Lyric Waiwiri-Smith joins Peri Zee on a walking tour of Upper Hutt – and asks if she has what it takes to unseat one of New Zealand’s longest-serving mayors.

Peri Zee has an idea for just about every corner of Upper Hutt’s city centre, from the road cavities and pavement cracks to the shut-up shops on Main Street. Walking through the city, she stops every minute to watch a car bump over a pothole or to discuss the aesthetics of the cobbled pavement, worn down by decades of footsteps. It would be tedious nitpicking to some, but there’s no harm in having a laser focus on your neighbourhood – especially if you want to be the mayor.

The transport and climate change adviser, who has spent the last 14 years working with and for local councils, was one of the country’s earliest 2025 mayoral candidates  when, in June 2024,  she put up her hand to say “I want the big job”, announcing she would be running for Upper Hutt City Council. She challenges incumbent Wayne Guppy, who, if re-elected in October, would steal Tim Shadbolt’s crown as Aotearoa’s longest-standing mayor. Guppy has been the mayor here since 2001, a year after this reporter was born, while Shadbolt held the Invercargill mayoralty consecutively from 1998 to 2022 (as well as from 1993-1995).

We meet at Brewtown, a row of breweries sandwiched between a go-kart course and an outdoor stage that hosted Six60 in early February, tucked away in an industrial area of Upper Hutt. It’s a popular hangout for the city’s growing population of young families, but this place was also once a tyre factory, Zee reminds me – her father worked here when she was a young child.

The 34-year-old has essentially lived in Upper Hutt  all of her life, save for a stint in Amsterdam in her 20s. Her “politically vocal” and “very Dutch” grandparents had settled in Wairarapa decades ago, before her parents eventually moved to Wallaceville when Zee was a toddler. 

Today, she lives on the rural outskirts, with her two young sons, two dogs, her husband and another pride and joy: her garden, where her vision of a self-sustaining Upper Hutt is exercised on a small scale. She shares some sage advice her husband gave her right before she put her hat in the ring for the mayoralty: “You can’t be running for mayor and be a homesteader.”

Over a plate of salad, sauerkraut and smoked meat from Te Aro Brewing, Zee shares her urbanist vision for Upper Hutt. She says her focus as a mayor would be in what the council can “create for communities to feel like communities” – which is why one of her mayoral priorities would be to bring two new train stations to the city, one in Clouston Park, the other in Timberlea, extending the number of train stations in the city to seven. 

Zee reasons the new stations – which would have significant costs and construction times attached – would knock out a few of the city’s immediate issues: road congestion (especially for commuters who drive to Upper Hutt station to reach suitable public transport), social isolation between the northern suburbs and city centre, and housing, with the potential for homes to be built along the train line. The station in Timberlea would be complemented by Zee’s plans for a new community centre in the suburb, which could at some point turn into a larger retail centre.

A growth in housing would also address the city’s rising population of young families, but also Zee’s concerns of Upper Hutt becoming an “insurance retreat” as climate change worsens living standards in other areas of Wellington, specifically Petone, and it becomes harder for homeowners to get insurance. The coastal Hutt Valley town is experiencing both land subsidence and rising sea levels, twin blows that are expected to make the community disappear within the next 30 to 50 years.

Future-thinking can be pretty grim, but Zee is one of those glass-half-full sorts, quoting singer/activist Joan Baez: “Action is the antidote to despair … I still feel OK, because I’m taking action.”

We leave Brewtown, head to Fergusson Drive and pass a not-yet-ready-for-business H2O Xtream Aquatic Centre (the pool reopened a week after we spoke) to reach the council’s big, brutalist chambers. Zee puts her thoughts on the building pretty bluntly: “It doesn’t look very inviting, does it?” Well, no – it kind of looks like a jailhouse.

The building itself is symbolic of the limitations she sees within the council: a bit old, unchanged and lacking much appeal to its locals. As mayor, Zee hopes she could be someone her constituents feel connected to – which is also why she’s been trying to use social media platforms such as TikTok as campaigning tools, because how else are you supposed to get your messaging out to the masses?

“I love local government, and I’ve always wanted to see it get better,” Zee says. “I tried to make change as a community advocate, but I felt like there was so much structural and cultural change that needed to happen within the council for them to even be able to start accepting different ways of thinking.

“It’s really going to require a fundamental shift. The starting point of how you view your community’s opinion influences how you do everything as a council.”

Next door to the council building is the local library, and then Upper Hutt train station, where in the middle of the afternoon rows and rows of cars are parked – a visual reminder of how many locals need to drive to access public transport. And across from the train station is one of Zee’s favourite cafes: Cake & Kitchen, which offers beautifully baked slices and a place for locals to chat, catch up on work or just wait for the next train.

A block over from Fergusson Drive is Main Street, where you can find The Mall (named “NZ’s saddest mall” by Stuff, but, as Zee points out, there is a Lorna Jane there now), hip homeware store Humble & Grand, a few retro op shops and some empty retail spaces – a good mix of too-old mainstays and new spaces breathing a bit of life into the city. 

But Zee’s eyes are mostly glued to the ground, where she inspects every nick collected by the cobblestones and points out each pothole in the road. Upper Hutt’s roads are relatively old and well-worn, with few improvements made over the years – although the council is currently footing a $11m bill for two roundabouts, one of which will be moved about 10 metres from its current location in a bid to improve congestion. The money would probably have been better reserved for actually upgrading the roads, Zee says.

We drive to Mangaroa Farm, a lifestyle block and market farm tucked behind the city centre, up Whiteman’s Valley. This place embodying the symbiosis between farmers and the environment reflects Zee’s hopes for a self-sustaining city, where most of the food consumed by the locals is grown locally, and communities feel empowered in living self-sufficiently. A Bogan Town that is also a homesteader town: the lifestyles may be more closely related than we’d think.

Heading back into the city to Wallaceville Station, our last stop of the day, Zee is still brainstorming ideas for Upper Hutt’s future that she’ll focus on for the next few months of her campaign before the local election rush picks up speed in July, and voting starts in September – and pondering how she’ll make it up to her husband for having him cover the school pick-up while she drops off a journalist.

So, what makes her reckon she has what it takes to unseat Mayor Wayne Guppy? “I’m a change candidate for more reasons than wanting to change how they do everything,” Zee says. “At the moment, there’s a wide interpretation of what the role of a councillor is in local government … the way they think about it here is not quite as progressive as it could be.”

“I think there’s more to it in terms of being a leader and community champion, but also connecting with your communities … It’s so important to have a mix of skills around the council table, but everyone should be connected. I think that’s what the community is angry about here: they feel like they’re not being communicated with.”

Changing the mayoralty hasn’t been a big tradition in Upper Hutt since its council formed in 1966 – Rex Kirton, Guppy’s predecessor, had held the mayoralty for 24 years, and he was only the third mayor of the city. Challengers have made decent attempts in the past, such as councillor Angela McLeod, who came second to Guppy in 2019 and 2022, and who has not yet announced whether she will contest the mayoralty again.

But with compounding issues with healthcare access following the loss of the city’s after-hours care, as well as tension over proposed rates increases and how the council is spending its money, particularly following the $55m reopening of H2O Xtream, the people of Upper Hutt might just be tempted to break character and decide it’s time for a change.

Reminiscing on the road that brought her here, Zee can’t help but laugh when she remembers a moment from the last local election in 2022. At a community event, a colleague had tapped Guppy on the shoulder, and warned him: “Watch out, she’ll be after your job.”