and it was like “Ahhhhhhh”, I did feel like I was enveloped in a womb of lovely tenderness and calm. I feel like that’s a reflection of your beautiful relationship and level of sub-linguistic communication with each other, it almost feels like we’re being temporarily let in on your connection with each other through the music, and it’s super tender and emotional and evocative in a way that most music isn’t. Do you feel that? Do you feel like the kinship thing gives it a whole other dimension?
C: That’s so nice!
H: I feel like that’s just what’s there, that’s what’s available, and it just works.
C: Yeah, there just wouldn’t be another way.
H: Yeah, like I find it really hard to make music with other people, especially in a live setting. I would just never be in a band with anyone else, it would be so hard.
C: It’d be so awkward, I don’t know how you would do it!

H: Maybe it’d be more professional, if you had more of a structure.
C: *Laughs* But yeah, we definitely have it where we’re communicating without saying anything when we’re making the songs, so that’s really cool. I think someone once said me and Hazzie do this thing where we rock together, in sync, so I feel like it’s this very subconscious thing because we’re so used to each other.
S: You’re all quite different on stage as opposed to in your general daily lives, Charlotte especially. Do you feel that you have to separate your music personas from your private selves?
C: I don’t feel like I have to separate it out from myself, more that it’s just a different part of myself. A lot of the music is quite sad, so it’s not something that I want to be in social situations. I think I get quite scared on stage, so it’s probably partly that as well.
G: I think maybe I feel a bit more reverent. Like, it’s a pretty great honour to be on stage. I also probably have to pay the most attention, because I’m the most novice still at my instrument, so I have to not let my guard down otherwise I’ll fuck up.
C: You do look like you approach it with a reverence, it’s quite cute.
G: I’m still really stoked to even continue to be asked to come back to play in the band, and it’s always a great honour that people want to come and watch.

H: Yeah, totally.

S: What other parts of your life influence the way you play music?
G: I feel like I approach it in a very similar way to the way I approach visual art.
C: Yeah, even in the new song, the way Georgette plays drums kind of forms a figure 8, so it’s pretty visual.
G: I like listening to other songs and maybe thinking about how to steal the drumbeat. Oh, and Charlotte’s emotional states.

C: *Laughs* do they inspire you?
G: No, they inspire you to write lyrics!
C: Oh yeah, totally. It’s quite fun that anything that happens around us could inspire a song, you know? […] And our mum! She inspires us.
S: Speaking of your mum, what kind of role does she play in your collective musical lives?
G: I just can’t get over how cool it is that we were all inside her stomach! Or her womb I mean.
C: She’s just so cool! I have this weird thing where I really need her approval for stuff. Knowing that she’s got our backs, it’s a really nice to be able to make music and know that she likes it. I would understand if she didn’t like it and we’d still make music —
G: Well, we might not. Would we still make it if she didn’t like it?
C: Maybe not! She can be harsh. I was just thinking about this time when I was drawing and she didn’t like it, and Georgette says I haven’t drawn since then!
G: And I was trying to make illustrations for a children’s book and she didn’t like it, and then I just couldn’t do it anymore.

C: We’re whipped! Whipped on our mum.

S: That’s beautiful, but also a little bit sad.

C: Yeah actually, don’t put that in, we’ll sound like freaks!

S: You’re not freaks, you just love your mum! Ok, now I’m gonna wrap it up with a hard question: if you could choose any band or artist to cover any song of yours, which band and which song would you choose?
C: I’m gonna say The Weeknd, covering our song “When The Night Breaks Up”. I feel like that song would just suit him.
G: I want Charlotte to cover “Pure Morning” by Placebo. Or Micachu to do a Womb cover, of ‘Here We Bend (To Smell the Dirt)’.
C: Ooh yeah, that’s a good one. Alexa Casino didn’t do a cover, but she did a remix of “Satellite” and it’s so cool, I wish we’d written the song like that.

H: Yeah, it’s got bells and stuff in it. So cool.

Womb are currently working on new stuff, and don’t have any live shows on the horizon. In the meantime, you can find their debut album at w–o–m–b.bandcamp.com

How does the way that students and young people engage with the climate movement today compare with other historic movements?

Obviously the climate movement has been led by young people, but of course it’s hard, because there are so many other crucial things going on right now. Every single day the most important thing that’s happening in the world is climate change. But every single day there’s something else a little more dramatic happening. So, there’s never a day when the most dramatic thing on the front page of the newspaper is likely to be climate change. This is especially true in America, where Trump is wrecking every form of civilised existence. Young people are having to be expected to take on immigration and healthcare, and we’re in the middle of this amazing Me Too movement, and so on and so forth. So, I worry sometimes that it’s hard to keep focused on the deepest, underlying problems all the time. But the good thing, too, is that the same people who care about those things are also working hard on the climate.

I was trying so hard not to ask a question about Trump, but it’s only been two minutes and he’s already been brought up.

America right now is a very odd place. Trump is a grotesque buffoon, and it’s extremely difficult to concentrate on anything else. On climate change though, he’s not that much worse than most of the other leaders of the world who aren’t doing much either.

Do you know much about New Zealand’s climate action movement?

People in New Zealand are doing such a good job. I first came here 10 years ago, and each time I’ve come back since there are more and more great movements. When I was last here, 5 years ago, I was in Dunedin, and the fight against offshore exploration was just beginning. People were thinking that they couldn’t possibly win, and that the oil industry was too powerful. And I said “no, I think you’re quite capable of doing this – people love the ocean here, and they’ll defend it”. So, it doesn’t surprise me at all to see what’s really a world-victory taking place [government’s ban on offshore oil exploration]. One wishes that one could then say: “time to rest on your laurels; no need to do anything else for a few years.” Sadly, climate change is proceeding so fast that we need other things happening too.

There are so many important areas of environmentalism that you could get involved in, so how do you find time to prioritise yourself and to prevent burn-out?

I don’t always succeed, and one of the issues is that with most problems we face, you can rest confident that eventually you’ll win. The problem with climate change is that it’s a timed test, and if we don’t win fast then we can’t ever win. And that scares me a lot. So that’s one of the things that keeps me going. And the other thing that keeps me going is this emergence of a really strong world-wide movement, especially in places where people have done nothing to cause the problem. So, if people in Bangladesh and Pakistan and the Pacific Islands can work super hard on this, then so can I.

That’s so true in terms of Indigenous peoples, too — I saw that you did some work on the Keystone Pipeline protest. It feels so inequitable how climate change affects the people who did the least to contribute to it.

Right! One of the best things that’s happened in the last 10 years is the powerful emergence of Indigenous organisers at the very forefront of all this work. And I think that’s important for many reasons, but it’s really good to have the oldest wisdom traditions on the planet meshing with the newest wisdom. You know, the messages coming out of ceremonies and sacred sites matching the ones coming out of supercomputers and satellites. That’s powerful.

How do we address some of the fundamental inequalities in the climate action movement, when it takes a significant amount of time and money to educate yourself and to make informed decisions that impact the environment?

I think the real leadership of the climate movement around the world comes mostly from people in frontline communities. If you have a lot of money and time, chances are you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution. The biggest source of carbon on the planet is rich white people – that’s just what I find. 350.org works in every country on earth except for North Korea – and maybe now we’ll get there. Almost everybody who does this work is poor, black, brown, Asian, young, because that’s what almost the whole world is composed of. So that’s the most exciting part of it all.

I’m in the middle of a report for my Environmental Studies degree, but I can’t find enough evidence to back it all up. Can you give me permission to cite you every time my lecturer points out that I haven’t referenced something?

Absolutely. And if you really have trouble, email me.

(If you’re reading this, Cliff, please give me an A)

So was human rights always something that you’ve been passionate about? Was that something you always wanted to make the focus of your career?

Yes that’s been the core focus of my career. The criminal courts are constantly applying human rights, so that’s always been the central to my career. The right to a fair trial is a fundamental human right. In New Zealand human rights are at the forefront of things like discrimination and treaty issues. Māori are so overrepresented in prisons and disenfranchised financially and can’t afford that kind of access to justice. One of the joys of my job now is working with Andrew Little and being able to have an actual vision of what the justice system is supposed to deliver. Some of the reforms we are working on are so exciting for someone who’s been at the forefront as a human rights lawyer and has actually looked into this as an expert.
Being elected as one of the only immigrant politicians in New Zealand, and obviously the first refugee MP, do you to feel a responsibility to represent those with similar backgrounds to you? Correct me if that is a bit tokenistic on my part.
I think it’s hard to avoid. My running as a candidate weirdly coincided with the Trump election and was shortly after Brexit happened. So I think it took on meaning in a global context in a way. I ended up having people reach out to me from all over the world, telling me they were amazed that New Zealand has this other way, and also from others from similar backgrounds, saying “I thought I’d never see someone like me as a politician”. I quickly realised that my fear of tokenism was very much secondary. I think it’s considered tokenistic now, but if more of us stand up so there’s lots of different faces and lots of different stories, it’s the only way to overcome tokenism. Representation does matter, so diversity matters and it ends up that identity matters. If that’s called identity politics then I’m okay with that. Just as we need more people from the Rainbow community and disabilities community to stand up. And more women as well. I’m not necessarily comfortable with the responsibility because it’s huge and different every day but I’m okay with tokenism on this one because hopefully it won’t last and more people will stand up.
Was it shocking being thrust immediately into the spotlight? Obviously you were announced as an MP after the initial election once the special votes came in.
I had actually gotten a lot of media for a new candidate, I think that was partly because of my background and my work for the UN. I think I ended up realising that media meant a platform. You could actually talk about important issues like race. Some people would ask weird questions like “How can we help other people from migrant backgrounds assimilate as well as you?” and you can be like “what do you mean?” and challenge that and it would get published. You could go “oh you mean that I’m a feminist and that I’m educated?”, well actually I get that from Iranian culture. I could bring to light that yeah it might be seen as tokenism but it’s humanising for a population. I welcomed it in the end. It’s a precious platform and people from my background don’t get it very often.
What was the thing you found most surprising about joining Parliament?
I found it far more adversarial, than the most adversarial system that you can colloquially think of, which is a criminal trial. Because in a criminal trial, yes you have the defence and prosecution, but you both understand that we are trying to establish truth, and at the end of it everyone walks away with some kind of middle ground. You accept the outcome. But in Parliament it feels like nothing is based on the debate, everything is predetermined and the debate is superfluous to our decision making process, which is terrible. It seems like you stand up and say something and it has no effect on the process. It’s certainly different from what I was used to, coming from a criminal law background.
Was there a particular shift you saw in national politics that made you want to enter yourself? Could you ever see yourself in any other party other than the Greens?
When I came back to New Zealand I became really active, and I had this kind of funny dual feeling about in New Zealand. Why have we got these ridiculous child poverty stats, why are we looking to mine the national reserves? There was also a personal feeling that I wanted to move back. I decided I need to be in one place, I didn’t want to be an expat forever, I think that’s partly an identity problem. When you are a refugee and you can’t go back, you’re almost stateless, and then I was not really connected to any one place in my adult life. I didn’t really want to get kicked round the UN system forever. I came back to Auckland, became really active with the Green party on the internal side. I wanted to be connected with the people who were engaged with the people involved with the issues I was interested in.

Do you think that the Government’s plan to double the refugee quota is enough? New Zealand is ranked 90th by the UN for refugees hosted per capita. Is the Green Party plan to increase the quota to 5000 refugees within six years still on the cards?
That’s certainly still our policy, so obviously when I meet with the Minister for Immigration that’s going to be my position. We definitely have not resolved that and Labour’s always known that’s what we want. I’m really focused on the resource side, on the family reunification because that’s an area where we actually have agreement on.

So you don’t think the level of refugees currently taken in by New Zealand is satisfying?
No we’ve never said that, so we’ve never maintained that it was. We maintain our Green Party policy on that, we definitely continue to work with our Government partners to try and lift that level where we can.
Just to finish up, Andrew Little: with or without the beard?
With definitely yup, the same goes for Jeremy Corbyn.
Denim overalls, yes or no?
Solid yes, I grew up in the nineties. I had a couple of denim overalls. I may even have some presently.

I was stoked.

At 12:25pm, I realised I had not recorded any of the interview.

There’s something especially dire about failing to press two buttons less than an inch apart. An action justifiably described as “pretty hard to screw up”.

The following is a summary of what I remember from our interview: *

Would you rather fight 100 duck-sized horses, or one horse sized duck ?

One horse sized duck.

Favourite book, movie, TV show, and album of 2017?

My favourite book is The Luminaries, which isn’t 2017 but is the best fiction I’ve read in a while. My favourite TV show is Orange is the New Black, and I have been listening to the most recent LCD Soundsystem album. I had tickets to go to the concert on Saturday, but they cancelled the show.

Who is someone, alive or dead, who has had the most influence on you/your politics?

Thich Nhat Hanh, who wrote Peace is Every Step. He outlines the importance of peace at every step of change, starting with internal peace of changemakers.

You recently announced your candidacy for the co-leadership of the Green Party. What does this role entail?

There are three main elements to the role.

1) Public: reaching into communities, building connections and support, fronting up on policies/making the case, appearing in debates.

2) Party: maintaining internal unity, facilitating internal democracy, ensuring engagement from membership, representing the party body.

3) Parliament: negotiation, maintaining working relationships, working on policy.

What is it about you that means you can fulfil those 3 elements?

I have broad, deep, successful experience at all levels of the party. I have been a party activist for 12 years, and I was on policy strategy committees for three. I have worked a variety of portfolios (simultaneously and separately), made gains on my own policy areas as well as other policy areas, and improved quality of national debate on issues (e.g. effective advocacy for medicinal marijuana while health spokesperson).

Are there certain issues you’d like to address if you become co-leader, internal or external to the party? For example, changing the male co-leadership position to “any gender”?

It’s not really the role of the leader to dictate to the party on issues like that, but I understands the co-leadership constitutional change is likely to happen at some point. I really wants to be able to regrow Green Party support going into the 2020 election starting ASAP so we can make the case for our policies and have a better position to initiate the change we need.

The Metiria/James co-leadership reflected an important dynamic in the party between the further left and centre-left groups. There might be some concern your politics are too similar to Shaw’s to reflect this dynamic, which could cause some internal dissent.

Do you think this is a fair representation of your politics in general?

Do you think this is a reasonable concern you will have to face?

I didn’t consider the left/centre-left dynamic was especially relevant to the co-leadership contest. Metiria Turei was the less radical candidate compared to Sue Bradford. Realistically, working on the consensus democracy model, it won’t actually make a huge difference what my personal politics are.

What’s your personal vision, in general terms, for Aotearoa New Zealand given you’re now part of the executive’s new “good green heart”? You’ve mentioned empowering communities, ending poverty, and real action on climate change in candidacy announcement. Anything else in particular?

It’s really important that we make the material changes needed to eliminate poverty in New Zealand and get real action on climate change. An important initial step to do this is empowering communities. Communities are important for creating change and rallying for issues, but central and regional government are responsible for the structural issues that facilitate or prevent communities growing. We need to remove these barriers (poverty, racism, sexism etc) to allow communities to assist in making the change we need. We also need to start making the case for reforms now, (e.g. comprehensive tax reform), to reduce inequality, redistribute wealth, and remove barriers.We need to be able to go into 2020 with a case to gain mandate for change which we don’t really have now. We need massive changes but have to start where we are.

Do you have any cheeky life advice for students/young people?

Do something you’re passionate about. Might sound trite but if you really seek it out, something will come along. Try get plenty of sleep and exercise. [*nervous laughter from interviewer*]

What are you looking forward to in 2018?

Having my first child will definitely be the best part of the year.

* These notes were run past Julie Anne Genter before publication because I’m probably already on her shitlist without misrepresenting her.

*

We thought we should start with what it is to represent. The OED provides numerous definitions: To present the image or appearance of; to resemble. | To constitute; to be, form, amount to. | To serve as a representative example of (a group or class); to typify, exemplify, or stand for, esp. in a specified context. |  Of a picture, an image, etc.: to portray, depict, show. | To bring clearly and distinctly before the mind or imagination; to describe, evoke, conjure; to imagine, conceptualize. What does this word mean to you, and how do you relate it to literature?

You’ve trawled through the OED, which is always a great place to start. In the popular use I suppose we’d say that representation produces a kind of life-like depiction of things. It could be verbal, pictorial, could be bodily through acting. The magic of semiotics is that we can use material of a different order (from what it is used to represent), and yet we can bring before people things.

So language, and I’ll focus in on language, might make present something which is necessarily absent e.g. hey, there’s a saber-toothed tiger over the brow of the hill, look out! That’s why we need it, that’s why we want it. The matter of necessary absence is interesting. Under what circumstances do we need to represent?

In the world of literature and the arts, the ideal is that the very process of representation is productive of something valuable. The history of the discussion of art is often a discussion about what that value is. Do we need this? Fictional narrative is a large part of what we consider literature, and since its beginning fiction has been troubled by the question of its truth status: should we promote the telling of lies, making things up? Is that a good thing? Weren’t we all taught as children that telling the truth is the thing we should aim at?

There’s a distinction being drawn between representation as communication, to bring before us something that isn’t there (but exists somewhere), and then fiction which is the deliberate crafting of something that is untrue…

The imagining (the bringing before us) of something that isn’t there, not just because it can’t be there, but because it isn’t there at all.

It seems to change the ethical responsibilities, if the thing wasn’t there in the first place?  

Certainly. We tend to operate under the assumption that there are responsibilities that come with calling something non-fiction. And to be clear, that responsibility is not the promise of absolute truth, because no one can promise the truth. It’s a promise of sincerity, that you will make every effort not to mislead, that you won’t deliberately lie or misrepresent.

New journalism (which is influential on a lot of feature writing today), to quote one of its practitioners, Tom Wolfe, was centered around the idea “that it might just be possible to write journalism that would… read like a novel.” It combines elements of fiction with the reportage of fact, where the goal is to come closer to a “truth” through devices like the representation of interiority — something unheard of in conventional reportage. By presenting itself as journalism, would you say it’s trying to circumnavigate the ethical responsibilities?

The expectations that come with something being marked as non-fiction is often talked about as a compact, a kind of tacit agreement, between the producer and the receiver. A tacit agreement that nothing will be materially falsified. But people seeking to produce true and convincing accounts quickly realise that the innovation of fictions, particularly the innovations of point of view, of attempting to inhabit consciousness as well as representing the material surface of things, seems to draw us towards the potential of a clearer, more compelling, maybe even a greater, truth.

One of the paradoxes of literature is the idea that, in its decision to free itself from those constraints of the compact of truth telling, it actually frees itself up to do something that seems more powerful and more authentic. It’s not surprising to me that practitioners of non-fiction want some of that, that they say: “now that I have the superficial facts, let me try and inhabit the experiential dimension. The person I wish to represent is dead. Let me imagine what it was like to be them — what was going on in their mind?”

A new compact is developed — nothing is substantially falsified, but a number of things are added which on the basis of evidence seem fair enough to imagine. Of course that takes us to a very murky area, and a potentially problematic one.

György Lukács says: “If literature is a particular form by means of which objective reality is reflected, then it becomes of crucial importance for it to grasp that reality as it truly is, and not merely to confine itself to reproducing whatever manifests itself immediately and on the surface.” What is the relationship of realism to what we’ve been talking about?

One argument used to justify the production of fiction is that the serious writer, the credible realist writer, will pay sufficient attention to the details of the world. Their fictional creation will be constrained by some of the material facts of the world outside. It would become incredible, would lose its plausibility, if it strays too far from what we know about the world and the way it operates.

Writers like Nadine Gordimer from South Africa, following Lukács, have pushed for an idea of fiction which has this kind of fidelity to the reality out of which it arises. And that the demands on a particular kind of fidelity grow more pressing the more politically heated and ethically challenging the specific situation.

For context, Gordimer mounted this argument in 1980s apartheid South Africa. The enemy then was clear and present. The injustices were obvious and undeniable. Racism, she says, is evil in a simple, old testament sense. There can be no justification for it. The job of fiction writers is to speak truth to power. And speaking truth to power, she insists, involves being true to the location, being open about the contours of the political situation. Under these conditions, specificity is important; you can’t reduce the detail to broad truths that universalise the situation. This is just one example; historically there are plenty of arguments about responsibilities that are attached to fiction no less than non-fiction.

In that same segment quoted above, Lukács goes on to quote Lenin: “In order to know an object thoroughly, it is essential to discover and comprehend all of its aspects, its relationships and its ‘mediations’. We shall never achieve this fully, but insistence on all-round knowledge will protect us from errors and inflexibility.”

When Lukács says it’s of “crucial importance for [literature] to grasp that reality as it truly is,” he seems to be pointing towards what you’re talking about with Gordimer and the realist insistence of speaking truth to power. The Lenin quote, however, is more interesting, in that it perhaps outlines the goal of the novel to map what is a complex and incomprehensible economic and social system for an individual.

To know in its totality…

Yeah.

The “reality as it truly is” is the sticking point. It’s an admirable aspiration. The simplistic version of how language works is that there are things in the world, and that we need a representational system for when those things can’t be present, to represent them. On this account, language simply applies a set of terms to things that already exist. But…

From a human perspective, the “fact” that the world is full of trees and rocks and the sky and sea and so on, it seems like an irrefutable truth. What problem could we possibly have with that as an understanding? The world exists independently of us experiencing it. But when we peer closely at the process of definition, we frequently arrive at grey areas. Most of our definition proceeds according to the logic of noncontradiction. In order to define, say, a tree, we are defining it against that which is not tree. But what is the status of the bark that has flaked off — it was incontrovertibly tree at one point but is decomposing and becoming soil. And what is the status of water which enters from the soil by the roots, and exits through the leaves via transpiration? Where are the limits of things?

This is sort of fairly banal first year philosophy… but what it does suggest is that the system of divisions that the system of language seems to recognise may in fact be substantiated or brought into being somewhat arbitrarily by the system of language, not the other way round.

The problem with realist representation is that it implies there’s a world you can get to?

It suggests that there’s a reality in the things in themselves which exists independently of the observer and the systems that the observer brings to codify and to communicate, to share, the subdivisions that break the world into things. Focusing on the impact of consciousness on the constitution of objects moves us from ontology to phenomenology, the philosophy of phenomena.

Where does phenomenology get really difficult? When we start bringing in human consciousness. Considering consciousness as constitutive rather than simply reflective of phenomena takes us to the heart of the area that you’re describing as the ethics of representation.

Arguing the toss about whether a chair is an adequate word for that particular object is rather arid — and readily resolved through mutual agreement; we just agree to follow certain conventions of terms and their definitions. When it comes to personal experience, the question of adequacy becomes more pressing. What counts as adequacy in the representation of personal experience (which is, after all, the primary domain of much fiction)?

In the Afterthought podcast you did with Forethought, you mention an article by Yassmin Abdel-Magied that criticised (author of We Need To Talk About Kevin) Lionel Shriver’s claims that, because fiction is “self-confessedly fake,” there ought to be no restriction on what experiences and characters that authors can imagine. Abdel-Magied writes, “It was a monologue about the right to exploit the stories of ‘others’, simply because it is useful for one’s story.” She draws a comparison between Shriver’s perspective of fiction to her wider political context: “The kind of disrespect for others infused in Lionel Shriver’s keynote is the same force that sees people vote for Pauline Hanson. It’s the reason our First Peoples are still fighting for recognition, and it’s the reason we continue to stomach offshore immigration prisons. It’s the kind of attitude that lays the foundation for prejudice, for hate, for genocide.” What do you make of this?

One response here is that it would be fine if there was a level playing field, that everyone could have their stories heard and could pitch their different representations, misrepresentations, bad efforts, good efforts. If everyone had equal opportunity to counter what they took to be misrepresentation with better representation then I suspect that the question of adequacy would not seem so pressing. But what we appear to have is an excess of stories about certain groups of people and a deficit of stories of others. People point to significant effects of these imbalances (such as the normalisation of some sorts of experiences and the marginalisation of others) and so questions of cultural access rights have become politically important.

There is no theoretical limit on the diversity of stories that can be represented, but there remains a question of who will be heard, and who determines this. This in turn influences the kind of stories that readers accept as plausible or valuable or true. When we hear a certain story, we make an assessment about its plausibility or credibility, and we like to think that we have a great antenna for the truth itself. But it may simply be that something “has the ring of truth” because it accords with other representations we’re already familiar with — it sounds like the right kind of story. “Truth” in narrative may appear through a circular, self-affirming process. The problem then: how do we open the doors of publishers, and thus the attention of readers, to a greater diversity of stories? This enters political debates as people recognise that their narratives have been suppressed along with their options.

Abdel-Magied’s response that the representational order is wide open to white males and white females, like Shriver, but not so open to anyone who is non-white, seems a little simplistic. There isn’t equal access, but the nature of publication has changed radically. Which is not to say that we’re there yet. But there are mechanisms by which people can be heard that previously weren’t possible, using self-publication through the internet and so on.

But how do we take seriously certain kinds of stories? I know that when I was teaching postcolonial literature, within the field there were those who felt that part of the mission (a term with an unfortunate history!) was a kind of affirmative action. Until we institutionalise the teaching and appreciation of unfamiliar stories (of an Igbo tribe in the pre-Christian era, say), until we start bringing them into the institution under the aegis of a department which in effect gives a work the stamp of disciplinary authority (if you’re studying something in an English department you’re invited to think of it as “serious literature”), we won’t open up some of the gateways to that appreciation of diversity.

These two things go hand in hand. On the one hand we need to open up the possibilities of representation and, in the process, that must mean freeing people up to express what they want in the way that they want to. On the other, we must be alert to history and the political situation we all inhabit, and seek to undo certain self-perpetuating loops. The case of women’s writing is instructive: for centuries, the only stories generally considered worthwhile were those with male heroes. Women’s stories — stories about and by women, or which considered the domestic sphere — were perceived as uninteresting. Of course it turned out that they could be really interesting! You just needed to undo the persistent, self-perpetuating, institutional loop that restricted ideas of value.

Do you think you can achieve a level playing field of representation under capitalism?

Bringing capitalism into it is useful, because the logic of market-led capitalism says interest is just interest. People feel it or they don’t. “We don’t set the agenda,” say the publishers, “we don’t start by saying we only want to hear white men’s stories. We look at what’s selling and then we comission more of that. If we find another narrative we think is interesting then we’ll publish it.” But there’s a catch-22, and this catch is tied up with the pleasures of familiarity.

So essentially, no, I don’t think a “market-led” approach to representation will deliver a level playing field. But this is not a conspiracy claim. Rather it recognises a flaw in the logic that assumes the market is neutral. The assumption behind market neutrality comes down to individual readers. We like to imagine that we each wield a critical intelligence that equips us for an even-handed encounter with a vast range of texts. But just as the categories we use are not empty signifiers of things that are just there, interest is not just a marker of what is interesting. Our interest is produced by the stuff we consume. We may read out of a drive for difference, variety, innovation, but we also have a desire for familiarity. These drives are held in balance, but under certain conditions we are more likely to favour one over the other.

At the institutional level things can and do change. But equally interesting to me is the changing status — associated particularly with post-structuralist theory — of the status of the reader themself. We have become more self-aware of our own role in the constitution of meaning.

Understanding that we are both constitutive of and constituted by the meaning we derive from text requires us to accept an uncomfortable truth: there is no position of truth outside of language that we seek to one day to step into, with absolute freedom to see things as they really are. Our problem is: how do we absorb ourselves into the fictional world and get something out of it, and at the same time maintain sufficient critical distance to think about the devices the narratives are using, their little rhetorical mechanisms to hook us in and make us feel committed to the outcomes for one character, and our readiness to dismiss as completely appalling and villainous another? If we’re relying on narrative as a kind of counsellor, we’re already in deep shit. One attraction of fiction is finding pattern in a life which, for many of us, is experienced as inchoate and random and chaotic. Is narrative showing us the pattern that is already there, or fulfilling a forlorn wish for meaning that is simply not part of existence? I get why that’s appealing, but is it a good thing to do? Does the appeal of those patterns simply convince us to be inattentive readers of life itself?

Perhaps they fix things as they are and make the world as it is desirable?

That’s certainly one possibility. But do self-reflexive novels disrupt that tendency? Not necessarily. One fairly well known postmodern novel, A. S. Byatt’s Possession, played very cannily on the idea that we can be self-aware but still desire the romantic outcome; we still read that novel for the happy resolution of the romance plot. There’s a recognition that we are, “homo fabulans,” narrative beings. Narratives don’t just represent our desires, they constitute our desire, they formulate it in a simple structural form.

But I still want to insist that narrative does have this utopian potential, and it’s when narrative is allowed to be most surprising, discordant, and disruptive to our sense of how it and the world ought to be that this potential is greatest. If we reduce the scope of narrative according to unduly safe, pious representational proprieties, we reduce its capacity to surprise and to change us. If we restrict writers to the way of life they’re authenticated to speak about through experience, where’s the capacity for surprise? I’m quite happy reading novels that are appalling and make use of stereotype because I can see what I’m looking at — I’m looking at the appalling use of stereotype. I can get my thinking going about what I understand stereotype to be, and why I think it persists. Those also seem to be important thoughts to me.

In an article published on the VUW website, you mentioned that urban marae and urban papakāinga are ways of creating a sense of place-identity. Can you give me some examples of what these look like?

Cities tend to be made up of two groups of people, at least in the Māori community — there’s mana whenua, who are from that place, this is their tūrangawaewae; and then there’s mātāwaka or taurahere groups, who are Māori, like me, living somewhere which is not my tribal roots. And “urban marae” is really the name assigned to the marae that mātāwaka or taurahere groups have established in the city.

So an example in Wellington would be the Ngāti Pōneke marae down in Thorndon and Tapu Te Ranga in Island Bay. Those types of marae were established when there was this urban migration to the city post World War Two and Māori whānau were looking for ways in which they could carry out their tikanga, or cultural practice. I think it really centered around things like tangi, or funeral, needing spaces that could hold people, that could be a place where people could carry out tangihanga tikanga. But they’re used for all sorts of things — hui of different kinds, kapa haka practice, parties, weddings.

[…] Papakāinga is a more established idea of a traditional Māori settlement, and urban papakāinga had [come to be] seen by government and Māori communities themselves as potentially a response to housing needs. You see around Greta Point, Te Āti Awa have recently developed a modern, medium density papakāinga there.

Moving on to IDC — can you give us a bit of background of how that project/movement began and how you came to be involved in it?

So it really began over a glass of wine with my colleague, Amanda Thomas, who’s a Pākehā lecturer in geography and environmental studies, and her work aims to be decolonising in the way that she does it, and in terms of the outcomes. And we struck up a discussion, thinking: how do we make cities a reflection of the indigenous people that have always lived there? I think it goes back to another idea that often indigeneity is understood to be a rural construct. So people understand Māoriness to be a rural thing, in general not entirely, and cities are not really understood to be indigenous places. But they are, and they always have been and they always will be. We just don’t celebrate that enough. So we were thinking, how do you change the urban realm to be an indigenous urban realm?

What you need is some kind of decolonisation process. [So we thought] okay so how do you do that? And it really was an experiment to open up this public competition where we say, here’s a site — public, give us your ideas: what does decolonisation mean, and secondly, what does it look like in relation to place? Often decolonisation is talked about in relation to other things, social things, like poverty or incarceration rates. But we were particularly interested in place — what is the tangible outcome for our cities?

There’s lots of us in the team now [including] Derek Kawiti, Morton Gjerde, Ocean Mercier, Mike Ross, and of course we’ve collaborated with Ngāti Toa — Bianca Elkington and Jennie Smeaton.

To go on to the symposium that IDC had, how did that go, from your perspective?

I think it was great! We had a great lineup of speakers, all from very different backgrounds — artists, [a] lawyer, Ngāti Toa, we had planners, architects. We had an Aboriginal architect come in and talk about his work. It was a really great mix of people just thinking about what does this look like for our cities. More generally, but also particularly for Porirua.

On the topic of decolonisation, what are important aspects around that very big and loaded word that you think should be addressed before we can even think what it would look like in our cities?

I think that’s a really good question and it’s a really tricky question to answer. I think one of the key things we found, [as] Moana Jackson said, how do you have these conversations if people don’t really understand what colonisation is or what the impact of colonisation is?

Because it was a public competition, it was very hard to sit everyone down who wanted to be involved and say, look this is what colonisation is, if you didn’t already know. So we did try, in the background information that we provided people, to give them a sense of that. Quite a tricky job.[…] So that is something we will try and improve in the future if we were doing something similar. To have a discussion of decolonisation, you have to understand what colonisation is and what the impact of that is on Māori.

There needs to be an understanding of social justice, a broad understanding of what that means and why that is important for [de]colonisation. I think there is a need to recognise the role of mana whenua in our society, our cities, our places, and recognise the mana they have over than whenua in that particular area. I think those are the keys things that need to be addressed before you can move on to thinking about decolonisation.

In the article on the VUW website you mention globalisation in cities around the world and how they are starting to look the same, that there’s this call for a focus to develop unique places and unique place-identity, [and that] Māori identities are unique to New Zealand and something we should embrace. I took that word globalisation, and I was thinking about it for ages. In the broader sense of the moving across borders of ideas, people, and constructions, how do you see immigration and refugees as part of this globalisation, in relation to this larger movement of decolonisation?

It’s a great question and it’s a question that we need to explore in a bit more detail actually. I think yes, immigration and refugees are a part of the globalisation movement in some ways. New Zealand has long been part of a globalisation of movement of people. I think there needs to be a discussion and I think that actually [from mine and my colleagues’ experiences] refugees, in particular, are often pretty open and empathetic to this idea of decolonisation because they’ve either been indigenous people in their own lands and they’ve been persecuted because of it, or they’ve been minorities in their own land and been persecuted because of it. So I think that discussion is almost an easy one to have with refugees and new migrants because they’re kind of coming from a clean slate. […] I think we need to think through it a bit more.

One of the interesting experiences I had doing this project was [when] we were working with some young people in Porirua and we were talking about what decolonisation is. I was in a group with four young men — one from Malaysia, one from China (both quite recent migrants), a young man whose family was from Samoa, and another man whose family was from Vietnam. I was saying to them, what does decolonisation mean to you? And they were a bit baffled to start with, because they hadn’t had to think about it so much in relation to their lives.

Often we talk of this as being a Pākeha–Māori thing but actually, there’s more people involved in this conversation than Pākeha and Māori, but often that conversation doesn’t move past that dichotomy or binary.

How do you deal with or think through this tension of indigeneity and colonisation, and thinking of “urban” itself as a colonising or modern movement? With working within institutions that don’t stem from indigenous structures, to what extent can you indigenise that?

I think it’s very tricky, but I think it’s possible. I think there’s a danger of thinking of indigeneity as being an old thing, something in history. But actually, what we’re really interested in is contemporary indigeneity and future indigeneity and what all that means. I was at a symposium yesterday where people had done a 3-D scan of the marae over the road and I was thinking wow, that’s really forward-looking, to take marae and think about them as learning spaces [and] digitise them so that the learning can be broader than just those who are able to physically access that marae. I think it’s possible, it just has to be done in quite creative and interesting ways. But I do think it’s difficult working within institutions that don’t stem from indigenous structures and values.

Within that, what are some challenges that you’ve seen for Māori who have little connection to rural papakāinga, or rural marae, if they’ve grown up in urban settings?

There are lots of challenges and I experienced them myself, growing up away from our marae. I think a sense of belonging is often really a thing that people get worried about or concerned about, because it relates to identity. Who am I ? Am I Māori? Am I not Māori? What does it mean to be Māori? What does it mean to be Pākeha? And most of us are a mix of a whole range of different things, so that identity and belonging issue is a big deal.

[Other questions are]: Where do we belong? Where is our place? Where is our tūrangawaewae? Is it where we grew up? Is it our marae? Those kinds of things are really tricky.

And I think the third thing is about how do we reconnect? […]  Lots of young Māori and students that I’ve had want to reconnect and I think the university has a real role in encouraging that. How do we as lecturers and teachers encourage that reconnection for our students, so that they’re not having to rely on their own steam, [and] we’re helping to facilitate some of those connections.

To run with that sense of finding those connections, what are some examples that stood to you, perhaps even your own, of asserting that belonging and finding that sense of identity following that sense of removal?

The obvious one, and there’s a lovely book written on it called The Silent Migration, is the Ngāti Pōneke group [post World War Two]. So they banded together and had kapa haka groups […] and they’ve got a marae down in Thorndon, which I’ve already talked about, they’ve established a sense of belonging in Wellington.

Another example which is more contemporary is from my own whānau where my aunt recently passed away, and she was from Ruatoria up the east coast which is where she’d grown up and been most of her life, but her children were in Palmerston North. She, and her husband, wanted to have the tangi in Palmerston to be with her family. So there was lots of negotiation about turning this three bedroom house into a marae essentially.

My cousins got army tents, and gas cookers, tarpaulins, and set the deck up as a wharekai, and tables, and we had a hangi cooker that you can get from the Warehouse. So a real kind of contemporary adaptation of a three bedroom house in the suburb to create a marae. And I thought wow, this is a really amazing transformation. This is such a great assertion of this whanau, [saying] this is their place, their home, and that’s where she wanted to be.

That’s beautiful, going back to the creative ways of thinking about place and belonging. To go on from the article [on the VUW website], you’ve mentioned that this not just a Māori-Pākeha conversation. Everyone needs to be involved.  One of our writers who wrote about the IDC Symposium also wrote about this. He was struggling as a Pākeha writer and attendee of the symposium, thinking, where do I come into this?  How much do I listen? Where does my voice come in? Could you give us an example of what this discussion has looked like, could look like, in a way that’s fair and balanced, and being respectful to Māori as tangata whenua, and as voices that haven’t been a part of largely mainstream or governmental conversations of this? How do you negotiate these voices?

I think Māori or mana whenua have to be in charge of those conversations, because they’ve been most impacted by colonisation. So I do think that still stands true. But I think that Pākeha need to be involved. And to be involved respectfully is kind of just common sense. It’s about making sure you read the situation. Are you understanding what’s going on? Have you prepared and do you know the background to some of these situations? Have you built the relationships with mana whenua to be able to be at the table?

The competition that we held was quite unique in that it did blow open the door for anyone to be involved. I think that’s really important because lots of people said to us, “oh, I’ve never thought about this before.” In fact, one of the winners at the prizegiving [at the IDC Symposium], said “can I please say something?” And he stood up and said, “I’ve grown up in a town where there were no marae, and I’d never thought about it. Never had any Māori around me and I’ve never had to think about these issues and this is the first time, and I’m really grateful for the opportunity of being part of the conversation.”

So, that felt good, but I also think that also needs to tempered with making sure mana whenua are in charge because you don’t want a situation where, again, their mana is stood on by people, well meaning people, who are wanting to get this conversation going, but who haven’t understood the nuances of that history of that place or the relationships.

That reminds me of how our writer opened up his article saying how he had just wanted to pop in later in the day and posted on Facebook about this, and they said if you haven’t been powhiri’d onto Takapūwāhia Marae, you have to be there for the 10.00am powhiri. And for him, that was when he realised that how he understood the whole setting needed to change before he could even be an effective participant in it. And I thought that was really cool how he admitted these parts of his experience.

Yeah, it was a great article!

What are other sites/groups/projects that you’ve seen have an active involvement in thinking about decolonising our urban spaces, in a public or more local scale?

I think there are few projects going on. I don’t think they’ve constructed them as “decolonisation projects” but I think effectively that’s what they are.

Ngā Aho Tikanga Māori Co-Design Network have developed, a few years ago now, a set of principles called the Te Aranga Principles, which are essentially to guide urban design thinking in New Zealand. Some of them are process-driven, how you do the design, and some of them are higher level ideas or concepts, that allow people to draw down and think about what that means for the built environment. So that’s been a really interesting project. So that is now part of Auckland Design Manual. They’ve now got a Māori design lead in the design team at Auckland City Council so quite a big project going on there.

The Christchurch rebuild has been a really interesting time for Christchurch to rethink their place-identity. As most people would know, Christchurch was know as a “garden city”, that was its identity pre-earthquake, and to some extent still is, and very much modelled on an English city. Despite it being a completely destructive and horrendous set of events, [the earthquakes] has given Christchurch a chance to rethink that.

And what has happened has been a really interesting process, whereby Ngāi Tahu have set up a group called Matapopore and their role, [as] mandated by Ngāi Tahu, is to feed into all of these new design proposals for new buildings and spaces the Ngāi Tahu identity. I’m simplifying, but that’s basically what happens. […] The Tākaro ā Poi Margaret Mahy Family Playground, in the centre of Christchurch, is this lovely demonstration of Ngāi Tahu identity woven into this contemporary park.

They have a set of urban design guidelines as well, that are a set of narratives. They’re stories about different parts of Christchurch that designers have to take into account when they’re designing for that area or context.

Narratives as the form of guidelines are a really cool way of looking at it. Like, here’s the context, now design from that point…

It’s pretty innovative actually. Often guidelines are very much just concepts, as opposed to narratives. So yeah, it’s a really cool idea.

Who do you think still needs to get involved, in this conversation, in this larger movement?

Pākehā middle New Zealand. So we will never, well, not easily, get involved people who are racist. But I think there’s a group of people who are middle New Zealanders who are educated in certain things and they’ve just never had to think of these things or never had the opportunity to think about these things, and they often [think] this is not to do with me, this is not my area of interest, I have nothing to do with this. It’s those people who I think are important to bring into the conversation […]. They’re educated and they’re open to ideas but they hadn’t had the opportunity to talk about this kinda stuff before. […] I think one of the things opening up the competition to everyone did was allow people to think, okay, even as a Pākehā New Zealander, I’m allowed to be part of this conversation. I think that was a useful thing.

And now our final question, always the most challenging — what is your favourite colour?

I think I like green… almost an aqua green…

Almost-blue green?

Yeah, that gives me two colours perhaps!

As a new candidate, could you give me a run-through of your background before the decision to stand for the Opportunities Party in the Mt Albert by-election earlier this year and as candidate in Wellington Central?

I’ve been pretty lucky. I grew up in a middle class household, with two teachers as parents, and they raised me to be curious and interested in society. Neither of them were economics teachers but I naturally gravitated to that subject. I tried a few different degrees at university but kept changing and went and did some travel for a couple of years. I went to a developing country, Egypt actually, and that’s where I was like wow: we worry about the environment, society, equality, and stuff like that, but these people are just worried about getting food to feed their kids for today. So that’s when I realised economics was what I’m really interested in. I came back, finished an economics degree. Worked in Treasury for four years, worked overseas in different governments and consultancies and NGOs for a few years.

I came back and got a job with Gareth at the Morgan Foundation, his charity. I’ve been running that for the past few years. We were really looking at how to solve the issues that face New Zealand and I, like Gareth, got sick of offering this advice but no one taking it up — all the politicians saying it’s too hard. The solutions are pretty easy but what’s hard is having the public conversation. So we thought we should offer the public that choice and that’s what led to setting up the Opportunities Party.

The Mt Albert by-election was pretty interesting. There was this opportunity, a weird situation where Labour and the Greens were running — if the Greens hadn’t run we wouldn’t have run because it would have been a joke — and National wasn’t running, it was an opportunity to get our policies out there. I grew up in West Auckland and had an affiliation to that area. I said to Gareth, I can have a crack if you want, if you want to get us in the mix.

Politically it makes sense to get your ideas out there before the general election in a forum like that.

Yeah, I think it has helped build momentum for us. As we got closer to the general election I was looking at whether I should stand in Wellington or Auckland. We had such high quality candidates come forward in Auckland, particularly in Mt Albert, so it made sense for me to stand here — which is where I live, which is nice.

Could you describe what the Morgan Foundation does, and what its kaupapa is?

It’s really all about generating ideas that will improve the wellbeing of New Zealanders. Generally we talk about economic growth as a society but we as economists don’t actually use that as a metric, we use a much broader metric of wellbeing. What ideas could make all New Zealanders better off was really our kaupapa.

Do you think it would be fair to call the Opportunities Party the political force to push the ideas?

Yes. At the Morgan Foundation we were coming up with these ideas and the politicians would go, “the public would never vote for that.” And we said, well okay, let’s test that.

In an interview, this was during the campaign for the Mt Albert by-election, with Jenée Tibshraeny for interest.co.nz you described the approach of the Opportunities Party as “radical centrism.” Could you unpack that concept?

There are two parts to coming up with policy — there are your values and there is how you achieve those values. In our view, the values of the Opportunities Party are very middle New Zealand — centrist. In that we want equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. We want everyone to have a fair go to be able to achieve their potential. New Zealanders have this thing where we want everyone to have a fair go, but beyond that it’s up to you and your hard work to get ahead. And those two different ideas are epitomised by Labour and National as their values. In our major parties you can see those two values and we agree with both of them.

The radical bit is what it would actually take to achieve those values, and, when you look around the world, a lot of the things we’re suggesting are not that radical. They’re radical for New Zealand, given the policy malaise we’ve been stuck in for the 33 years since Rogernomics. But looking around the world a lot of the things we’re talking about are just best practice from other countries. We’re radical for New Zealand and we’re centrist in our values.

A term that is thrown around a lot, by people describing the party, and members of your party as well, is that your policy is “evidence-based.” Something I’ve wondered, is do you consider evidence to be ideologically determined? Can you separate it from values and view it in vacuum, say?

No. Any scientist worth their salt (and good economists should as well — economics is a social science) will say what they are trying to achieve before they tell you the evidence. You have to have a pretty clear idea of what you’re trying to achieve, and then it’s a question of, what’s the best way to get to that outcome. In determining what you’re trying to achieve, obviously there are values wrapped up within that. You can’t have an evidence base without values.

So your key value would be equality of opportunity?

You can think of it as fair go and prosperity. So equality of opportunity kind of brings those two things together. Give everyone a good start in life and then let them succeed to the best of their abilities.

It’s a comparison that’s made a lot, but the Green Party would also say they draw from evidence, but they come from a different value set. How would you differentiate the Opportunities Party from the Green Party?

I would say our values are pretty similar, particularly around the environment we want to achieve the same things. Making sure that kids have a fair start in life, we definitely want to achieve the same things there. Let me give you a conceptual answer and then an example of that. The conceptual answer is that I’d argue they’re not always evidence-based. There is a certain amount of dogma in what they’re trying to do, don’t get me wrong, James is very good, I also have a lot of time for Julie-Anne Genter — they’re both incredibly intelligent people. The Greens have a history of being a left-wing party and they carry a lot of baggage from that. There are certain ideas that the Greens wouldn’t currently touch because they carry that dogma with them, even if the evidence says that they should be doing that.

A good example, there’s two really. The Greens are strong on the environment, just like we are, but their solutions tend to be focused on regulation because they don’t like using market mechanisms (carrot and stick incentives) and that’s just from their history as a left-wing party — they don’t trust them. Whereas the evidence is very clear, from the OECD and others, that you need both. You need regulation and market mechanisms, because regulation takes out the worst offenders and the market mechanisms provide the carrots to get everyone improving.

Another example is around their tax reform. The Greens are a big fans of a capital gains tax excluding the family home, and I understand the politics around this. What we’re proposing is an annual tax on all assets and the idea of paying a tax on your family home is an anathema to New Zealanders; some people get very upset at even the concept. But these things are quite common overseas. South Korea, various countries in Europe, have a tax very similar to what we’re proposing. So the Greens wouldn’t want to propose that, as it is political dynamite, but actually there’s no evidence that a capital gains tax excluding the family home will achieve anything. There are plenty of other countries around the world that have rampant housing markets and have a capital gains tax excluding the family home — Australia, the US, the UK. On that particular issue it’s somewhat of a tokenistic response as they think it’s all the electorate can handle — it’s that political expediency thing.

It may well be that we don’t get elected because our ideas are too unpalatable to people, so I can understand where the Greens are coming from on that. The famous line, I forget who said it, is that knowing what to do is pretty easy, the hard part is getting re-elected once you’ve done what you know you should do.

The Opportunities Party has been self-labelled as anti-establishment by Gareth Morgan. In a previous interview we had with him, he suggested that “the main thing with establishment parties [in this category he included National, Labour, NZ First, and the Greens to an extent] is that they are filled with career politicians. So the priority for those people is keeping their job. So that drives them to (it’s how trustees act actually) do as little as possible because we don’t want to disturb the voters.” Say the Opportunities Party did gain 5% of the vote, or did win an electorate, and entered parliament, would you be sticking around as a candidate for the election in 2020?

Our kaupapa is that once our policies are implemented there’s no need for us anymore. Realistically, we’re not going to get even a fraction of what we are proposing implemented in one term of government — there will still be a need for the Opportunities Party in 2020.

Gareth is trying to make something that can continue on; he doesn’t want to be involved forever. After this election we have to create a constitution, work out how we involve our members in developing policies, work out how to select candidates, work out how to select a leader — all that cool stuff. That’s going to take the time between now and 2020 to develop; we didn’t have time to do that before this election. So there are a whole lot of caveats there as to whether I’d even be welcome to be involved in the party, you can’t choose these things. I’m passionate about policy, I’m passionate about making a difference to New Zealand, and if I can help then I will. If I end up a bit like Andrew Little where I’m hindering more than helping, I’ll gladly step aside.

In a hypothetical world, say all of the Opportunities Party’s policies were implemented — the country would still have to be governed if we continue to have a parliamentary democracy. Would the Opportunities Party take on the role of governance? Plus there are always new issues that will require policy provisions.

I think there is always a role for a cutting edge party, and I think that’s why Gareth said the Greens to a certain extent, because between 10–20 years ago that’s the role they were playing. Whereas in more recent years they’ve been playing it more safe, as they became a bigger, more mainstream party. I think there is always that role within a parliamentary system; whether or not we’re the best to play that role is a big question.

The establishment parties are very good at dealing with and managing things on a day to day basis, but they’re terrible at looking long term and seeing what issues are coming and adapting for them. Our fourth policy “Democracy Reset” is trying to get government (with a small g, not National or Labour, as those politicians are never going to look long term) institutions right. If you make sure there are people within government that are thinking long term, whether that’s an upper house, or a parliamentary commission, whatever. Some of the things we see overseas, some of these institutions, have built into the system people thinking long-term, saying, hey, have you noticed this iceberg we’re heading straight toward? I think that if you can build on the institutional frameworks to do that then perhaps we don’t need a political party.

What is the fundamental change of the “Democracy Reset” policy?

There are four aspects to it. First, a constitution, which embeds our rights, the rights of the environment, the Treaty, and honours it. The second part is a constitutional authority, that’s what I was talking about before, having a body within government that is making sure that constitution is upheld and is looking forward to what’s coming. The third part is making sure the public service is open and transparent, so that people are fully informed. The fourth part is making sure that people are fully informed by civics education and having public interest media.

In an interview with Wallace Chapman for RNZ you were asked about what you would say to Roger Douglas, and said “he did a lot of good stuff in those six years as well as some of the negative stuff.” You said the biggest problem was that while “he simplified our tax system… the big thing that he left out was housing and land.” You suggested they were loopholes that were driving rising inequality. Could you explain what you meant?

Some assets get taxed more than others. If you put your money in the bank then you get interest on the money and you pay tax on it, and that’s all done automatically. Once you’ve got that interest and paid that tax you can use that money for paying your rent, whatever. Whereas if you take the same amount of money and buy a house you’re basically paying rent to yourself and you don’t have to pay any tax. That’s the big loophole known by economists as “imputed rental”. It’s driving capital gains which, again, are untaxed — another loophole.

Businesses can use these loopholes to minimise their tax bill as well. It’s not just individuals that are doing this, it’s businesses too, and that’s where you’re talking serious money.

How does that work exactly?

They have massive assets that they’re getting a return on, but they are able to arrange their affairs that they can shift their money where there is very little taxation.

Like here, in New Zealand?

For physical assets. The big loophole within New Zealand is physical assets and that’s why a lot of rich people want to buy land here, because it’s not taxed. Coca-Cola Amatil is perhaps the easiest example to understand. They manufacture Coca-Cola in New Zealand and sell it around the country and make money. But they’ve got to buy the “secret Coca-Cola formula” from Coca-Cola based in Bermuda, in a tax haven. So they’re buying the “secret formula” from Coca-Cola in a tax haven, and it just so happens it’s really expensive for them to buy. You’re minimising your profit here and you’re shifting it overseas to where it’s not taxed.

A similar idea applies that if we can tax assets, because intellectual property (IP) is an asset, then it becomes a lot harder for Facebook, Google, Uber, and Coca-Cola, etc. to avoid tax in New Zealand.

It’s Opportunity Party policy. All assets have to pay as much tax as a bank deposit, is the basic way of thinking about it. Some assets are already paying that kind of tax, so no problem, they don’t pay any more. But if you’re not paying at least as much tax as you would if you had it in a bank deposit, why don’t you have the money in a bank deposit? Are you telling me that that asset is not generating any revenue, any value for you? Because it clearly is, it’s just generating non-taxable value for you.

As part of the Wellington Central campaign you’ve been in quite a few debates. Have you found that your presence, as a representative of the Opportunities Party, has shifted conversations around policy?

Yeah, I’ve privately (I won’t name names here, because I respect privacy) talked to candidates from other parties and they enjoy what the Opportunities Party is doing. It’s broadening the playing field for debate. Normally we have this really narrow debate between right and left, and actually their ideas are pretty similar. This election is a great example. Do we give the money back to you in tax cuts, or do we spend more on health and education? But it’s always these little amounts of money at the margins. No one is saying, how do we collect tax? How do we spend money on health and education? How are these systems even set up? The really big issues. We’re trying to open the debate wide open.

In the previously mentioned interview with Jenée Tibshraeny for interest.co.nz, you also said we’re in a “new phase, where left and right are disappearing, and politics all around the world is changing.” Given the recent UK election where you had a different kind of left-wing Labour emerge, I wondered if that goes against what you’re saying about the disappearance of left and right?

I’ve got a lot of friends in the UK, I lived there for a few years. A lot of my friends think that Jeremy Corbyn is “batshit crazy” but voted for Labour anyway, because they disagree with the Tories so much. This is the trouble with the old Westminster first-past-the-post system, you don’t really have the opportunity to show your true preference. You’re much better, when it’s a two horse race, to pick which of the shitty horses you’re more happy riding.

The second point I’d make is that one fact that a lot of people don’t dwell on is that not only did Jeremy Corbyn increase the Labour vote, Theresa May got the highest ever Conservative vote in recent history. What’s the driver of that? It’s polarisation — Labour moving solidly to the left motivated a lot more Conservative voters to vote than normally would. As things polarise there is a risk of extremism arising, I think we’ve seen that in the US, which I can understand because they have big problems that need solving. What we’re trying to say is, if we don’t get radical now, things are going to get extreme, and you will start to see this polarisation of society. That’s why it’s important to be more radical now to head that off at the pass, so we can keep society reasonably together.

We’ve been talking a lot about things that are away from student issues. But given we mentioned aspects of this earlier, what changes does the Opportunities Party propose to housing policy that would benefit students?

As I mentioned, we want to tax assets, and housing is included in that, which will stop the speculation we see now and will hold house prices. It won’t make housing affordable overnight, but over time it will make housing affordable.

In the meantime we have to do more to protect the rights of tenants. One thing I should point out about that tax reform [we’re proposing] is that it benefits renters. What we’re doing is taxing assets and giving it back in cuts to income tax. 80% of people will be better off, and that includes the 50% of New Zealanders who are renters — all renters would be better off under that tax change. In the meantime we have to take care of the rights of renters, so long-term tenancies, warranties of fitness on rental properties, greater investment in insulation and efficient heating — all of those things are part of our policy, which was released today, “Houses not Homes”, our tenancy reform. Those are the major housing things which will benefit students.

Also important for students is transport, something you’ve been working on. In terms of Wellington Central, I wondered if you had any general thoughts about what should be done to make it fairer for students?

We do agree with the Green Party policy of a green card funded from the National Land Transport Fund. The issue with the fund at the moment is that it all goes into roads, and we think that it should be looking at projects right across public transport, and choosing the ones which have the best cost-benefit analysis. If they were to do that, then free off-peak fares for students would just make sense because it’s keeping traffic off the roads. It’s kind of impossible to promise certain projects, but if we were to run our transport in that way there would be much more invested into public transport. I personally think a green card, or off-peak fare for students, makes a lot of sense.

Just on students, our Unconditional Basic Income (UBI) is our main policy for young people. There is a third of young people who don’t go to any form of tertiary education and we want to support everyone to pursue their goals. I used this example when I talked to bFM; I think some of the best journalism in New Zealand comes out of places like you guys, and we should be supporting you to do that because I know a lot of you are volunteering. That’s the idea of giving everyone $200 a week, no questions asked, it allows you set out your own goals and work out how to pursue them. I have a lot of mates out at Weta and none of them went through formal education — they just turned up and said, can I sweep the floors and copy what Barry does. There are many paths to the top of the mountain.

We talked to Gareth about the UBI, but the youth one is different?

Yes, it’s new. It’s our alternative to Steven Joyce’s tax cut package. The idea is that we’re phasing this in over time. If we could reform the tax system in the way I set out to you before, that would enable us to roll the whole thing out a lot more quickly. Until the tax reform is done, it’d take a few years, you can’t introduce a UBI across the board. That’s why we’re starting with 18–23 year olds.

It wouldn’t take money away of student loan living costs, or student allowance, or anything like that?

The things it would be instead of are the unemployment benefit, job seeker support, and student allowance. Everyone is getting $200 a week, student allowance is less than that if you’re under 25. Even if you’re on student allowance you’d be better off as this is $200 after tax. And everyone gets it regardless of what you’re doing, whether you’re going to university or not, whether your parents earn a certain income, or have money in a trust — everyone gets the money. The student loan will remain, so of course people can borrow for tuition and living costs on top of it. It’s more generous than at the moment.

It’s how we always finish — what’s your favourite colour?

Green.