This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability
Aaron:
So Jasmine, we normally talk to you in your role with the Environment Centre – people will recognise your voice – but we’re not talking about that today. You’re running for the Community Board. We might cover some of the same ground, but this is really a different discussion. Why are you running for the Community Board?
Jasmine Hunter:
It was a very last-minute decision. It’s something I’ve thought about over the years – probably the previous two elections. I’d had discussions with people who’d actually asked me to run, but at the time I didn’t feel interested. I felt like there were already some pretty good people on the Community Board.
But recently, there seems to be a lot of misinformation around rates and what councils do and should do. I was a little bit concerned about some of the messaging out there – particularly from groups like the Taxpayers’ Union.
Also, I’ve got a really vested interest in this community. I’ve been working in the community for about eight years – actively engaged with different organisations and directly with the community, right in town. And I’ve got a 14-year-old daughter at Raglan Area School. So yes, I’ve got a real vested interest, and I’ve got great relationships with community members.
Aaron:
I like to ask people near the start of the interview so listeners can learn a bit more about you; I know your work at the Environment Centre, but I don’t really know what else you’ve done in your life. I know you’re involved with Kiwiburn, is that right?
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes, I was the chairperson and also the event manager for a while – more on the operations side – for probably about six years. Not just across one role though.
Aaron:
I only mentioned that because that’s really the only other thing I know you’ve done in your adult life. Have you had other jobs? I know you’ve been raising Stella.
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes, I’m a single parent. I was born in the South Island – my parents were pig farmers, right down south in Waimate. When I was about 11, we moved onto a bus that my dad built from the chassis up, and we travelled around the South Island.
I had the chance to do all sorts of things. I was a rousie on a sheep station, and I did a lambing season right at the very tip of the South Island, looking over to Stewart Island.
Aaron:
This time of year it must’ve been so cold down there.
Jasmine Hunter:
It was freezing down there– but it was great fun. Later we moved up to the North Island. I did some milking as a teenager, and I used to come over to Raglan, actually, as a teenager.
Later on, in my adult life, I studied Japanese business.
Aaron:
See, I didn’t know that.
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes, I got a scholarship to a Japanese-owned university in Palmerston North. It was a full scholarship to live on campus and study Japanese business. I completed a diploma in that, and then I lived in Japan for two years. I even opened a business there when I was 21.
Aaron:
Oh, wow.
Jasmine Hunter:
The business actually ran for 17 years. Then I came back to New Zealand and worked in television, doing advertising commercials. I used to physically place the commercials into the slots on a computer.
I worked on the Lion Red Sports Café as the guest coordinator. Can you remember Sports Café on TV?
Aaron:
Yes it was fairly new as a concept, shall we say. In sports reporting? [laughs]
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes, exactly. And alongside all that, I’ve always volunteered. I started volunteering when I was about 11 or 12. I used to volunteer for the Te Puke Times and for Kapai FM in Te Puke as well, so I’ve got a bit of experience there.
Then I went on to spend a decade working in project coordination with IT companies. That was a really good foundation for learning about project management. So yeah, what else? [laughs].
Aaron:
That’s plenty! And you’ve been coordinator at the Environment Centre for the last eight years?
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes. In 2013 I left a full-time job I had here in Raglan, because I had a really young daughter at the time and I felt I wasn’t getting enough quality time with her. So I decided to pack it all in, start over, and think about what I was going to do.
A friend, who was on the committee of the Environment Centre, suggested I start volunteering there. I’d already been popping in and checking out their seed bank, so I started doing that. That eventually turned into a paid job, and now I’m the operations manager for the Whāingaroa Environment Centre.
Aaron:
And we interview you every few weeks here,
Jasmine Hunter:
Yeah that’s right just to keep people up to speed with what’s happening at the Environment Centre.
Aaron:
So I guess a lot of people – and this is a question I’ve asked other candidates – will be wondering if your primary aim in standing for the board is to continue that work. You’re known as an environmentalist – is that what you’re going to be all about on the board?
Jasmine Hunter:
Protecting the environment is a massive part of it, yes – but primarily the role of a Community Board is to represent the community to the council. We’re supposed to be that in-between where the community can come and engage with the council. So that is the job if I got on – that would be my primary focus. I think it’s important to have transparency. Making information accessible is also really important to me. Accessibility is a big thing.
I’ve spent the last eight years working on a wide range of community projects. That’s across like, food security – I’m not sure people realise how much the Environment Centre is involved in that. We work across a lot of food resilience projects, like the Growers’ Market. We started that in 2021 during lockdowns. It’s about to start its fifth season and has been really successful.
There’s also the Repair Café, which I oversee, and I run the Science Nights. One of the things about standing for the Community Board – it’s quite daunting for me – I don’t really like being in front of people. But hosting the Science Nights for the last few years has really helped me get more confident speaking to crowds. It’s been a good challenge.
Aaron:
You’re getting used to that.
Jasmine Hunter:
And just before you go to the next question, I want to point out that I’m also chairperson of the Raglan Refill Charitable Trust. I was part of the group that started Raglan Refill. Altogether, I’ve got about seven or eight years of governance experience.
Aaron:
Okay, fair enough. So my question was going to be about Raglan. What is Raglan about? What makes it unique or different?
Jasmine Hunter:
Something I find really unique – and it’s why I decided to settle in Raglan – is the sense of connection here. I’d been visiting Raglan throughout my 20s, and even in my teens. My daughter’s great-grandfather was living here then – he was on the museum committee.
Aaron:
Who was that?
Jasmine Hunter:
Bill Ringer. I actually found a really cool newspaper clipping of him standing outside the Harbour View Hotel with John Lawson, many years ago, black and white.
Aaron:
Oh wow.
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes. And something I noticed about the community whenever I visited was how connected the community was, and how connected it was to mana whenua. That really attracted me.
I remember being in the checkout line at SuperValue – if it was still SuperValue back then, I can’t remember –
Aaron:
It would be Four Square
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes – the OG. I remember standing at the checkout line and hearing this little blonde Pākehā boy with his American mum speaking fluent te reo Māori with the checkout operator and just being floored. I thought, wow, this is so amazing. I loved it so much. I remember thinking, gosh, I’d love to live here – and talked about it for years.
Aaron:
We all know the parts of Raglan that we really value. The community wants to keep those things, and often doesn’t want change. When something new comes along, large parts of the community just say, “don’t do it.” But change seems to be inevitable.
Do you have ideas about how we handle that situation? Because it’s a big issue for Raglan at the moment.
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes, I think it’s really important to connect with any new households moving to Raglan straight away. I attended the Raglan Naturally organised – I was actually the only Community Board candidate there, which I thought was a bit disappointing – we talked about resilience planning for Whāingaroa.
I’d love to see every new household get a welcome pack. Something explaining what our values are and what the community is about. Just little things like that – it’s really important to help integrate new people moving into town and the community.
That’s probably one of the most important things for me. But I’d also love to hear what other people’s ideas are, because we can’t get away from the fact that there are new subdivisions being built in Raglan. There’s one not far from where I live, outside Lorenzen Bay, and one of the biggest subdivisions has gone up around Greenslade.
I’ve been involved with neighbours around Lorenzen Bay Reserve and the restoration of that reserve. At the moment it just looks like a paddock –
Aaron:
Many people don’t even realise it’s actually a reserve.
Jasmine Hunter:
It’s just a really constructive example of engagement with council when they had budgeted for a playground at Lorenzen Bay Reserve. I’d seen it sitting at the bottom of the Community Board agenda for a while and I’d been waiting for it to make the agenda. I missed the opportunity, but fortunately Gabrielle – who’s also a neighbour of the reserve – went along to the meeting.
As neighbours, we were concerned about the plan. Council’s proposal was basically plonking a playground in the middle of the reserve, with astroturf and concrete paths – all the things we didn’t want at the reserve. Local biologists who live next to the reserve have been doing studies on fish in the stream there which shows 5 different types of whitebait and different species of gully. All our children have grown up at that reserve without a playground, interacting with that natural environment. We’ve had a positive experience working with the council and have flipped that plan on its head. Instead of plonking a playground with concrete and astroturf plonked on the reserve. What we ended up with was much better: three different pieces of playground equipment, built from natural materials, placed in different spots across the reserve to work with the biodiversity.
I found that experience really positive, and I want to show community members that engaging with council can have really constructive outcomes.
Aaron:
So you’re a new candidate – you haven’t been on the board before. I’m always curious how much new candidates know about council. For instance, I always check that people know the Community Board is an advisory body – you don’t actually have your hands on the levers of power.
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes, the Community Board doesn’t have any control over rates.
Aaron:
Or much else – no actual hard control.
Jasmine Hunter:
They can advise, represent the community and express what the community would like.
Aaron:
What else do you know about how council works?
Jasmine Hunter:
I know that the council budget – the actual spend – is already heavily weighted towards the basics. The government, and some groups, are really pushing for councils to be stripped back to basics, to do away with what they call the “nice to haves”, the different wellbeing factors.
There’s a lot of talk about doing that ‘back to basics,’ there’s some really punchy slogans out there. But people don’t realise that if we did strip council spending back to basics, two-thirds of the budget already goes on the basics – roads, water and…
Aaron:
I’m always curious: Where do libraries fit? Which side of the line do they fall on?
Jasmine Hunter:
Well, first of all, when people say “wellbeing”, we should think about what that really means. Roads are wellbeing, water is wellbeing. All of those are wellbeing because roads connect everyone – we have to keep water healthy because we don’t want what happened in Hawkes Bay to happen. What happens if we don’t fund our libraries and our parks and public toilets? What happens to them? They run down and the long term effect of that is we’re going to end up with a run-down town with nothing for young people to do
With public toilets or just run-down areas – if they’re run down, they’ll drive tourists away. It’s a really backward step.
So I think it’s really sad people are hearing these catchphrases like “back to basics” and “stripping councils back” without realising the implications. We’ve just had a government for the last year or two doing exactly that – stripping things back – and look where we are now.
If we treat councils the same way, strip them back to the bare basics, it won’t actually affect our rates. It won’t lower them, it won’t cap them, it won’t even them out.
I was listening to the Infrastructure Commission talking about the plan they’ve advised the government on. New Zealand sits in the top 10 percent of OECD countries for how much we spend on infrastructure, but we sit in the 10 percent lowest for what we actually get from that spend.
Aaron:
Is that because of things like the Roads of National Significance that primarily go into rural areas? I’m trying to think of an example…
Jasmine Hunter:
Yes. I’ve got so many notes here, Aaron – I do a lot of research from reputable sources, like commissions. And I want people to think about, if we strip things back to basics it won’t make our rates any cheaper. It means that the funding for libraries and public toilets and creative communities etc would be stripped away and we’ll be left with a town with no soul.
Aaron:
Those are some of the big picture things. I’ve tried to think about the number of times the RCB actually spent talking about rates and it’s about 1%, maybe 5-10% if someone was generous. Obviously the bulk of the time is spent talking about other stuff. So what is that other stuff? And what are your aims for the community?
Jasmine Hunter:
Yeah I’ve been to some of the community board meetings and there is really low turnout from the community. There is a lot of consultation and engagement with the board that the community doesn’t do. It’d be really good make the information a little bit more accessible.
Aaron:
Why do you think there’s not much of a turnout at board meetings?
Jasmine Hunter:
Probably because there isn’t much accessibility to what the Community Board talks about. You have to go to the council website and find the minutes and the agenda. I do think there’s lots of room for improvement there. I know the community board and the council do what they can. I’ve heard a lot about there’s been an increase in employment in council but there’s also been an increase in population. There’s more work to do. Lots of work to do. And then people complain about the number of consultants that are used by council but then in order to use less consultants it means we employ more people on council. The work doesn’t magically go away, and you can’t just keep piling it onto the staff already there. We’ve got a growing community, with 900 to 1000 houses consented in the long-term plan for Raglan. Someone has to process that paperwork.
And that’s the other thing – if we strip the Councils back to basics, who grants the consents? Who does the food safety standards in Raglan?
Aaron:
I’ll share something that happened. Recently there were bad E. coli readings in the harbour. It turns out a new house connection in Rangitahi had been plumbed wrong – sewage connected to the stormwater pipes. That’s something the council ultimately governs. Having worked in the industry I don’t know how on earth that happened – but it happened.
If you strip back spending in that area, then you’re going to get more mess-ups like that.
Jasmine Hunter:
That’s right. And let’s face it – we had a really amazing plan called Three Waters. Instead of the government stripping wellbeing functions away from councils and making them pay for roads, wastewater, water supplies and stormwater – all of those things, and just those things. By the cost of those things is only going to rise so if we strip them back to that, it won’t make our rates cheaper at all.
What we should be doing is putting pressure on government to fund councils more. That’s where the focus should be.
Aaron:
So from the position of a Community Board member, you’d encourage the rest of the board to agree with that sentiment, tell the council, and then push the mayors of the country to carry that message on?
Jasmine Hunter:
I know that there’s a new CEO on the council, so I guess that would be them and the mayor.
Aaron:
I wonder if CEOs get told not to be political – whether they’d even consider that political. That’s kind of a line people talk about.
Jasmine Hunter:
True. But I’d like people to start thinking about what Raglan’s future looks like. We really do want to be funding the things that get called “wellbeing”, because they improve our lives.
I saw figures yesterday that 191 New Zealanders are leaving the country every single day, and two-thirds of them are aged 18 to 45. If we strip councils back to basics and end up with run-down facilities and nothing for young people to do, is that going to help Raglan? There are already towns around New Zealand like that, and we’ve got an ageing population. I was talking to a friend yesterday who lives in Timaru, and she said that’s what’s happened there – their public transport has been taken away. We don’t want that for Raglan.
Aaron:
Alright, time for us to wrap up. But before we do – do you have an elevator pitch, or something you’d like to leave listeners with?
Jasmine Hunter:
I just want people to remember that no one going for a position on the Community Board knows everything. I don’t know everything but I spend a lot of time trying to learn everything that I can. Past members have told me the first six to 12 months are really about learning. It’s not possible for us to have all the answers, and I’m not going to give you a neat soundbite or slogan.
What I can say is that I really care about this community. My day job is about working with people to improve our living situation, improve connections, and increase our resilience in areas like food sovereignty. Basically that’s what I want to see for Raglan.