Healthcare
The region’s healthcare was the most frequently mentioned issue. Students spoke at length about “under-resourcing” at Gisborne Hospital.
Many have family and friends who work at the hospital. Campion College’s Nadia Beard thought the hospital was “severely understaffed and underfunded”.
“[Staff have] advocated for change for so long and nothing’s really been happening,” she said. “It’s kind of hard seeing people come home so tired and so stressed about it when there should be so much more effort being put into helping them.”
Isaac Ng attends Gisborne Boys’ High and turns 18 on election day. He is planning to study health at university to support rural communities “who are chronically understaffed”. He and classmate Shaun Diver expressed frustration that people had to travel out of the region for specialist care.
“We have some of the highest depression rates for teenagers, obesity rates, suicide rates … we have a really high rate of rheumatic fever,” Shaun said.
“As long as you’re healthy, you can debate other topics and you can have other concerns, but as soon as someone in your life gets sick or has a very terrible diagnosis, everything else stops, and it becomes about that.”
Roads
Coming in a close second was the state of the region’s roads.
When asked what issues were affecting Gisborne’s young people, Gisborne Girls’ High student Mya Wilson immediately responded with “the roads”.
“Everybody talks about infrastructure,” classmate Nellie Varey said. “We were hit really hard by the cyclone [Gabrielle] and every time there’s another weather event, it just gets worse.”
Campion College students had a similar response.
“We’ve been asking for the roads to be fixed for so long, and we haven’t seen anything,” Amy Main said. “I go driving [down] one street … and pothole after pothole. My car is going to break. Like, please guys, I want these roads fixed.”
Lack of regional opportunities
All 10 students the Gisborne Herald spoke to plan to attend university next year.
Science and commerce degrees are popular picks, particularly healthcare-specific study paths.
Most want to return eventually to start families, but not in the foreseeable future.
Mya said being a young person in Gisborne was “kinda boring”.
“There’s nothing for us young ones to do besides, I don’t know, drink,” classmate Charlie Ireland said. “That’s literally all there is to do. You see a lot of people, like younger kids, roaming in the middle of the night because there’s nowhere to go.”
Isaac felt Gisborne had been “left by the wayside” compared with other developing cities.
Shaun and classmate Alexander Dinkel have considered moving to Australia because “the money’s a lot better than just trying to find a job in New Zealand”.
“[I’ve] definitely thought about it because why wouldn’t you?” Alexander said.
Artificial intelligence was brought up twice, unprompted, by Gisborne Girls’ High and Campion students.
For Nadia, AI was “definitely” something she thought about when it came to planning her career.
She had been interested in studying marketing, but her parents told her there was a risk of AI taking roles in the field.
“It’s annoying having to be worried about that when you are already sacrificing stuff you enjoy for a job that’s more secure to get more money.
“But now you’ve also got to sacrifice, like, that kind of creativity, and even more enjoyment to get a secure job for money that’s also not going to be taken over by AI … so it’s like, what options am I left with?”
Fees Free
Finances framed the discussion at every school, with most of the students in the process of applying for scholarships.
Shaun said scholarships were a “heavy decider” in choosing a university.
Classmate Jake Higgins, a former youth MP for Labour’s Cushla Tangaere-Manuel, is expecting his first year at uni to cost about $32,000. He said the scrapping of the Fees Free scheme for tertiary students at the end of this year was “saddening”.
“They want rangatahi, they want us to go to work … [but] we can’t get that job unless we have thousands of dollars to go and learn about that job at university?”
Charlie said bringing back Fees Free could convince her to vote for a party.
“I understand not having it first year, because people take advantage of it,” Charlie said.
“…but especially having it last year would help,” Mya added.
“Maybe just more help for uni kids in general,” Nellie said. “I think it’s kind of lacking.”
Political leanings
The students said they were drawn to parties across the political spectrum.
The Opportunity Party, Labour and the Greens were the most popular among those spoken with. However, most were still undecided about which would win their vote.
Tamatha Paul, the Greens’ candidate for the Wellington North electorate, was the fan favourite. Paul was mentioned by at least one student from each school, and this was often met with nods from their peers.
Jake thinks Paul, who is 29, is “just amazing”.
“She’s always advocating for what’s right, really, in my eyes … she’s just like me, too. She’s still very young, and I look up to her.”
Nadia often sees Paul’s posts on social media.
“She seems to advocate for lots of things and doesn’t back down, and I think that’s pretty cool.”
Most students said they got their political information from social media, but all were wary of taking posts at face value.
“I know that the parties can kind of create their own, like, what they want people to perceive them as, so I’m kind of careful with what I believe,” Nadia said.
For the East Cape electorate, incumbent Dana Kirkpatrick, of National, was the most commonly mentioned candidate. Some students said she was the only local candidate they knew of.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be running the country?’
Although Alexander has enrolled to vote, he does not plan to do so as he feels he is “not informed enough to make a proper decision”.
Most of the students said they felt voting wouldn’t make a difference. Some said they didn’t know enough about politics and needed to do their research.
“I’ve felt this way, where, just what’s the point in voting? Like what change am I kind of going to make?” Amy said. “We’re kind of screwed. [Young people are] not a big fan of the options, so they’re just kind of like, ‘Oh, let whoever gets it, get it.’”
Across all schools, students said they were tired of political bickering.
Alexander said it was one of the reasons he had chosen not to vote.
“Each party’s trying to demean the other one, trying to put each other down, so it kind of seems like none of them can do a good job.”
Amy said National and Labour social media posts making digs at each other were “really stupid”.
“I was like, come on – aren’t you supposed to be running our country?”
Asked whether he thought young people felt heard by politicians, Jake replied: “No, absolutely not. Political parties and people in politics have their own view on what New Zealand should look like, and they’re not going to change that because rangatahi views suggest something else.”
Thoughts on the current Government
Students had mixed attitudes towards the coalition Government.
Campion College student Rio Knight felt it was “doing as good as they can”.
Nellie said it was “personally, not my cup of tea”.
Isaac felt it was “largely inoffensive”, apart from the failed Treaty Principles Bill.
Charlie thought some things – such as anti-stalking legislation – were positive, but “[the current Government was] benefiting bigger companies and other people than it is other people that are, like, low-income”.
Amy liked National’s approach to farming, but “I don’t agree with National taking the funds away from autistic people”. Her brother, who has autism, used to receive support from the Government, but “now he gets nothing”.
“I know my brother used to get a little bit of money … [but] that was taken away, that funding is gone. [But] I do understand National’s approach with trying to get us out of debt.”
Nellie felt important issues were being ignored.
“[It] seems to me [they’re] changing what they want to change, rather than listening to the people who voted them in,” she said. “… Why are we taking away kids’ phones in schools before we’re supporting people in hospital and stuff like that, and supporting people who are in poverty and, like, the housing crisis?”
In general, the students were not disengaged, but felt disillusioned.
“Are you actually going to do change?” Amy asked of political leaders. “The amount of people we have had who promise so much and promise things for Gisborne and you never see it … I hope they actually do what they say they will.”