It’s time to listen, and to lead

Nominations for local body elections in Tāmaki Makarau are now open, and there’s a desperate need for many more young brown faces, writes Will Flavell.

 

The year before my koro died, I sat with him on the verandah of our homestead up north, by the ocean where our tūpuna traditionally gathered kaimoana.

Koro looked me in the eye and told me that it was time to step up into a leadership role. I didn’t really understand what he meant, but shrugged my shoulders and thought: “Okay, sweet as.”

A seed had been planted. By the beginning of the following year, 2013, the question started to bloom in my mind: Should I run for the Henderson-Massey Local Board at Auckland Council?

I decided to watch a public meeting first. I went to a local board meeting at the old Waitākere Council chambers in Henderson, taking in the faces of the people who’d been elected. There were no Māori faces, no Pasifika faces, and it seemed no one under 50 years old. This didn’t look like our area at all.

To provide some background, our local board encompasses nine suburbs in West Auckland and is home to nearly 140,000 people, making it bigger than most standalone city councils across Aotearoa.

Our community is full of life, diverse, and young. Eighteen percent of us are Māori, 22 percent Pasifika, and a huge 40 percent are under 29. We are young and brown. Surely, we deserved local leaders who looked like us and truly understood our unique lives, hopes, struggles, and aspirations. The gap was obvious.

I felt intimidated looking at some of those elected members. Many were well-known names, people who had served since the 1970s and ‘80s. Doubt crept in. How could I possibly win against them? They had decades of experience, strong connections, and name recognition far greater than mine. The challenge felt huge.

However, a different idea then took hold. I decided to focus on something that I felt many politicians often overlook — truly listening. I promised myself I would get out into the community, not just to talk, but to listen to what people were saying. I wanted to hear and understand the real issues, the everyday worries, and the hopes and frustrations of our people. This, I believed, would be my greatest strength.

I also had just started a new job as the head of Māori studies at Rutherford College. As someone who firmly believes in amplifying the voices of rangatahi, I knew their ideas had to be at the centre. I made an effort to weave their thoughts into the main messages of my campaign. Our young people wanted real chances for education. They wanted support for local jobs.

I gathered a team, and we hit the streets, visiting many homes and knocking on many doors. We talked with whānau and supporters at Saturday morning rugby league and netball games. These were real kōrero, connecting with people where they were.

The tension on election day was almost too much to bear. Results would appear on the Auckland Council website at exactly 12 noon. I felt incredibly nervous. More than anything, I wanted a Māori voice at that decision-making table. I wanted to represent our rangatahi whose voices had been missing from local governance.

I knew it would be a difficult race, with only eight seats available. When the names appeared on the screen, I scanned the list, my eyes darting down. When I saw my name in seventh place, I was overjoyed, overwhelmed, and incredibly excited. We were in!

The following Tuesday, I walked into the council chambers for the first time as an elected member. A council staff member approached me. “Are you in the right place, young man?” she asked, her voice carrying a hint of polite surprise. I met her gaze confidently. “Yes,” I replied. “I’m a newly elected member.” She looked at me for a moment, her expression changing from curious to a subtle shock, before she led me to the meeting room.

Walking in, I felt all the other elected members looking at me in astonishment. For the first time in that chamber since the establishment of the Auckland Council Super City, an elected member was Māori and under 30 years old. It was an important moment, not just for me, but for every young Māori person who had felt unseen or unheard by local authorities.

Of course, we can make a political difference without being an elected member. There is power in speaking up and taking action in the community from outside the formal system. But we desperately need more Māori elected members on city councils across Aotearoa too.

We need people who genuinely understand kaupapa Māori and who will stand up for the issues that deeply matter to us. This means playing an active role in looking after our whenua and taiao and ensuring these are adequately funded and supported. It means supporting the ongoing revitalisation of te reo Māori by using Māori names for parks, reserves, and new street names, thereby supporting the stories of mana whenua in our community. It means promoting hauora, encouraging physical activity. It means advocating for the spaces that our whānau regularly use, such as libraries, community centres, and playgrounds. These are some of the only free spaces for our whānau. I remember my mum regularly taking us to the library, where I fell in love with reading.

And there’s one thing I can’t stress enough: our rangatahi Māori need adult Māori role models in all aspects of society, including local politics. They need to see people who look like them, speak like them, understand their world, and actively take part in shaping the decisions that affect their lives.

The old saying is true: “You cannot be what you cannot see.” I genuinely wish I had seen more of that representation when I was first elected.

The chance for change is here again. Local government nominations are now open, but they will close on August 1. I may be the first Māori elected to the Henderson-Massey Local Board, and I’ve put my hand up again this year, but we need more like me in the running too.

Local government elections are our chance to make a difference and to be the change we want to see.

My koro never saw me elected to local government. Still, I did fulfil his wish to step up and be a role model for our rangatahi. It’s now time for more of us to put our names forward, to listen, and to lead.

Dr Will Flavell (Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua, and Ngāti Maniapoto) is a Fulbright scholar, deputy chairperson of the Henderson-Massey Local Board, and the winner of the Local Government NZ 2024 Young Elected Member of the Year Award.

E-Tangata, 2025