Kerrin Leoni was the first wahine Māori elected to the Auckland Council. Now she’s campaigning to become Auckland’s first Māori mayor. With local body voting opening on September 9, she sat down for a kōrero with Dale Husband.

 

I always start with names, Kerrin. Some people pronounce your name Kieran, but I know you say it slightly differently.

Yeah, it can be a little bit confusing. My mother named me Kerrin and then pronounced it Kieran. So I answer to both, and I love my name. Leoni is Italian. My grandfather on my mum’s side, Roy Leoni, is part Italian. We’ve got a really mixed history of Irish, Māori and Italian.

Have you got a middle name as well, Kerrin?

Yes, I do. Bianca Melinda. Melinda was after one of my aunties — Aunty Linda. She was my dad’s sister, and she was very close to my mum, Royda, so she named me after her. I’m not sure where Bianca came from.

Your pepeha, please, Kerrin?

On my mum’s side, we’re Ngāi Takoto and Ngāti Kuri from Awanui. My grandmother, Rita, was born and raised up there, and my great-grandfather is from Te Hāpua. He’s a De Silva Portuguese Māori from up there.

On my dad’s side, we’re Ngāti Pāoa from Waiheke Island. I did some of my high school years on Waiheke, and we had our homestead over there for many years. My grandmother on my dad’s side, Margo, was born and raised in Kaiaua.

So, we’re very mixed on our iwi side as well. Two Pākehā grandfathers and two very strong wāhine Māori grandmothers.

How many in your family? Can you describe growing up?

My older sister, Regina, is two years older than me. We were raised partially by my grandmother in Mount Roskill. We used to go and watch my uncle, Aaron Leoni, play softball on the weekend. He eventually played for the New Zealand softball team. He was the pitcher. Went over to the States for a while.

In my teenage years, I spent time living on Waiheke Island with my uncle Aaron and my paternal grandfather, Len Salmon. Len worked for the council on Waiheke for about 20 years. He did a lot of the maintenance and roading over there.

I did high school there. In my last year of high school, I went to Louisiana, where I lived with a white host family who were very racist, and then a Black host family.

Then I enrolled at AUT for my first degree in social work. Later, I did my master’s there, was lucky to get a scholarship, and then I went over to the UK.

This experience as a teenager in Louisiana — tell us how that surfaced for you and what you learned from the experience.

It was pretty confronting for me because it was the first time I’d experienced that form of racism. My host parents told me that I couldn’t go to a school disco with my Black friend from high school, and when I asked them if I could go to the mall with her, the answer was no again.

In the end, I spoke to the coordinator and said: “I think I need to move to a different house.” I could tell my values didn’t align with theirs. And I was shocked that they would still have that kind of racism in the US, but it was very much alive, and I know it still is now.

In comparison to what we go through as Māori here in New Zealand, it’s much more blatant there. But it wasn’t too long ago that we had similar things happening here in our country. I’ve heard stories of Pukekohe where one part of the cinema was for Māori, and the other part was for non-Māori. And we know that racism still exists now.

I mean, I’m standing as a wahine Māori, and I know I’m going to get a lot of negative comments. I’ve already been compared to Tory Whanau, which is ridiculous because Tory has nothing to do with Auckland and the policies that we’re wanting to push in the city, but I’m already getting that comparison.

You spent a long time in London, too, doing another master’s degree at King’s College, in economics and international politics. Interesting subjects to choose after social work. Why so?

When I was over in the UK, I was running my own consultancy in the social services sector. The UK really appreciates the hard work that social workers do over there. We’re very adaptive in terms of our skill base. Māori are very much put on a pedestal in the UK and right across Europe, because they see the haka and they see our culture from over there, and they absolutely love it.

When I did my second master’s degree over there, I wanted to look at how I could contribute to making a difference for our country and for our people, but on an international level. I’ve always had an interest in the United Nations and how that organisation can benefit policy development for our nation. I wanted to do something where I could learn more about how the UN works, and how New Zealand governments have changed their approach to the implementation of different policies from the UN.

Economics has always been a passion for me, because I went into property investment when I was around 21 years old. I bought my first home in South Auckland, and I’ve been buying and selling properties ever since. All of these things, around buying and selling assets and being part of the economy, are really important for people who’ve been in poverty.

I mean, intergenerational wealth in New Zealand is huge, and a lot of the people in property investment have had those properties handed down to them from their parents or grandparents. I’ve always wanted to understand the wider aspects of how we can break the poverty cycle in our country, what we can do to encourage entrepreneurship among Māori and Pasifika, and those who haven’t come from a strong financial background.

In London, I used to run a charity called Mana Aroha, where we would bring young Māori and Pasifika over to London and help them get into work by linking them up with New Zealand-owned businesses in the UK. We linked one young person with a haka company there, and he went from doing not much here in New Zealand to getting paid 1,000 pounds per haka workshop.

Just imagine the level of opportunity that our people have on an international basis when they have access to those connections. That’s the sort of thing that excites me about the future of our country, the future of our city, and what we can do better to put Auckland and New Zealand on the world stage.

That’s quite a different life experience to many of your peers, having spent a year in the States at 17, by 21 you’re buying a house, which most Māori don’t, and in fact, the Māori home ownership rates are hugely disappointing. That you were able to organise yourself well enough to make that a reality is a credit to you.

There’s also a boldness in your approach as well, a willingness to back yourself by running your own contracting business rather than working for others. Where do you think this business confidence comes from?

I think that I’ve just been surrounded by the right people. I’ve had friends since I was in high school who’ve always just encouraged me, and my family members as well. I’ve had strong aunties, such as my Aunty Linda, who have always said to me: “Go for what you believe in and what you want to do, and don’t let anyone ever hold you back.”

My mother used to say the same things to me, because she was brought up in the generation of being seen and not heard as a child, and she never wanted us to feel like that. She didn’t want us to feel that there was anything in our pathway to hold us back.

I had part of my upbringing with my nana, who was there for all of my graduations at university and everything else.

So I think when you know that you’ve got people behind you who are supporting you all the way — even when they’ve passed away, because you hold on to the memories and the strength and the aroha that they gave you when they were alive — it pushes you to keep going, and to ask: “Why can’t we own businesses in four different countries? Why can’t we own properties around the world?”

I’ve got a timeshare which has access to properties all around the world, and this is normal for a lot of Māori who live in Europe. And so the more we normalise going for the top jobs in this country, and the more we normalise international business development, the better it is for future generations.

Did you detect that some around the council table were unaware of your savvy history and experience and just assumed you were a young Māori who got around the table somewhat by accident?

I’m the first wahine Māori to be elected to the Super City, which I think is shocking. There should have been many more before me, and I hope that there will be a lot more coming through in the future, and I’m doing my best to encourage Māori to stand for all the general seats.

Sadly, and this is from the outside looking in, it feels that the ongoing utilisation of a voting system that’s antiquated means low turnout, and of course, as Efeso Collins found, too, when he stood, people on the ground didn’t turn out in the numbers needed. And in the end, it was the middle-aged leafy suburbs residents that effectively put the quash on his mayoralty run. How might we counteract those challenges?

That’s a massive issue, Dale. You’ve got so many Aucklanders who are well educated but ignorant about local body politics. I just spoke to a 25-year-old Pasifika wahine the other night at a night market. She’s just completed her law degree, yet she knew nothing about local government elections.

I believe we need to put political studies or something of that nature around voting into all schools, because there’s currently only a 37 percent turnout to vote in local government elections, and it’s usually people who are 60 and over and own their own homes.

There’s still this assumption that you only vote for local body elections if you’re a ratepayer. Well, actually, all Aucklanders are ratepayers, so whether you’re doing that through paying rent or paying your mortgage, you’re still a ratepayer.

And yes, we have very old-fashioned systems in our country, which don’t help voters even go out and vote, because if their address is not up to date, then they’re not going to receive their voting papers.

The other thing is, how can we encourage more media coverage? I’ve been grateful for a lot of the media that I’ve had, but it’s got to be on TV. TV has got to be pushing the fact that there’s a local government election coming up in Auckland in around six weeks, and Aucklanders don’t even know that it’s happening.

Central government has been such a focus for New Zealanders for a long time. We’ve got to be able to bring that focus back to local government as well. I always say that local government is where it’s at. When you wake up in the morning, you flush the toilet, you put your kettle on, you drive down your road — that’s all local government.

One of the things that intrigued me about your background was your decision to write a thesis on young Māori leaving foster care off the back of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into abuse of state- or faith-based care. What prompted your interest in that area?

The inspiration for me to write that thesis was because I was working for what was then Child Youth and Family. I still remember celebrating my 21st birthday in the Child Youth and Family office in Õtāhuhu, where I was a frontline social worker.

I could see the trends of what was happening, that our Māori young people were transitioning out of foster care, and they didn’t have any life skills. They didn’t have any connections with supportive whānau. It was just so predictable that these vulnerable young people were likely to suffer negative outcomes in life.

We already know with statistics that they’re more likely to go to prison, more likely to look at suicide and have mental health issues and drug and alcohol abuse. It’s really disheartening, and I felt that the government wasn’t doing enough to support these young people through what can be the most challenging time in their lives, but it can also be a turning point.

I look back at my own life, and I know that I went through some challenging times with my own mother, but I always had my extended family, my nana, my uncles, my grandfather that I could go to when I needed support.

When I was doing the research and speaking to young people, what they spoke about was just wanting to have a wānanga where they could learn about budgeting, about running their own homes, and all the things that a normal whānau would provide for them. It was a privilege to be able to document all of their whakaaro. They had some fantastic recommendations, and now we’re starting to get that wraparound pastoral care in Auckland.

Māhera Maihi is doing a fantastic job as the manager of Mā Te Huruhuru with a lot of our homeless young people, and that’s what we’ve got to do more of to help them go through that phase.

Tell us about your decision to stand for local government. Perhaps you have some central government ambitions, or are you committing yourself to local body politics for the foreseeable future?

When I first came back from the UK, I decided to join the Labour Party, because I’ve always been of the view that we have to take the whole country with us if we want to make changes. I joined Labour knowing that eventually I would like to get into politics. My twins were only two when I first stood for the Waitemata Local Board. The great thing about local government is you’re able to work things around your family.

I stood for the Waikato seat in the 2020 elections. It’s pretty well known that standing in a strong blue seat can give you the experience that you may need later on if you want to look at going into parliament.

I was grateful to have that experience and to be able to understand the difference between running a campaign in a local body election and in central government. I was only two places away on the list from going into parliament. That was the year of the Jacinda effect, where Labour won so many seats that hadn’t been envisaged.

Right now, my focus is local government, and I think that all the local initiatives that we need to be seeing in Auckland require a strong focus. So I’m passionate about standing for mayor and making sure that we have leadership that is going to take our city forward.

You’ve had six years of experience as a councillor, and unlike others, you said, “I think I’m gonna have a go at the top job.” What would make you a better mayor than those who are also vying for the role?

First, my leadership skills. The current mayor is simply not visible out in the community to provide vision and leadership for the city, whereas I’m right across the city.

I was out at the Pukekohe markets on the weekend, and I asked people if they’d ever met the mayor or if he’d ever been out here? The answer that I’m getting right across Auckland is that they never see him, and I think Auckland needs someone who’s got extensive governance experience, but who is also providing leadership for the city. You need to be able to do both.

Obviously, I’m younger, and we need to have younger leadership to take our city forward. When you’re talking about 30-year infrastructure plans, you need to have someone who’s going to be able to see those plans through. We’re so outdated and behind in terms of other global cities that have a similar population. When I came back from the UK, I couldn’t believe we still didn’t have a train from the airport that links up with our current infrastructure.

We need to have someone who is future-focused rather than just looking at all the bad things that the council’s doing. I mean, yes, we’ve got to address spending, but the key focus should be: How do we take our city forward? Aucklanders need a visionary leader who actually cares about them and is going to listen to their concerns and do something about them.

I guess your stand needs to have a generalist appeal, because while you want to tautoko Māori concepts or Pacific concepts you’ve got to appeal to the general population of Auckland. How are you going to marry up the two goals?

One of my big policies is to bring a lot of our contracting back in-house. Right now, a majority of the tier-one contracts for the whole of the Auckland council are run by Australian-owned businesses. People aren’t happy that what used to be done locally, before we became a Super City, such as the maintenance of parks and things like that, is now contracted out. I want to give more power back to the local boards, so that they can be part of the monitoring and the overseeing of some of the local contracting, rather than the Auckland Council doing that, because I don’t believe they’ve done a very good job at it.

Secondly, I will open the train line back up out to Huapai, because we’ve got a huge growing population out there and they want to have public transport up and running again. The cost of that is around $9 million, which I think is well within our budget, and we should be prioritising that.

Another thing I’m campaigning on is having a train line from the airport, which will connect with our local infrastructure. That would take freight off the road and reduce congestion.

Another big issue is people going between South Auckland and West Auckland, so I am supporting an Avondale to Southdown train line, which would cut out so much of the travel time via public transport to get from West Auckland to South Auckland. It can take up to two hours on public transport. We could halve that time if we opened up that train line.

My focus is to look at these big infrastructure projects for our city, which are long overdue, and to look at partnerships as opposed to just relying on central government to get these done.

I always leave a bit of room in these interviews to ask what else do you? Are you a baker, crocheter, a jet skier? Tell us your interests outside of mahi.

I still love to travel. I love taking breaks and getting out across our beautiful country. There’s still a lot of the South Island that I haven’t been to that I’d love to visit.

Any great books you’d recommend to our readers?

I’m reading a book about Helen Clark, because I’m looking for some inspiration, and then I’ve also got a book on Catherine Tizard. So, yes, I’m needing that inspiration from some strong women who have broken barriers in our country, to keep going.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity.)

Voting for the 2025 local body elections will be open from September 9 to October 11.

E-Tangata, 2025