The Wairarapa electorate covers a large chunk of Central Hawke\u2019s Bay, including Waipukurau and Waipawa.<\/p>\n
Shepherd, 31, is a relief teacher in primary and intermediate schools, and was formerly a Navy chef.<\/p>\n
He said his main goal was to promote a party vote for Opportunity, rather than win the Wairarapa electorate.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to reject people if they want to vote for me, but my primary message is to let people know that Opportunity is a party vote.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said there were \u201cno easy fixes\u201d for a lot of issues, such as cost of living, and Opportunity offered something different to voters to make change.<\/p>\n
As for education, he said he would like to see smaller class sizes introduced.<\/p>\n
\u201cTeacher-to-student ratios will have the biggest impact on kids long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shepherd has not previously lived in the Wairarapa electorate, and is now basing himself between Lower Hutt and Masterton.<\/p>\n
Ward, a Havelock North mum of two, is the general manager of Cape Sanctuary, a privately-owned wildlife sanctuary at Cape Kidnappers.<\/p>\n
Ward said conservation advocacy was the driver for her pursuing politics.<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking in conservation in New Zealand is very rewarding, but also very frustrating as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said there were a lot of improvements that could be made, which could have wide-reaching impacts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur habitat is the foundation of everything we do, so we really have to look after it and restore nature,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cLooking at the current state of our fresh water, almost 50% of our rivers and lakes are unswimmable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m 40, and when I was a child I was swimming in rivers all the time, and my kids can\u2019t do that.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said one thing she\u2019d like to see, for example, was the national co-ordination of all the projects happening across the country.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a lot of amazing work being done, but it is quite unco-ordinated and fragmented. So, doing national frameworks for those and [putting] national goals in place.\u201d<\/p>\n
There is still plenty of time for candidates to be announced, with official candidate nominations (through the Electoral Commission) opening on September 7 and closing October 8, when the official list of candidates is released. <\/p>\n
Candidates announced to date<\/p>\n
Napier: incumbent Katie Nimon (National), Alex Hedley<\/a> (Labour)<\/p>\n Tukituki: incumbent Catherine Wedd (National), Taine Randell<\/a> (NZ First), Rachel Ward (Opportunity), Kaleb Hawkins (Independent)<\/p>\n Wairarapa: incumbent Mike Butterick (National), Kieran McAnulty (Labour), Matt Shepherd (Opportunity)<\/p>\n Ikaroa-R\u0101whiti: incumbent Cushla Tangaere-Manuel (Labour), Haley Maxwell<\/a> (Te P\u0101ti M\u0101ori), Heather Te Au-Skipworth<\/a> (Green)<\/p>\n *More candidates are still to be announced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wairarapa electorate covers a large chunk of Central Hawke\u2019s Bay, including Waipukurau and Waipawa. Shepherd, 31, is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2246,95,1561,21323,1389,13116,5903,2294,226,1976,19755,70487,13489,10005,111,43,139,69,1118,56638,7574,11744,38714,102],"class_list":["post-405392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-2246","tag-and","tag-bay","tag-candidates","tag-conservation","tag-contest","tag-election","tag-general","tag-growing","tag-hawkes","tag-join","tag-joining","tag-leader","tag-list","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-seats","tag-teacher","tag-upcoming","tag-vying","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405392\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}