NAME: Erica Stanford
PARTY: National
AGE: 39
MP for East Coast Bays
OCCUPATION: Former electorate agent for Murray McCully, a producer for local TV shows including Piha Rescue, and export manager.
What has surprised you about being in Parliament?
I guess the thing that has tripped me up the most is the long hours. It has quite a big effect on you, adjusting to those really long hours – sitting until 10pm. But I'm slowly getting used to it.
What issue would you like to address in a private member's bill?
I've been looking at issues around education, and also the environment. So at this point I don't want to give anything away because I'm still working on them. But certainly at this point I'm looking at access to education, things around the decile system.
Is there a politician you admire? And not one from your own party.
Not from my own party…because I was just going to say Nikki Kaye, who is someone I've been working closely with and who I've looked up to for a long time. I guess the one person who I look to outside of New Zealand politics, and who I look to when I was going through the election process, was Kamala Harris, an American Senator. Just because she has got incredible online presence, and she's a really strong woman, she is incredibly well spoken, immaculately presented. So I used a lot of what she did on social media and I tried to replicate that in mine. I don't know if I quite hit the mark, but I certainly used her as a role model.
What is your view on the euthanasia bill?
The reason I voted in support was, in part, because I wasn't expecting it to come up so quickly. We weren't supposed to be looking at this until next year. And I'm a brand new MP, I've only had five minutes in my seat. And I haven't had a chance to talk to my electorate yet. And so the fact we had to make such a quick decision last night is really unfair, in a way. Really, the only option open to a lot of us was to support this so we now have a chance to go back to our electorate and get their views before we proceed. But the select committee process is going to be robust, and it's going to allow New Zealanders to have that discussion that we need to have, I think.
Tell us about your upbringing and family? Would anything surprise us?
Probably not particularly, it was pretty bland. I'm the daughter of an immigrant, my father came here when he was a young boy, from Holland. And all my values are from my parents, but especially from my father – his attitude towards working hard and reward for achievement and personal responsibility. And I guess my mum, my commitment to my community comes from her. She did a lot of work for the community when I was young, and that really had a big impact on me. The thing that would surprise people? I played the bassoon for many years, and I was quite good at it in high school. It is a terribly dorky instrument but if I wasn't a politician I may have been a musician.
Would you like to see more te reo spoken in New Zealand?
I do. I love the language. I studied it at university. I am out of practice. But I'm teaching my kids at the moment – my young children, 10 and 5 – how to pronounce things correctly. We played Monopoly the other day and I taught my young son how to say Taupo and Tauranga, and my daughter actually voiced something for a promotional video she did recently and she had to say Hauraki Gulf. And I'm really proud teach them how to say those words correctly. Because it's just, that is the correct way of saying it. It's the way you should say it. And I think that should be taught to a certain extent in primary schools. So we respect the language. Whether or not we make it compulsory all the way through, I'm not so sure.
Is there a growing urban-rural divide in New Zealand and, if so, what has caused it?
I don't really think that there is. I think that sometimes in politics we like to try and make it appear that there is, for political gain perhaps. But I don't necessarily think there is, no.
What will you be doing to unwind this summer and where will you be?
I am going to be on the Coromandel hopefully for a couple of weeks, if I can squeeze it in. Spending time with my family, with my kids. They have had a difficult time adjusting to me being in Parliament and being away three days a week. Especially my older one. She is just about to turn 10 next week. I won't be there for her birthday. And that is upsetting for her. It is upsetting for me. It's the first one. And they are really missing me. So I'm looking forward to spending some quality time with them.
Did you have a favourite beach or other place you holidayed at when growing up?
I grew up on the Okura estuary, which is a part of the Long Bay-Okura Marine Reserve. It is a magical place. It is a protected marine reserve bordered by an original native coastal forest, the Okura Bush. It is a spectacular area. And Long Bay Beach is just around the corner. So I spent my childhood with my dad and my brother out there swimming. And we used to catch crabs and try and catch eels, I don't think we ever caught an eel, we tried to, and traipsing through the Okura Bush. Those are some pretty special places to me and it's really important to protect those for future generations.