How does a paramedic become New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister?

Sunday, 24 March 2024

On weekends you might find the climate change minister saving lives in the back of an ambulance. But during the week his job is to carry on work to get the country to net zero emissions. Anna Whyte explains.

He’s pulling the ropes in one of the most significant portfolios to prepare the country for, and attempt to mitigate the effects of, intense and extreme weather, sea-level rise and erosion, while answering to farmers facing drought and communities grappling with flooding. Homes, livelihoods and lives are on the line.

If that weren’t enough, from time to time you’ll catch Simon Watts on an evening paramedic shift, helping save lives.

So how did a former accountant from Cambridge, who swapped an early life on the orchard for a life wearing suits, and then a paramedic’s uniform, end up as the country’s climate change minister?

Watts entered Parliament as MP for the North Shore off the back of National’s disastrous 2020 election campaign, which gutted the party of experienced MPs after its support base was slashed. Only five newbies ended up joining the ranks. Now-Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and Watts included.

The five were placed the lowest in then-leader Judith Collins’ list, alphabetically ranked, with Watts the last of the 33 MPs. He was given the ACC and associate health portfolios.

Watts was then unranked, along with 13 other MPs under Luxon’s first National Party line-up in 2021, but got his break picking up local government from Luxon, allowing him to claw into the contentious Three Waters debate.

Watts was given the climate change portfolio early last year - becoming the minister after the October election saw Labour ousted from government. National sees the portfolio as an economically-linked one.

It’s a far cry from the boy growing up on a Cambridge apple orchard, when Watts recalls “sitting in the apple basket of my Dad’s Hydralada [an elevating platform to get to the top of trees].” Watts’ grandfather was also an orchardist.

In his maiden speech, Watts recalled selling wind-fallen apples at their farm gate to save money for a family holiday with his two brothers, Tim and Paul.

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” he jokes to the Sunday Star-Times now. “Hopefully it's given me a little bit of a health kick early on.”

Watts was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes as a toddler, later telling Parliament he had experienced “a lifetime association with a system that is blessed with passionate professionals yet plagued by broken decision-making”.

The first time he swapped the gumboots for suits, donning formal dress for his first summer internship at Inland Revenue, was in the late 90s, while he was studying accounting and management at the University of Waikato.

“Mum always said, dress to impress right? I love making sure that I look respectable.

“The suit was slightly too big for me, I think that was the style back in those days, they’re a little bit more cut now.”

After also working for Deloitte, Watts headed overseas, to Canada and Ireland, with his head turning to health while he worked in London, picking up volunteer shifts for St John Ambulance.

Watts worked at the Royal Bank of Scotland, working his way up to executive director of regulatory stress testing, before heading back to New Zealand in 2013 with wife Shannon and their two sons.

Watts then took a couple of years off work to spend with the boys and complete a degree in para-medicine. By 2016 he’d combined his two interests - he was the deputy chief financial officer at the Waitematā District Health Board.

Even now, despite the long hours in Parliament, Watts still finds time to take up paramedic shifts .

Just last week he “jumped on the truck in Manukau… it's just a different side of my life”.

For Watts, it takes him “back to the reality of what life's like in parts of the world in which I don't walk in each day”.

“You're dealing with children, you're dealing with Friday night situations with mental health, you're dealing with people in situations where they can't help themselves and they're in pretty desperate situations.”

Watts told Parliament he had been into homes with black mould, “treated children with breathing problems in overcrowded housing, self-harm due to mental health, and I've been on the roadside with colleagues as we tried to save the life of yet another person blighted by drugs and crime”.

That perspective was important to understand, particularly as a minister, he says.

“When I think about making decisions, I have a perspective of what a wide range of Kiwis would have and they may assume or perceive that I don't have that perspective, but I do.”

For him, it was the ability to make a difference for that one person who needed help.

“But you can't change the broader system,” he says. “You can't change the circumstances that led to why that person is where they are at that point.”

That realisation was a key pivot for Watts; why he moved out of finance and public health system jobs into Parliament.

“I felt, what is the role that I could do that could actually affect the change required?”

So, then, with a background in finance and health - how did he end up as minister of climate change? The portfolio had largely been occupied by outgoing Green Party coleader James Shaw, who picked it up in 2017 under the Labour-Green government and held the position for six years.

They are large shoes to fill - Shaw is considered the architect of the country’s landmark climate change legislation, the Zero Carbon Act. While Watts may not have the traditional green roots that Shaw has, and climate activists are sceptical about what progress will be made to advance the country’s climate goals under a National government, Watts says picking up the portfolio made sense to him, with his financial background.

“Climate change under the coalition government is an economic portfolio,” Watts says.

“It is highly complex, it's challenging, it has a bilateral multinational aspect to it as well. But at its core, it's about achieving a target.”

Watts says his role is about putting in place the roadmap of achieving climate change targets, which include net zero emissions of all greenhouse gases other than biogenic methane, as well as methane reductions.

It won’t be an easy task and the path has degrees of tradeoffs, he says.

“I'm having to lead with my caucus colleagues and Cabinet colleagues in a coalition agreement, around getting commitment to the actions we need to take because we do need to deliver upon those targets.

“The targets we've committed to, the gap between where we are and where we need to be, is significant.”

Watts’ first speech in Parliament ended outlining his vision about New Zealand becoming a technology and innovation centre.

“Complacency will condemn us, as will the future generations, if we don't take this opportunity to lift up this country with both hands. Fellow parliamentarians, let's make it happen.”

It’s talking about his family where Watts looks visibly at ease.

“Shannon's got a marketing director role for one of the large corporates here in New Zealand,” he says. “We've been together for a long time. We know each other very well. We make a great team.”

The challenge for Watts, who is only able to be at the family’s Auckland home about two nights a week, is to be present for Shannon and their two boys, aged 11 and 13. The family has a WhatsApp group, Watts relishes cheering on the sidelines of his son’s sports games, and having dinner as a family remains an important part of their days.

“That's easy to say but very hard to do in this role.

“But I am pretty relentlessly focused around trying to make Sundays my day where I don't have stuff on, until the prime minister calls and says, ‘I need you here,’” he jokes.

“You've got to be disciplined and I think that importance of getting that work-life balance is even more critical when you have family that are relying on you.”