What it’s like to be the odd person out in local politics

We have a lot of queer people in parliament, but what about local politics? Sam Brooks spoke to two councilors and a local council hopeful about the importance of representation.

Queer political representation in Aotearoa politics appears to be at an all-time high. We currently boast 11 deputies, according to media reports, the strangest parliament in the world. But when you drill down to the local level, it’s not as clear that the queer community is represented. While two high profile councilors – North Shore’s Richard Hills and Nelson’s Rohan O’Neill-Stevens – are openly queer, it seems undeniable that this year’s slate of local election candidates is overwhelmingly heterosexual.

So why is it important to have queer representation in local politics? I spoke to councilors Hills and O’Neill-Stevens, along with Waitematā board candidate Rosemary Peppermint, about how being queer has affected how they see their role in local government.

Uwhen he was first elected in 2016, Richard Hills didn’t think much about the importance of being Oakland’s only queer councilor at the time. It wasn’t until he started being asked about it in interviews that he began to think of himself as representing not just the North Shore, but the queer community. “Councils are synonymous with not having a good cross-section of society,” he says. “Being younger than most of the elected members and being in the rainbow community helps bring some diversity to these rooms, but obviously I don’t claim to represent the broad spectrum of the rainbow community.”

Hills says his sexuality helps him see things from a different perspective. “Not all people in the rainbow community think or feel the way I do, but at least I listen or advocate in their corner,” he says. “I understand the weird issues when they come up and I can advocate for that through the council.”

It’s not necessarily just queer people who connect with Hills on queer issues – it’s often the community’s port of call on all issues, whether it’s climate change, public transport or infrastructure. “They might feel more comfortable coming to me because they know I’m not going to be narrow-minded or homophobic or transphobic,” he says. “The more people you have from different parts of the community in elected positions, it helps open the door to parts of the community that maybe haven’t been heard enough or have been treated quite badly by councilors in the past.”

While other councilors attend events like the Big Gay Out and get involved in Pride, there is clearly a greater expectation for Hills to attend events and be relevant in these spaces. It brings up the Auckland Pride debate of 2019, when there was a split in the community over police having to march in uniform during the parade. “I was definitely getting pressure from people to have positions and be really aware of who was ‘good’ and who wasn’t,” he says. “I’ve been doing everything in my power to try and listen to support the whole community in the areas they feel are important.”

Hills says it’s important for non-LGBTQ+ candidates to remember that the community cares about more than lightning rod issues like gender-neutral restrooms. “It’s important to keep reminding our colleagues that it’s not just talking to one gay person and thinking that’s the tick box for everything. We are all individuals who have different wants and needs for the city.”

This year Rosemary Peppermint, who is non-binary and trans, performed in Auckland’s Waitematā area for the first time. They got involved in politics after volunteering for Chlöe Swarbrick’s successful 2020 Auckland Central campaign and say it was a real life time: “I was working full-time in retail and it felt really detached from it and I wanted to do something that mattered.” The Swarbrick campaign showed them that politics could be the way to make that difference.

The community aspect was what really attracted them to local councils and what motivated them to run. It is the most grassroots, community-related area of ​​politics, they say. “I didn’t want to be an MP. I saw local government as something you do collectively with people. I really shine best in a team.”

Where they ran also played a factor – in the inner Auckland Waitematā district, six of the seven board members are affiliated with City Vision, the broadly progressive left collective. They knew it would be a “little safer place” to run to. “Of course, there’s still a lot that people need to learn, but that was something that was more encouraging.”

One of the things Peppermint is particularly passionate about is accessibility both in Auckland Council spaces and in the city as a whole. “When you talk about accessibility, I think people think of a wheelchair accessible bathroom or streets that are well paved. But it also means how easy it is for anyone to engage with what’s going on,” they say. “Council spaces don’t feel comfortable for queer people because they weren’t built for us.”

While they say they found the election campaign frustrating at times, it was also a motivating experience. “It’s much easier for me to have my privilege in this pocket of space, in a space that was created for whiteness and for people who already have privilege. The ways that I feel pressured by it as a non-binary trans person, as a queer person, make me want to wedge myself into that space and make it easier for people down the line to apply.”

Uwhen Rohan O’Neill-Stevens ran for Nelson Council in 2019, he, like Peppermint, made the decision out of both idealism and frustration. He had returned to his hometown after studying and saw that very little had been done to address pressing issues such as housing and climate change in the years he had been away. “This made me very angry. None of the candidates running at the time were that inspiring or representative of the communities I intersect with.

“And so I thought, shit. I’m going to throw my name in the ring and see where it goes.”

O’Neill-Stevens won his election and was thrown into a whole new world. At council meetings, he will often be the youngest person in the room by about 30 years by his estimation. He is also often the only person who is queer and who is Maori. “I really enjoyed spending three years doing real work for these communities,” he says. “But there were also some pretty uncomfortable and challenging moments where I’d be the only voice raising these issues and I’d run into people saying, ‘Give it a break.'”

Since being elected, O’Neill-Stevens has pushed for diversity training for councilors (it took two years to happen) and has worked to increase queer visibility and access to funding. “It’s been a challenge to put these issues on the agenda because there’s a perception that they don’t matter or that they’re not worth the time.” But what often happens is that the changes needed are relatively small, and you spend more time debating whether or not to discuss them than the time it would take to simply implement them.

O’Neill-Stevens, who is running for mayor in this year’s election, is seeing an increasing number of diverse candidates not only running for office, but also attracting votes. “It shows that it’s not necessarily the lack of communities that want that representation, but [about them] they didn’t give him the chance to have it,” he says. “I am very grateful for all these candidates who have put themselves forward in what can be an extremely challenging space.

“Without them, nothing will work.”