Press Power List 2024: The ones to watch
Last weekend, we listed the 50 most powerful people in the South Island in the Press Power List. Some healthy debate followed and questions were naturally asked. What is power, anyway? Is it merely political or financial? What about cultural power and that less tangible quality we call influence?
The top 50 are the power brokers of 2024. They are the established names. But we also want to know who will wield power tomorrow. Who are the ones to watch?
Unlike the longer list, the following 10 names run in no particular order. But you should see them exerting power or displaying influence in areas as diverse as sport, politics, food, tertiary education, the arts and climate action in years to come. As ever, we welcome your feedback and suggestions.
James Meager
The National MP for Rangitata made a big splash with his maiden speech in 2023. In fact, a standing ovation followed. Meager spoke of being from “simple, straightforward people from a simple, straightforward part of the world”. He described a world unfamiliar to many in Parliament: “My dad is Ngāi Tahu, a freezing worker most of his life, a little Māori kid who was kicked out of school at 14 and who never told his parents, hiding in bedroom closets and spending afternoons down the river until he was old enough to convince his folks to let him go to work at 15. Until yesterday, he had never stepped foot in the North Island.”
Meager was raised by a solo mother in a state house and told Stuff his first memory was of being coaxed out from under a bed by a police officer. He went on to be head boy and dux at Timaru Boys’ High School, and studied law and politics at Otago University. As he said in Parliament, it might seem contradictory that he stood for National, but the parties on the left do not own Māori and do not own the poor.
Jorja Miller
Jorja Miller is another rising star who started in Timaru. If 2023 was a big year for the now 20-year-old Miller, 2024 should be no less spectacular.
The so-called “try-machine from Timaru” was named Rookie of the Year by World Rugby in 2023, and when she signed a contract committing to NZ Rugby and the Black Ferns Sevens for four years, it was the longest contract yet for a woman in local rugby history. Miller will now have her sights set on Olympic glory in Paris. A powerful player who came up
through Timaru Girls’ High and Christchurch Girls’ High, Miller also excelled in highland dancing and basketball. Tankfully, rugby won. Sara Templeton
Could the Green councillor from Heathcote be Christchurch’s next mayor? Some have been speculating about a mayoral bid from Templeton in 2025 or, failing that, 2028. Others are wondering if Christchurch is progressive enough for a Green mayor. Either way, Templeton has established herself as one of the smartest and most principled politicians around the council table since she was elected in 2016, and she has held the climate change portfolio since 2022.
She also made headlines for taking a stand against online trolls who targeted her and other female politicians in Christchurch, and she revealed the personal cost of such abuse. She showed that to be affected by such trolling is not a weakness. “Do we want only thick-skinned, unfeeling and aloof representatives making decisions that impact our lives?” she asked in 2024. Grant Robertson
Okay, Grant Robertson is not exactly an unknown up-and-comer, but the former Labour finance minister’s return to Dunedin in July, to take up the role of vice-chancellor at Otago University, is a powerful move. Not just because of the obvious symbolism of the one-time student leader going back to his home town as the boss of the country’s oldest university, but because Robertson, a former tertiary education spokesperson, has long held informed views about where the sector is at, and what it needs.
What can we expect from Robertson when he hits Otago? He told TVNZ’s Q + A in an exit interview from Parliament that we need “better collaboration” between our universities. Internally, he will be dealing with an institution that has experienced three years of declining student numbers and faced budget shortfalls. Lan Pham
When she was put at number 6 on the Green Party list in 2023, there was never much doubt that Banks Peninsula candidate Lan Pham would make it to Wellington. Picked by the party as the successor to retired Green MP Eugenie Sage, Pham graduated from Otago University with a masters degree in ecology and was a two-term Environment Canterbury councillor before she ran for Parliament.
She famously ran a quirky campaign for ECan while doing a 13-month stint as a biodiversity and conservation manager on remote Raoul Island in the Kermadecs. South Island rivers and native fish are of particular interest, and she once produced a parody Taylor Swift video about Canterbury water quality. She is also New Zealand’s first MP of Vietnamese heritage. Flip Grater
Christchurch musician turned food entrepreneur Flip Grater aims to change the world, one vegan chorizo sausage at a time. In 2018 she opened a vegan delicatessen and cafe called Grater Goods with French Moroccan husband Yousef Iskrane. Along with vegan chorizo, a growing range of products include carrot lox and “furkey”, which is a soy version of turkey (there is also “faken” and “faux gras”). Rather than being angry at the world, she believes it is better to put something positive into it, whether it is a song or ethical food.
As for her unusual first name, Grater was originally Clare, but when she started a petition to save the Hector’s dolphin at the age of 15, her friends started calling her Flipper, shortened to Flip. Kaylee Bell
A native of South Canterbury, Kaylee Bell left New Zealand in her 20s to pursue a career in country music and made a triumphant homecoming in 2024, when she played before thousands at a free event at the Caroline Bay Carnival in Timaru. She is also doing three consecutive nights in Waimate followed by a night in Balclutha. That’s real heartland touring.
She told the Timaru Herald in January that when she saw Stan Walker at Caroline Bay in 2015, she hoped to play at the same venue one day and draw even just a tenth of the crowd. Instead, she may have exceeded Walker’s audience size. The tour has been in support of her third album, Nights Like This. After success in Australia, where she won Female Artist of the Year at the Golden Guitar Awards, and a support gig with Ed Sheeran, the current tour is not her first rodeo. Finn Ross
The son of Lake Hawea Station farmers Geoff and Justine Ross, Finn Ross has emerged as a highly motivated champion of climate action. A PhD candidate at Deakin University, Ross is researching the use of seaweed as a climate solution, after studying ecology and economics at the University of Canterbury.
He is also the founder of the carbon credit exchange Carbonz, the host of the Both Sides Now political podcast and the co-chair of Future Farmers New Zealand, among a range of other climate-related and future-focused activities.
As a student, he helped launch a kombucha company from his Ilam flat. He says that “my work centres on nature connection, climate solutions and building an inclusive ecologically sound society”, and “above all my heart belongs to the most remote valleys of Te Waipounamu and reefs of the Pacific”. Aurora Garner-Rudolph
Eighteen-year-old Christchurch student Aurora Garner-Rudolph already has an impressive track record in political and climate activism, ranging from disrupting ACT leader David Seymour’s media conference before the election with a wellplaced sign to much more serious and lasting work.
That includes protests about the Christchurch City Council’s woefully slow pace in reducing emissions and its controversial plans to develop an airport in Central Otago and campaigning for cycleways and the return of passenger rail.
She wrote about the power of protest in The Press in 2023.
“Don’t get me wrong: voting in elections is crucial,” she wrote.
“But our participation in democracy must extend out from the poll stations and into the streets if we want to see tangible action on the climate crisis.” Kiran Dass
Bookworm and music fan Kiran Dass moved from the North Island in 2022 to succeed Rachael King as programme director of the respected and popular Word Christchurch writers’ festival, which immediately made Dass one of the gatekeepers of New Zealand literature.
She has twice judged the fiction prize in the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards, including 2024’s still top-secret winner. The prize itself is worth $65,000 to some lucky or deserving author.
As a cultural critic, Dass appears as a book reviewer on RNZ’s Nine to Noon and as a music boffin in the pages of highly specialist UK publication, The Wire.
She is also rumoured to have a very good record collection.