City councillor Tamatha Paul ruffling feathers as bold moves cause controversy
Thursday, 29 April 2021
Tamatha Paul is shaking things up, and she’s making no apologies for it.
Now 23, she became Wellington’s second-youngest councillor when she took office 18 months ago. She has stepped things up a notch over the past few months with some bold moves.
First, she successfully pushed for a $76 million loan for Wellington Airport’s seawall upgrade to be scrapped, citing concerns the money appeared to be earmarked for a runway extension that flew in the face of climate change efforts.
Then, she passed a notice of motion asking city council officers to look at making the central city fossil fuel-free by 2025, effectively an attempt to ban any non-electric vehicles from the area.
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Her ambitious moves have not escaped criticism, with some councillors worried her proposals bypass local government process and undo years of careful planning.
But Paul is having none of it.
“I agree that the way I’ve done it is quite urgent,” Paul said during an interview this week.
“I think a lot of that comes down to being young and not having been victim to unnecessary bureaucracy before,” she said. “People have different theories on change. I’m of the frame of mind that unless you give strong signals to other parties across the city about what your intentions are, how are you ever meant to change anything?”
A “game-changer”
Matthew Tucker, the chief executive of the Victoria University of Wellington Students’ Association (VUWSA), said Paul was a “game-changer” when she was president of the association in 2019.
“When she sees something that’s not fair, she says: ‘That’s not fair, we’re going to change that,’” he said. “She was a change-maker”.
Tucker said Paul focused on the key issues of climate change, sexual violence and mental health in her time as president, helping to establish a pilot programme for extra mental health and counselling services at the university.
“She had some very clear goals that she wanted to achieve, and she focused on those to make sure that were going to happen,” he said.
Paul said she was happy with the terms “activist” or “game-changer”, which many people have used to describe her.
But she said it was never her intention to get into politics or activism, and she fell into it when she moved from Tokoroa to Wellington to study political science and international relations at Victoria University.
“I didn’t realise how easily you can get communities organising. It really opened my eyes to all that kind of stuff,” she recalled.
Disrupting the game plan
But not everyone is as comfortable with Paul’s bold exploits as some of her supporters are.
She was elected with a mandate to produce action on climate change and provide a voice for young people, along with fellow councillor Teri O’Neill, who was even younger at 21. Paul was elected as an independent but almost always votes with the left-wing bloc on the council, often putting her at odds with Mayor Andy Foster.
Since taking her seat at the council table, Paul has shaken up the status quo.
Her move to scrap the Wellington Airport loan angered airport management, who later submitted to the council to ensure them the money would not be used for a planned runway extension.
She got into a public scrap with fellow councillor Diane Calvert in April last year, when she accused Calvert of bullying her during a council meeting.
Calvert said the pair had since developed a “good working relationship”, but she still struggled with Paul’s “activist” style.
Calvert noted that a recent independent review into the council’s governance, prompted by ongoing councillor disagreements, found the current council had a “more limited than ideal understanding of the governance, role, function and operation of local government than many local authorities”.
“I’ve been through my activist days, but I’ve learned to adapt,” said Calvert, an ally of Foster. “My view is that the council itself is a bureaucracy built on a strong sense of rules, and when you try and turn a juggernaut on the head of a pin, things really start to creak.”
Calvert pointed to the high amount of late amendments to council proposals tabled by Paul and other councillors as a problem for over-worked council staff.
“In the council there are long-term plans and priorities. It’s not to say we shouldn’t turn, but you’ve got to take people, systems, processes along with you.”
She said Paul’s notice of motion for a fossil fuel-free central city interfered with the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme, which had plans for central city streets and cycleways.
“I think it’s the way this council started off [with the mentality that] we’ve got to get this changed, so we’ll put in an amendment, but not understanding the consequences of what does this amendment mean.
“We know our staff are tired, and we keep asking them to go and do more and more work without looking at what our priorities are.”
From humble beginnings
Paul is the youngest of seven children. Her family lived in Christchurch until she was eight, then moved to Tokoroa. Her parents and her grandparents now live in Dunedin, where her father is a truck driver and her mother is an aged-care worker.
When she was growing up, she looked up to Tūhoe Māori activist Tame Iti and Niuean New Zealand activist and reggae artist Tigilau Ness. New Zealand Māori land rights lawyer and activist Pania Newton was a contemporary inspiration, she said.
Former Wellington mayor Justin Lester mentored Paul as part of the Tuia programme a few years ago, in which mayors across the country select a Māori youth to coach as a local leader.
Lester said Paul was an “outstanding candidate” who appeared ambitious, smart, and confident. “She knew what she wanted to achieve, and that is making a real difference in young people’s lives.”
Colleague Jill Day, the only other Māori councillor and someone who was also involved in the Tuia programme, said Paul had a clarity about the issues affecting young Māori from where she grew up.
Paul was acting in the best interests of the city, Day said.
“Some of those things will make people feel uncomfortable, but it’s really important that people start to identify that this is the concern and voice of young people, and this is what we need to do to get a better future.”
What next?
Paul said she would definitely run for the council again next year, but her long-term plans involved working with her iwi, Ngāti Awa and Waikato Tainui, to improve environmental and social outcomes.
She suffers from lupis and rheumatoid arthritis, but she said the illnesses do not slow her down, other than moments of fatigue. She is currently studying for a Master of Resource and Environmental Planning at Massey University.
She said the problems within the council over the past 18 months had been difficult to deal with, but were improving.
“Last year was really hard because of Covid … but I feel like this year and towards the end of last year, I really felt like I understood what my job was as a city councillor, and that, to me, is to give a voice to people who don’t feel represented by local government or may never engage in local government.”