Valedictory speeches by Liv Roe and Julia Maskill

Liv Roe during her valedictory address to the Albert-Eden Local Board.

Liv Roe is retiring from the Albert-Eden Local Board after the 2022-2025 term, to pursue new adventures overseas. In her valedictory speech to the Board’s final meeting on 25 September, she reflects on leadership, humility and ongoing learning.

It has been a great privilege and pleasure to serve the community over the last three years as an Elected Member for the Albert-Eden Local Board. I am filled with humility and gratitude for the opportunity to become just one of the voices for our diverse community of over 100,000 people. There are not enough ‘thank you’s I can repeat that will ever be enough to express my gratitude to the staff for their patience, insights, and expertise. You all make our visions and sometimes very ambiguous ideas to life. Thank you! Thank you to our people. Thank you to the community of the Albert-Eden Local Board, including those beyond our borders who have special bonds to our town centres, our arts scenes, or our local sports teams.

We all know community knows no borders. The impact of our work ripples throughout Tāmaki Makaurau, be it with our nationally renowned events like Big Gay Out or our locally loved bakeries like Muzza’s Pies in Mount Albert. I am very proud to be a part of our community.

When I first campaigned for this position, I sought to make decisions with humans over numbers on an Excel sheet in mind. This included always pushing for community wellbeing, better delivery of the arts and cultural programmes, and advocating for action within the principles of Te Tiriti and bilingualism (not just out of legal obligation but because of the spirit of progress). And although it has been a challenging term with immovable and opposing philosophies on this board, we all managed to get on with the work week after week, year after year.

There are many things I’ve learnt from being a governor in Auckland Council. The most important of it all can be summed up in the old saying, “The more I learn, the less I know”. We, as Elected Members, have been shown time and time again that we do not know everything, and to listen to our staff, the engineers, the community experts, the people with degrees on the subject and those on the ground. Often, I’ve had to swallow my pride, put aside my established ideologies and often limiting beliefs to make decisions for this community for a better outcome. This has been the most humbling experience as a leader. I have chosen to take on a new chapter in my life as a learner and student of life before I lead again, because I have now learnt to place greater value in being able to admit that there are gaps in my knowledge and blindspots in my worldviews.

So, lastly, I would like to thank my fellow Elected Members on this board. Thank you to those of you who have shown professionalism, class, respect and given space to hear each other out. It is my hope for this board in the future to be able to create a culture of continued respect and science-based and ethically informed decision-making. Kia Ora.

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Julia Maskill is retiring from the Board after two terms. In her address, she reflects on the big issues that have driven her, on progress over the last two terms, and what remains to be done.

Tēnā koutou. Ko Julia Maskill tōku ingoa. He Tangata Tiriti au.

Tēnā koutou katoa.

Mōrena, I’m Julia Maskill and I acknowledge that I’m here today by virtue of te Tiriti ō Waitangi.

It’s been an honour and pleasure to serve on the Albert Eden local board for two full terms.

Today I want to start and finish thanking our local board staff for their helpfulness and dedication to democracy. They have often given me extra time and wisdom with great patience and grace—thank you.

Also, I’d like to draw a few threads together and identify issues which motivated me to stand in the first place, starting with some background.

I migrated from England 50 years ago, and lived in Ōtautahi Christchurch, Pōneke Wellington, and London before Tāmaki Makaurau. In each city, I came to feel I belonged when I shared public transport and public places with locals and attended events. Here today we depend on attracting and keeping people, especially young people. So I’ve always been happy to support investment in events and public places, and to prioritise our public libraries. For replacement of the Point Chev library I advocated with others for a dedicated building and least delay.

I believe social infrastructure is core local government business and I oppose removing social and cultural wellbeing from our statutory purposes.

I’ve also advocated a lot for maximising intensification and the infrastructure it requires, especially public transport, choices for safe cycling and walking, and more open space. These are signalled as broad policy direction in Auckland Council’s long term plans, but I think we hesitate. We worry too much about today’s objectors and losing popularity. We need a future focus. We are losing young people to other more advanced cities.

There are three big issues that have preoccupied me over the last six years.

1. Climate action

Climate change became a dominant driver for me when I studied for a Masters in Environmental Law. After graduating in 2018, I helped put together a submission by academics at Auckland University on Auckland Council’s proposed climate action plan. I got interested in Council’s potential climate actions and I put myself forward to stand for election.

I was pretty disappointed when shortly after being elected I was reprimanded by an unnamed board advisor (not present today) for asking about the climate change implications of a decision staff were recommending. In 2019, climate action was beyond the scope of staff responsibilities.

However, in 2020 Council went on to adopt the climate action plan, Te Tāruke-ā-Tāwhiri. Now, as business as usual, staff include a section on climate change implications in every report. Recently, staff flagged the greenhouse-gas-emitting boiler at Mount Albert Aquatic Centre as a major emitter of greenhouse gases. I’m grateful that all members of the board supported my formal request to staff to seek priority replacement of this under the regional programme.

Also on climate action, I led the charge for the board to have our own local plan. Despite scepticism in some quarters, we now have a climate activator and an extensive programme of local climate initiatives. Reporting includes estimates of climate emissions saved, which helps justify the programme’s existence.

2. Prioritising vulnerable people

Along with other board members, I have been pleased to advocate and support funding for:

• mental health services via the board’s grants programme,

• tenants’ rights education with CAB—still a work in progress, and

• a town centre community connection project.

3. Te Tiriti obligations

I’m especially proud to have worked with Member Christina Robertson supporting the largest local project of Māori economic development in our rohe: the application for Private Plan Change 94 to increase capacity at the combined Māori iwi Wairaka precinct (now ‘Te Kukūnga Waka’) on Carrington Road.

Although we were outvoted, we at least got on record that a minority of board members supported the application.

I still feel that a political commitment to Māori development had to translate in practice to supporting iwi to achieve the maximum appropriate capacity for the land that came to them from the Crown as part of Treaty settlement. In our support we also stated concern about undersupply of open space for the precinct, which Auckland Council’s own open space acquisition and provision policies seems to be partly responsible for.

Frustratingly, a recent joint working party and a policy review have both failed to create better solutions for brownfields developments. We will have more of these to come in Albert-Eden because of investment in public transport routes here and our proximity to where people work and study. Fortunately all current members agree the current state of Auckland Council’s open space policy is a very bad sign for the future of Auckland’s vital intensification project - it’s unsustainable. I hope that members of the next board will do everything they can to fight to make a difference.

4. Informal open space

New Zealand research shows mental health benefits from access to nature. I acknowledge the work pioneered by Otago University’s Professor in public health policy Dr Louise Signal. We must have more open space—for sports and informal access to outdoors. Residents of apartments and town houses need somewhere to access fresh air and sunlight and to let off steam. Personally, I think we have to share all our open space out to make sure we dedicate enough for every purpose, sports and informal recreation.

The reason I particularly advocate for informal open space for future residents is because they have no present organised voice. I do support more sports fields. I would love it if supporters of organised sports clubs could reciprocate and support provision for more informal open space. We have scarce resources and need to play fairly and share them out.

These are some of the other areas where I’ve advocated for change:

• We don’t hear enough from young people on the matters on which we make decisions.

• So far, we have no strategic understanding of our property holdings to inform leasing and disposal decisions.

• External contractors don’t necessarily do a better job than Council staff.

• Local boards should have better transparency on financial aspects of our massive maintenance contract.

• We need specialist expertise to help establish significant partnerships, especially around facilities

• We should massively increase the Board’s tree planting.

• The Board should always consider the proportion of overall spend on different expenditure areas.

Again, thanks to staff’s efforts, I believe there’s progress on each of these matters. But I certainly think that whoever said it takes more than one term to see impact at Auckland Council was right. So I leave my last meeting, with thanks again to staff for their hard work. Also to all board members, especially for the collaboration, tea, humour and therapy dogs. Thanks to all my family and friends for endless support and tolerance. Especially to my partner Paul, who continues his hard work.

I used to egg on many friends, including Paul, to go into politics before he pointed out it was actually my dream, not his. It’s been great, and I couldn’t have done it without him—especially the hoardings.

Wishing all the best to Member Liv Roe, who like me is stepping down.

And to all others for an illustrious future on the board.

Julia Maskill gives her valedictory address to the Albert-Eden Local Board.