As part of the Morning Show’s coverage of the 2022 Local Elections, Aaron will be interviewing candidates standing for positions on the Raglan Community Board as well as the Waikato District and Regional Councils. Below is a transcript of Aaron’s interview with Kiri Binnersley.
“I think at the end of the day, growth is inevitable. We know we have more people coming in, but it’s coming back to the values of kaitiakitanga, to manaakitanga…. how do we keep the core values,” she said.
(Listen to the full interview below:) Aaron: Kiri is one of the current community board members who is running again – five out of six are coming back. I guess we know why you decided to come back – you only just started because you were elected in a by-election.
Kiri Binnersley: Yes, I feel I’ve only just started. It feels like I’ve just blinked and this year’s gone. It’s been one of those crazy years – as we all know and experienced. I took the position of Bob MacLeod, which were some big shoes to fill. I remember coming to town and he was just amazing. He was just so helpful and he’d always have time for me just to have a chat or speak about what sort of things he’s been up to. He was actually the first person that sort of said, “Oh, well, why don’t you get involved?” And I said, “Well, what do you mean?” So that really inspired me to get involved after speaking with Bob.
The reason I’m standing again is because I feel I’ve only just got the hang of it. There’s a lot of things to take on in regards to understanding how everything works. If you’ve got a project or something going on, what are the processes of that? Because again, it’s all processes, and understanding that.
Aaron: So what surprised you the most with the stuff you’ve learned over the last few months?
Kiri Binnersley: The biggest thing and the reason, (the driver actually, and the passion) behind me standing in the first place was being a big lover of community. I’ve always been a listener so I like to listen to what issues or things are going on for people and put that into action. For example, sometimes it’s like, “Oh, there’s a massive hole in the middle of the road,” or something simple like that and that could be an easy action. Instead of complaining about it, let’s do something about the situation.
Sometimes that takes a collaborative effort. I think for me it’s just understanding those processes. Say there’s a hole or there’s a slip or whatever it is, what ways do you go about making that change? I think that was the big understanding and learnings for me, it’s just kind of, “What do you do?” [laughs] Now moving forward, it’s educating people; so if you’ve got a problem, what steps do you take? I find any sort of government and the wording they use makes me think, “Come on, speak English!” I don’t understand that and how does anyone else understand that? Put that into simple terms; “Hey, look, we’ve got this problem over here. What do you do about it?”. I’ve done a doctorate but still I don’t understand their English sometimes.
Aaron: It’s a different specialist language. Kiri Binnersley: Yeah, but make it simple! Why does it have to be so tricky and difficult? I’ve been talking with the community board and they’ve been really awesome about setting up social media and putting out some videos. You’ve been going to the community board meetings and you’ve probably been the most active about putting the information out there with interviews sometimes.
There was a time when we couldn’t swim when there was a stormwater overflow and you’ve put the information out there. That should be so accessible instead of people going on Facebook and then they put a little notice on the notice board. I mean, I don’t even read that now because it’s just all over the shop. It’s just making the information accessible.
Aaron: It’s actually a problem now, connecting with people. When I was involved with helping run the junior soccer club, (trying to get everyone to turn up at the start of the season) in the end, we went for the carpet bombing approach where we used every media channel available, including posters around town to try to get everyone to sign up at the right time – and you still miss 20 or so people, but you had to. By doing that, all we’re doing is adding to the overwhelming flow of information that everyone’s confronted with at the moment. If you’ve got ways to get connected with people, what are you doing? You’ve got videos on Instagram and things like that?
Kiri Binnersley: Oh, no, I’m just trying to create more accessibility, not just Instagram. I think at the moment we’ve got – for the community board – the website and you know, Maki is awesome, she gives a lot of time for that, which is amazing. But not everyone looks at the website or reads the paper. Different generations are looking at different things. I mean, I probably won’t ever touch Tik Tok, that’s like a whole new thing to me. At the same time, it’s just addressing and looking at different avenues, like you said. It’s sort of different when you think about trying to get people to come to a meeting in that regard, even just voting, some people are like, “When are the voting packs coming out?” Aaron: Someone reminded me yesterday actually, when I talk about the interviews to actually keep mentioning when the voting is happening – because it’s just in my head – I don’t even think about it. But yes, voting packs come out on the 16th, the end of this week and you can vote until the eighth of October. But if you put it in the post on the eighth, it’s not going to get there in time. That’s a thing to remember, I’ve got to keep saying that.
Kiri Binnersley: It’s one of those things of, “Where do you find out this information sometimes”? I was thinking about how we can integrate the community board a bit more. Even on Facebook we get messages like, “Hey, what’s the weather like today out in Raglan?” We are not the I-site. We are a community board. We are the voice of the people.
Aaron: The community board gets those messages? Kiri Binnersley: We get messages on Facebook like “What’s the weather like? How’s the surf? Hey, I’ve lost a bag. What do we do about this?” We need to make the vision clear. It’s like any kind of page, what is your message and what are you putting out there? So for the community board, we are listening to the people and putting forward to the council about how to make change in the community for essentially the betterment of the people.
Aaron: I think I mentioned Instagram before because it seems like a particularly hopeless method of trying to get out the complex information that comes out of council and I don’t know if it’s even worth going there or not.
Kiri Binnersley: I think for me I thought about Instagram like, “Oh, how to put a service request in.” Aaron: Like something simple. Kiri Binnersley: Simple things. I think when I first started, I was like, what is the service request?
Aaron: Most people still don’t know that they can ask the council to do that. One of the good things about it is if the staff member doesn’t do it – because it’s now in the system – the stats will come back to the managers at the top. They want to know if their staff aren’t doing stuff – they actually want to know. I mention this because we always feel a sense of hopelessness about dealing with the council.
Kiri Binnersley: Absolutely. Aaron: The managers do want to know if things aren’t working. Kiri Binnersley: And that blew my mind, I was like, “Oh, this is a very straightforward process.” I just had no understanding about that, you know? It’s not always clear to you at the start, but obviously me being in it and I’m constantly there in the meetings and learning about all the processes, it’s now very straightforward. But for example, I was just out at Whale Bay and I had the community come and talk to me about, “There’s this slip down there,” (it was just some drainage issues at Whale Bay) and these rubbish bins aren’t out there anymore. People were starting to litter more and so I put a service request together based on the community itself.
That’s definitely a passion of mine. Just putting that information forward – especially if it hasn’t been dealt with – and bringing it up in the community board meetings: “Hey, look, we’ve got this. What’s been done?” Follow up with the correct council member. That for me is very empowering, to be able to provide an answer sometimes. Answers are just reassuring to say, “Oh, yeah, we’ve found those bins, they’re coming.” It’s just delayed because of COVID or whatever it was but you actually have an answer, which is really fantastic instead of just being like, “Oh, I don’t know what’s happening.” Aaron: I want to come back to the start, for people who don’t know you, just tell us a bit about yourself. This is the question I was going to ask first, but we immediately got into these other questions, which is cool, it’s obviously what’s on their minds.
Kiri Binnersley: I’ll start by just giving my mihimihi, Ko Hikurangi te maunga, Ko Waiapu te awa, Ko Ngāti Porou te iwi. Ko Horouta te waka. Ko Karen toku māmā, Ko George toku pāpā. Ko Lewis toku tu nga ne. So I actually grew up in Queenstown. I was born in England but I grew up in Queenstown. My whole whānau are from East Cape, my mum, my Māori side. I grew up in Queenstown, competed professionally in snowboarding for a while and I moved to Raglan for the waves, actually.
Kiri Binnersley: Yeah, so snowboarding will age you very quickly. Aaron: Oh, really? Kiri Binnersley: Yeah pretty much. Aaron: Hard on the knees. Kiri Binnersley: From age 20 I had degeneration in my neck. I had about three surgeries on my knee. Broken ribs, broken arms. Yeah.
Aaron: You have to feel like a bit of a write-off after that. Kiri Binnersley: Yeah. A bit of a write off. That’s why you probably see me constantly at the gym or doing exercise cause it’s more of a maintenance thing. For me in health, it’s all about prevention because if you stop, then you start to feel all those things. It’s like building up your body, like a strong foundation.
I’ve always been passionate about health and especially when I’ve gone back to the East Cape. I was very surprised because I didn’t always spend a lot of time there and I’d grown up in a very separate world view, obviously.
Aaron: Down in Queenstown? Kiri Binnersley: Yes, I was the token Māori girl and I’m not very, you know… I wouldn’t say I’m very Māori looking. I would be the token Māori that would go out and people would be like “Hey are you going to do the kāranga right now?” I was always the one that was isolated, or it felt like I was always on the fringe. I was very different from the rest of the kids in that way. It was my upbringing and I’d go back home to the East Cape and I was like, “Oh man, what is all this?” It was a very big driver for me at first. I wanted to be a medical doctor at the start, but I felt like it was more of a prevention thing, so that’s my passion now. Even today I was having a conversation with Kayla (who does a lot of the COVID 19 packs for Māori). This is all changing now, but we still want to kind of implement that health and provide packs. I just wanted to have a chat about nutrition, because some of those packs included a lot of sugar, a lot of processed things. And that’s easy and that’s what a lot of whānau know – that way of eating – it’s just changing that and educating. I’ve just planned a couple of talks that I’ll present to her, (and for when Michael gets home) just around health and healthy eating and what that means in regards to hauora, because we’ve lost all that sense of understanding around what hauora is or what is health – that kind of basic view.
It’s a passion of mine. I’ve always been very passionate about health and wellbeing and prevention because unfortunately, that’s the big point now, (unfortunately Māori still are the minority). It’s about empowering instead of being like “How do we get out of that? How do we improve our overall health and wellbeing for our community?” So that’s a big passion for me.
Aaron: You studied to become a chiropractor. I presume that relates to all the injuries that you had?
Kiri Binnersley: I actually studied to be a chiropractor because I’d been through lots of challenges, health challenges, as a child. I couldn’t really walk. I’m deaf. I have learning difficulties.
Aaron: You don’t seem deaf right now. Kiri Binnersley: [laughs] I’m deaf in my left ear, sorry, not fully deaf, but lots of learning difficulties and I was just one of those kids that had a little bit of a challenge learning. I think for me it’s having all those challenges and going through the medical system. I also had really bad vertigo, lots of weird stuff going on, but that inspired me – going through the medical system and having to find answers. I’d see a lot of different alternative health care and when I went to see a chiropractor they helped with a lot of my learning difficulties and it was the only thing that got rid of my dizziness, my vertigo.
Aaron: People probably think the chiropractor is about getting the bones in the back lined up properly – and the vertigo we could understand, but the learning?
Kiri Binnersley: Improving your brain body connection yeah. For Māori, it’s like improving your life force energy, your wairua. So if you improve that flow of information, the nerve flow, then you can improve your ability to heal. That was a big thing for me. It’s like improving that wairua – the life force – so you can heal yourself properly. I mean that’s all the philosophy behind it.
Aaron: With that background, I can see why you went that way. Kiri Binnersley: Yeah, definitely. Working with the community has been really awesome. I think Michelle mentioned that in her interview, just helping with COVID-19. We all have different beliefs, but at the same time, it’s just providing support for people, when their life is just a bit crazy and they’re making us lockdown and all that kind of madness. Just providing support for people at that time – I think that’s really important.
Aaron: For your work life, you also must have run a chiropractic business. I like to try and pick up on all the things so people know what you’ve done in the past and if that might relate to being on the community board if there are transferable skills – I think that’s the phrase they use.
Kiri Binnersley: I started my chiropractic business just after the first lockdown. Aaron: Oh, perfect timing. Kiri Binnersley: Not a great time to open a business, not going to lie. I started after the first lockdown in March. That’s been a journey opening a business during all these restrictions and whatnot. But it was great learning and it’s awesome because I get to work with the community all the time and you can kind of see as well, just talking with people, what’s going on in their lives. You know what is important to them and I think that’s a big one for me is definitely listening in and seeing about making a change within the community.
Aaron: So listening to people is also part of the process. Kiri Binnersley: Yeah, absolutely. Listening is pretty much the main thing and I think that’s even within the community board. I think it’s listening to people.
Aaron: Yeah I wouldn’t doubt that. Kiri Binnersley: I think the biggest thing is just having people feel like they’ve been heard. Aaron: I can’t remember if you were at the community board meetings I’m thinking of, but some people have turned up with – clearly – a desperate need to be heard and sometimes it feels like it’s deeper than just the issue they’ve bought that day as well.
Kiri Binnersley: I think at the moment, for a lot of people, it’s a deep hurt with what we’ve just been through in these last two years and a lot of people are depressed or they have high anxiety.
Aaron: Some of us are just a little more keyed up than we normally would be and sort of over-reactive.
Kiri Binnersley: You think about the world that we’ve been in the last two years. That can come out as aggression, but it’s actually understanding where someone’s coming from. I can have someone yell at me and go, “Okay, well, that’s not on me. That’s something that they’re going through,” because again, at the end of the day, they have every right to feel the way they do.
Aaron: I really don’t feel like they have the right to come and yell at you guys. I feel quite strongly about that because I’ve sat through quite a few community board meetings and people seem to think it’s okay to shout at council staff and councillors and community board members – and I disagree.
Kiri Binnersley: I definitely think they could come about it a different way. But I think at the end of the day, this is when I was talking about the processes and educating you about, “Well this is who you can talk to,” in that situation or if someone’s yelling, just saying, “Hey, look, have you done this first?” to prevent that from happening. It’s about making things more accessible or being able to point them to the right people. If they have a question like; “Hey, I’m really upset with this particular thing or I don’t agree with what’s happening over it.” Maybe it’s the wharf or maybe it’s “I don’t want to get this picture put on the toilet,” for example. Whatever it is they’re opposing, making sure they have the right person to talk to. I’d just say, “Hey, look, you can talk to this person.” So that situation is dealt with and they feel like they’re being heard or listened to. I think that’s a big thing.
I don’t agree with necessarily being yelled at [laughs] when you’re at a community board meeting. You might get someone coming in and they’re like, “You’re not doing anything about it.” [and actually] we’re doing the best we can with what we can do at the time. We’re all trying to do the best for the community.
Aaron: Did you know coming in that the community board was an advisory body and strictly speaking, didn’t have any power at all?
Kiri Binnersley: We do have power in the sense of being able to actually have a say. I totally understood that, and I know that we’re not able to be like, “Right, we’re going to do this, and we’re going to do this right now.” We are an advisory board. I was always made aware of that and I had been to quite a few before I signed up. I actually went to some community board meetings because I was like, “Well, I’m not going to sign up for that if I don’t even understand it.” So I went to quite a few board meetings prior, to understand how it all worked and the systems and processes, and obviously, still learning.
Aaron: It takes a lot of time to get used to council. Normally I ask people who are coming back, what they feel like they’ve achieved over their time, but you haven’t even been there for a year, so it might be an unfair question, but I’ll give you the chance to answer it in case there is stuff as well.
Kiri Binnersley: In the past, yeah, it went very quickly. I mean, half of our council board meetings were online. It’s all on Zoom, which was very interesting, especially when it came to public forums. For me it was around the projects that I’ve helped with. I sort of started looking into the wharf project. But in regards to the community response for the COVID-19 stuff, having the 0800 number, going down to provide RATs testing being down there to give that and teaching people how to use them, especially because of all the processes and systems, and if someone needed time off work, they needed to put that they had COVID and how to put that in the system.
Aaron: So you spent some time down there at the rugby grounds. Kiri Binnersley: Yeah, I was volunteering down there helping people with that because it was not always straightforward, like having to go into the COVID-19 website and then press the button and then this button to get yourself the testing kits. So I was helping with that as well as general stuff.
The thing that I was passionate about starting out was getting the voices from the Manu Bay breakwater from the Boardriders but they had that under control because that’s been running for a while.
Aaron: You’re involved in the surfing side of things. Kiri Binnersley: Yes. Aaron: Have you been involved with the boardriders? Kiri Binnersley: They’ve got the AGM coming up actually at the end of the month but yeah I’ve been involved in the boardriders. I’m on the board. The board of the boardriders.
Aaron: I just wanted to cover that in case people were interested in that sort of thing. We haven’t got too much time but I always ask the question about Raglan. People always want to keep Raglan how it is and retain those characteristics. But what are the characteristics? Or what is the thing about Raglan that we’re trying to keep?
Kiri Binnersley: Yeah, I totally get that. I’ve lived here for the last five years, so I wouldn’t say I’ve grown up here but I totally understand that fear of change, growing up in Queenstown – it was exponential.
Aaron: Yeah, they’re ahead of our curve down there. Kiri Binnersley: That was insane. I think at the end of the day, growth is inevitable. We know we have more people coming in, but it’s coming back to the values of kaitiakitanga to manaakitanga. It’s like coming back and saying, “Hey, how do we keep the core values.” We want to make sure that we’re keeping the environment, because that’s really important. Raglan has been awesome at that with you know, [for instance] Plastic Free Raglan. You look at other places and there’s still plastic everywhere – we’ve been quite amazing at that.
Also it’s making sure that we are keeping a place that is, essentially (at the heart of it) a place for the people and keeping those spaces like green spaces as well. And that comes down to talking with the people about what they want – so different groups of people as well. Because I think that unfortunately (and I think Dennis brought this up), big developers just come through and they go, “I want to do this,” and go straight to council. It just gets done. And this is the importance of having community boards because we can say,”Hey, wait a minute. Did you actually talk to us?” So it’s just having that say before things happen. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the voice of the people.
Aaron: You might not be the youngest on the community board, but you are living the younger lifestyle? I’m not sure how young Satnam is.
Kiri Binnersley: I’m 32, I think he’s a bit older than me. Aaron: He’s living the older life, right? He’s got a family and a business and he’s very busy with that. But you’re the one who doesn’t have a family and are you still going out to see gigs?
Kiri Binnersley: Oh, me, yeah, absolutely. Aaron: So you’re interacting with the age group that doesn’t typically vote, especially in local body elections, so that’s what I wanted to come to. I mean, are you talking to people about that and encouraging them to vote or are they like “Nah, don’t bore me with that.” Kiri Binnersley: Well, I’ve been boxing with Johnny a bit, Johnny Rickard. He’s got a lot of the younger crew, the little grommets. Tukana is a friend of mine as well and it’s like talking to them about, “Hey, you should have a vote.” Lisa’s really awesome at that as well. She’s really big on talking to Charlie, her daughter, saying, “Hey! Get your friends and everyone to vote.” So I think that’s a big thing. It’s just inspiring people to have a say.
Aaron: But what’s the vibe out there like? Is it disinterest? Kiri Binnersley: Actually, surprisingly not. I feel like the generation now is a bit more aware and maybe that’s just because of all of this information that’s just always in our face. It’s full on sometimes, it’s been really interesting to see a lot of the younger generation actually taking – sometimes – quite strong political stances, especially living through what we just have.
Having your voice and having a say is very important so that you’re not just going with it. It’s having your say and knowing what is okay and what’s not. I feel like this generation coming up, the 18, 20 year olds, they’re really starting to say, “Oh yeah, no, we agree or we don’t agree with this.” So it’s good.
Aaron: Okay. One quick question at the end, which I’m trying to remember to ask everyone; have you got your spiel that you tell people in 30 seconds about why they should vote for you?
Kiri Binnersley: Because I would love to get the information out to you. I feel like I’ve got a different perspective and I’m very open to hearing different views as well as actually just listening to what you want to say. So I can put that forward to the council to make those decisions. Again. It’s listening essentially.
Aaron: Okay. All right, Kiri, thanks for coming in this morning and good luck with the campaign.
Kiri Binnersley: Thank you. https://raglanradio.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/RCR_Candidates_Kiri.jpg