In a new series of one-on-one pub chats with MPs, The Spinoff sits down with Green Party and Wellington Central MP Tamatha Paul, who’s been taking notes on Zohran Mamdani’s rise in New York and worrying about the capital’s arts and culture reputation.
It’s Tamatha Paul’s first time in parliament’s new bar, Pint of Order, the exclusive drinking hole-in-the-wall set right in the middle of the building’s ground floor lobby. Beers are $8, the decor is expectedly politically themed, space is tight and the country’s most powerful can be found squashed together on leather seats, a part of a $7m upgrade to parliament’s ministerial offices paid for by the taxpayer – but if a lowly Spinoff reporter on a modest salary can make it here, then it really can’t be so upper-crust.
We catch up in a dark corner, with a glass of Parrotdog pilsner in my hand and a coke in Paul’s – she isn’t much of a drinker although, sure, there were two beers had over the weekend at the Phoenix v Wrexham match. But living with lupus and rheumatoid arthritis means hangovers tend to be week-long, and when you’re an MP, you “can’t afford” to have a few days off your A-game. And anyway, Paul reckons she doesn’t “need alcohol to be a vibe”.
“Starting politics when I was 21, I was just super aware that if I was caught partying, smoking, anything – that wouldn’t reflect well,” Paul says, remembering the alcohol-related opportunities and events she turned down as a Wellington city councillor. “Over time I kinda got to a place where I was like, ‘oh, young Māori are looking up to me, and I don’t want to be representing that’.”
Recently, she travelled on her first international government delegation to the US (“I may have archived two Instagram posts about Donald Trump”), to speak with officials and get a sense of life under the second Trump administration. For Paul, the trip provided an opportunity to understand how Trump secured the working-class vote (“I think I’ve got half the story, they might need to send me on another trip”) and watch up-close the rise of Zohran Mamdani (who won the Democratic New York mayoral primary just a few days after she left the city), which gave her some lessons to bring back to Aotearoa.
The first being that intellectual elitism and intolerance is tearing the left apart: “we are the first to shit on each other, and we don’t even have to wait for the right to do that.” And secondly, that the “supremacy” of university education has made polytechnics and trades training seem like the “poorer cousins” in comparison. “I think we need to emphasise training and giving people those skills to build the houses and venues we need, to do tech and production for the arts, to fill up our hospitals and rest homes,” she says.
Which brings Paul’s mind back closer to home, to Te Auaha, Whitireia and WelTec’s creative campus in the middle of Wellington city which is facing closure. She reckons there’s enough wealthy creatives in the city to be able to purchase the campus and bring it back to life – sure, it’ll take “a bit of political willpower”, but it could also be essential to ensuring the city’s creative reputation lives on.
Paul says she sometimes feels “like a fraud” when boasting about Wellington being the “arts and culture capital”. Te Auaha’s closure just adds to her lists of cons for creatives in the city, next to the lack of venues on offer and the “really shitty quality of housing”. As for the pros, at least there’s Newtown Festival and Cubadupa, and Paul hopes the organisers behind the latter event could take up the space left by Homegrown – at least for now, we can still claim to be the local festival capital.
At 28 years old, Paul is looking forward to playing the long game in parliament. All things considered, she’s already had a longer political career than many others who have come through the House, but there’s still more than 50 years between herself and parliament’s oldest minister. “[Politics is] easier to do when you’re young and you don’t have heaps of commitments, but you sacrifice being normal, which is hard,” Paul says. “It completely whacks out your personal timeline for when you want to have kids, when you want to get married … Those are just scary concepts, because I barely have time for myself, but then I’m also getting older.”
I tell her I couldn’t do what she does, honestly. She tells me she wouldn’t mind swapping places – cracking jokes can’t be much harder than this.
THE SPINOFF PUB Q+A
How much should a pint cost?
$5 — that’s how much they were at the RSA that I worked at [during] high school.
Do you have a karaoke go-to?
Regulate by Warren G and Nate Dogg, but you need a partner to do it. I’m Warren G, and whoever’s got the beautiful Nate Dogg harmonies can join my set up.
Favourite place to get a drink in Aotearoa?
My all-time favourite nostalgic spot would be Hunter Lounge balcony, but also Ascot for a winter night, and Rogue and Vagabond lawn for a little summer beer.
Which three MPs would be on your pub quiz team?
Gerry [Brownlee], he’s got enormous historic and international knowledge and can cover off sports, and I’m leaning towards Winston Peters, because he’s got good political and historic knowledge, but also pop culture knowledge. And I might put Lawrence [Xu-Nan] in there, because he’s super smart.
Which MP from across the aisle would you most like to share a drink with?
Judith Collins, because she’s the mother of the House, she’s the longest serving woman MP in the House, and I think she would have some really constructive advice for a young woman like myself in politics.
Is there an alcohol-related law you would like to change?
I would like a law change that means that alcohol stores can’t be concentrated in deprived areas, and on a local level, I want Wellington City Council to have a local alcohol policy, because alcohol is the biggest driver of harm in our city. I’m not saying I want everyone to be sober – I’m just saying that access plays a big role.
What’s a policy area we’ve been nursing without finishing the glass?
Fast fashion.
What qualities make a good drinking partner?
I love having yarns with old people. I think it’s because I grew up listening to my granddad and his yarns, but I just love listening to what they have to say. They’ve lived some lives, you know.
Have you ever had a Schnapp’s election moment where you regretted your political instinct?
Probably.
Up next on One MP, One Pint: Labour MP Peeni Henare.
