Greens offer rebel without the yell
Only non-shouty candidate believes in different kind of leadership: ‘I think shoutiness turns young people off’
Rebekah Jaung ordered tofu soup and said she was sortof a vegetarian, but not among Koreans. “Not when my grandmother is cooking.” Because she won’t understand? “Because I haven’t told her.”
I had kimchi soup with pork, which Jaung said was “very good if you’ve got any kind of head cold”, and I thought that might be me, you never know. It was very good.
We were in Northcote Centre, which has long been one of the epicentres of Korean life in Auckland.
Right opposite us was an art installation called The Claw, where kids turn up every afternoon and do their best to use a giant claw to grab soft toys. It’s free, and fun, and according to some people on Facebook, said Jaung, it’s ratepayers’ money wasted on rich kids.
There are no rich kids in Northcote Centre. It has a faded prettiness, the leaves falling from the trees, everything moderately scaled and shabbily neglected. It’s getting a makeover, one of these days. Right now, the roads all around are getting the makeover — wider paths for kids to bike to school, safer streets. Cones everywhere.
“People complain on Facebook about that too,” said Jaung. “People complain about a lot of things on Facebook. There’s a white supremacist group. They want to send all immigrant MPs ‘back to where they came from’.” She laughed. “It’s called ‘Immigrant Greed and Corruption’.”
Jaung was born in Britain and came to New Zealand at 6. Her father was a minister in a local church, her mother teaches preschool.
Jaung herself is a doctor of medicine and is now doing a PhD. She’s 30 years old and works parttime for the Public Health Service, dividing her time between refugee health and infectious diseases.
Why is she standing for Parliament? “I think Northcote needs a voice like mine,” she said.
I asked: Like what? “One promoting Green ideas. A young woman. Also, the fact that I’m a doctor, that helped in some of the debates,” she said.
In the 2017 election, which she also contested, she was able to call out the sitting member, then-Health Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman.
She did well in 2017. The Greens ranked their top 41 candidates and she wasn’t among them, but she generated a better party vote than 28 other non-MPs who were. Her candidate vote held up too.
Was that evidence of a “Korean vote”? She said no. “I do get a lot of emotional support from Koreans. They might not vote Green but they really support what I’m doing.”
It’s the perennial problem of the Greens: far more people want them around than vote to keep them there.
But really, why is she standing this time? She’ll be very lucky to get even 10 per cent of the vote and doesn’t she risk spoiling it for Labour’s Shanan Halbert?
She said she didn’t believe that. “To start with, I don’t accept that every Green voter would vote Labour if I wasn’t here. There are Blue-Green voters. Me being here gives them someone to vote for.”
Besides, “In a democracy voters should have a choice. It’s up to them to decide who to vote for.”
Not that you would mistake Rebekah Jaung for a Blue-Green.
At a candidates’ debate with an audience from the local social services this week, she said, “We need to talk about the causes of poverty.” Her list included “racism, sexism and the remnants of colonial history”.
Later in the same meeting she said, “It’s great we’re talking about poverty and homelessness. The media tries to frame this election as being all about congestion. Which,” she added with a sigh, “is not inspiring and not true.” Definitely not a Blue-Green. During our lunch she said, “When I hear them talking about how the transport plan doesn’t do anything for Northcote it makes me shudder.”
The “transport plan” is the new $28 billion accord between the Auckland Council and the Government.
“Them” is National candidate Dan Bidois and Act candidate Stephen Berry, who say Northcote’s transport needs are being ignored. Why do they make her shudder?
“Because they’re saying your own benefit is more important than the good of everyone. They reduce politics to a question of who gets the biggest slice of the pie. And that ignores so many things. People on the North Shore go into town, we catch buses there, we use all sorts of services that we benefit from.”
She supports the housing initiatives in the electorate. “There was a house near here that burned down a while ago, and the burnedout shell just sat there for ages. It was like a symbol of how no one cared about the people who live here.”
That’s changing now. “The new homes are good. They’re not the tower blocks of yesteryear. These places are nice, they utilise the space well. But it worries me that affordable and market houses are being built on public land, because it privatises a public resource. And there are problems for some of the former state-house tenants too. I’ve met families who are being moved away.”
South Korea’s candlelight protest movement in 2016 and 2017, and its rallies against corrupt President Park Geun-hye, impressed Jaung.
She belongs to a group that organises similar events here: protest rallies, film evenings, debates. “It’s been a good way for progressive voices to discover each other and we’ve had quite big numbers.”
I couldn’t stop myself asking about Trump and Kim Jong Un. “My hot take?” she said, and laughed. “I’m excited and hopeful. I don’t support Trump, of course not, but I feel I have to be hopeful.”
And Kim Jong Un? “He’s smarter than the caricature.”
I asked where her politics came from. “When I was young I listened to a lot of punk music. I was probably, at least on the inside, a bit of a rebel at high school [Westlake Girls].”
A rebel on the inside? “I read a lot of books with rebellious ideas.”
George Orwell, she said, and mentioned his 1930s account of working-class poverty and his own critical engagement with socialism. It led her to the Green Party. Definitely, definitely not a Blue-Green.
She’s soft spoken and not afraid to remain so. At a debate in Beach Haven on Monday night, heckling was encouraged and party loyalists of all types rowdily obliged. I told her I was struck that many of the abusive hecklers were older white men. “Were you surprised? Why?” Jaung’s opponents from National, Labour and Act all oozed boyish confidence. She was the only nonshouty one. “I’m conscious of being part of a politics that I want,” she said. “Quietly debating ideas.”
Quietly debating? Wasn’t that, well, boring? “Okay. It doesn’t have to be quiet. But debate and ideas.
“I think shoutiness turns young people off. I believe in a different kind of leadership.”
I think Northcote needs a voice like mine. One promoting Green ideas. A young woman. Also, the fact that I’m a doctor, that helped in some of the debates. Rebekah Jaung, Green candidate