Tamatha Paul’s first experience of politics was being neglected by it.
The now 26-year-old Wellington city councillor grew up in Tokoroa, South Waikato. She remembers not understanding why her parents were working 50-60 hours a week, sometimes more, just to make ends meet. “I would always wonder why there was no intervention and who was accountable for it,” she says.
In hindsight, she attributes the lack of support to a “self-interested district council” and government MPs who didn’t really care.
Paul was elected a city councillor in 2019 and though it may seem she set out to right council wrongs by working at the source, her frustration with the “slow-moving beast” that is council systems has seen her turn her sights to the national stage.
“I think you can use the city council to get good stuff done, but I have been really frustrated by the pace of change,” she says. “Parliament really dictates how fast councils can do things and how we respond to the challenges ahead of us, like catastrophic climate change.”
Her desire for urgency has led her to campaign as Green Party candidate for Wellington Central in the general election.
Despite the difficulties Paul remembers in her childhood, she stands by the beauty of Tokoroa’s diversity.
When pondering her political “firsts”, she remembers the mock election her primary school held. “I was, funnily enough, voted prime minister,” she laughs. “That’s a crack-up to look back on.” Aside from leading her little nation of fellow kids at the time, at high school she found no lessons about voting or how the political system worked. “When I first moved to Wellington, it was the 2016 local body elections. I didn’t even vote because I didn’t understand the value of it.”
Paul returns to high schools now as a city councillor and interacts with young people regularly. She’s not sure our youth voter rates will again spike in this year’s general election, for the same reason she didn’t vote when she first came to the capital. “To want to participate in a system, you have to feel and be valued by it.”
She believes many young people are very disillusioned by what’s happened over the past few years. When there’s better pay, treatment and lifestyles overseas, it’s hard to find hope here in Aotearoa. But this doesn’t stop her encouraging younger people to head to voting stations.
And for those teens wanting to see themselves where Paul is one day? “Make sure you have the stamina to say the same things over and over again until it starts to click for people.”
