Dave Letele spoke to Ryan Bridge on Herald NOW's panel about boosting local government voting rates and says it's inevitable he'll end up in either central or local government.
Retired professional sportsman and community advocate Dave Letele has confirmed his political aspirations.
Appearing on Herald NOW this morning,theformer boxer and rugby league player-turned-social activist told Ryan Bridge that’s where his career is headed.
“I think it’s inevitable, Ryan, that I will end up somewhere in [government], eitherit’s central or local,” he laughed.
“It’s inevitable, but how long [do] I last before getting in trouble?”
The community leader confirmed political parties had already indicated an interest in having him as a candidate.
“Even Chris Hipkins, when I met him last week, said ‘we’d love to have you, but you’d hate it’.”
“The thing is we’re out here in the community throwing rocks at the glasshouse, and then we break some glass but we can’t actually effect systematic change. I think we have to be at this table.”
Dave Letele is committed to his community work, but has opened up on how tough it is.
Letele told Bridge he’d considered running in previous local body elections.
“I was thinking about it, I didn’t end up [running] because I saw the way they operate.
“I sat in on one meeting and thought ‘screw this!’”
Letele said he believed the quality of candidates was discouraging people from engaging with the democratic process.
“We should care, because these things affect our everyday lives. But it’s the people that are running, what are they actually doing for us?
“I saw something about how they want to extend the term, you could give them 20 years, or 50 years, and they’ll still do nothing. I think we need to get the right people in there running that can actually activate the community.”
Earlier in the interview, the BBM Motivation founder gave a “shout out” to Education Minister Erica Stanford after the news that the Government is ditching open-plan classrooms in favour of standard designs that “prioritise flexibility”.
“Shout out to Erica Stanford for using common sense, can we just please apply this common sense across the whole Government?” Letele asked.
“I reckon she should be Prime Minister, because common sense down there in Wellington is the least sense used.”
“I spoke to someone yesterday who rang me up and just asking for advice on wanting to start something like we’re doing down in the Hawke’s Bay. I just said, ‘look, you just got to be careful what you’re wishing for, because this is not easy’.
“There’s no spikes like with political cycles or whatever. It’s all the time. Every minute, every hour, every day, every week, it’s relentless. The work just never stops. But where do you stop, and the same things that drive you are the same things that get you down.”
Letele told Bennett that he has seen kids as young as 9 years old getting patched in gangs, and that for many children, they have no idea what success or alternative life paths look like. He said that was what motivates his advocacy.
“That’s why I always get upset when people who make it out, not just sports stars, but people like me or business people who make it out, who don’t come back. We have to show these kids that it’s possible to have these nice things.
“You have to walk alongside families and accept that it’s not going to be immediate success. It’s just not going to happen, it’s generations this has taken. So it takes generations to get out of it. But it is possible”, he told Bennett.
