The four Māori candidates running for the Papakura Local Board in 2019 are hoping to encourage more Māori to get into local government.
The candidates, all members of Papakura Labour Team 2019, are Ian Marino-Tauhinu, Gerald Peka, Jacqueline Paul and Kim Hassan.
They are hoping to encourage young Māori to get active, enrol and vote in local body elections, using the slogan #PapakuraProud.
Marino Tauhinu says, “Heading into politics alone is not a pleasant feeling, but I'm so lucky that there's four of us that are standing and supporting each other in the race.”
Paul says, “We’ve got such a high population of young Māori, specifically ... within Papakura, but currently there are no Māori sitting on the Local Board, so just being a part of that conversation and involved in those decision-making processes and being heard is really important.”
According to the the 2013 Census, the Papakura Local Board Area has 1.1 percent of New Zealand's population and around twelve thousand Māori live in the area.
“I've got a strong interest in terms of how we integrate te ao Māori through value space policies. A lot of the kupu or the language that's currently used within policies don't reflect our worldview so being able to change that, reflect that, is such a huge push that I'm looking for,” says Paul.
Voting opens on the 20th of September and closes on the 12th of October.
Correction: subtitling in the news bulletin accompanying this article erroneously stated that the four Labour candidates were the first Māori to run in Papakura. Te Ao regrets the error and has removed the subtitles.