Question and Answers: MP Rachel Brooking

What issues are electorate residents raising with you the most? And why do you think these issues are at the forefront of people’s concerns?

So, when I'm just out and about the hospital, our tertiary hospital is the big issue but when I'm here at my electorate office and with my staff, the issues are around housing issues, and sometimes related to domestic abuse. Obviously, some people have financial difficulties and it is hard to find accommodation. And then we had the range of health issues that crop up.

So, the hospital is the one that I get the most when I’m out and about. Also, with the university within the electorate, issues around students and, the cost of living. That comes up as well.

What would you say to convince  someone who has never visited Dunedin to come see the place and what’s the first thing they should do or see?

There’s so many, but I really like town belt. So that's the bush that runs around the hills and sort of breaks up some of the suburbs from the, from the city area. It's amazing foresight and planning to have that green space right in the middle really of town over 100 years ago.

Also, there’s the penguins and sea lions, there’s also the boat, the Monarch, which takes you around the harbour. I think that's a beautiful thing to do and there's now the bike trail around the harbour, that’s an awesome activity.

I hear a lot of people say Dunedin has an image problem - is this true and how would you dissuade people of that notion?

Well I think, it’s true around the weather. It wears on me when people from Wellington to talk about the weather because theirs is much, much worse and harder to be around. I mean you know what the weather is going to do and so you just have to take it when it's a nice day.

There's lots of talented and often community-spirited people here as well who like to get involved in the community.

We have amazing facilities like Moana Pool, more recently the stadium, but also there’s the ice skating rink and there's running courses and the oval for cricket. lots of really good schools as well, really good schools and our whole range of different school, so you can choose, if you have a child, a school that suits. It’s also very easy to get around.

Who convinced you to stand for election and what sold you?

So this was back in 2020, and I had a career as a resource management lawyer. I was on some company directorships as well.  I was involved in a review of the whole resource management system with the review, it was just so much fun with thinking about how to make the law rather than how to interpret it. So I was keen, keen I, that was like, oh, this is really good. But before that, I was raised in quite a political family. My dad was an historian, my mother’s a teacher. And, I was involved politics when I was a student in the nineties.

I helped David Clark with his campaign in 2017 and then when he retired I came off the list.

What type of facilities is your electorate most in need of?

Well it needs the tertiary teaching hospital and I stressed the word tertiary.

I think for most people probably, that doesn't mean much to them, but it's really important when we're talking about the wider Otago and south region as well. to know that we need to. The country needs to do much better with primary care, those general practitioners and nurses and those sorts of services.

And then we had the secondary care, all those hospitals and Queenstown and sort of in between primary and secondary but if its cardiac surgery you are having, its going to be at this hospital.

Like most places, there's probably more that we could do for our youth spaces for youth. We are also missing a mid-sized theatre.

We could do with finishing off some of the bike tracks because some stop abruptly in places. It’s always good to do more to get trucks off the roads. So, some talk about having some sort of inland port, which would be where you get more truck loads off the road and onto rail.

Also, how we think about the harbour is something that we can improve on as well.

How can Central Government, local government and Dunedin parliamentarians work together, to better the city? And how will you facilitate this?

Well, I work closely with the city council and the regional council. Our council is having a really rough time at the moment from the National Party.  And that's their choice at the moment. The government is picking on councils and they're doing two different things. They're saying on the one hand, councils you need to only do core things, which we are going define, but we haven't defined them yet …. and we're going to blame you for everything seem to be what was doing at the prints a month or so ago. And, we’re not going to give you any new tools to help funding of things like waste water, storm water, drinking water.

Then with the regional council, we have central government saying, oh, we're going to change the law at some point. Yeah, I'm not going to tell you exactly how we're going to change it yet, but you should stop doing all the things that the law at the moment requires you to do because we are going to change it at some point in the future. That's just not how our system works and it's outrageous.

So, I think this government's approach to just expecting everybody to follow what they say when they're not following the rules is just so deeply irresponsible of them and leads to people having mistrust and confusion in central government politics, which upsets me because people should be able to be proud of the democracy that we normally have in New Zealand where you have good access to members of Parliament and you can, have an eye on on what they're doing in being involved  in processes like submissions, proper submission processes, et cetera. Obviously, the city council at the moment is doing this campaign about Hospital and I’m helping with that.

Main image: Dunedin MP Rachel brooking.