Shanti Mathias was runner up in the “Junior Feature Writer of the Year” category of the 2023 Voyager Media Awards for her journalism in The Spinoff.

Another year, another election to get enthusiastic (?) about. In my work as a journalist I read a lot of news — possibly too much — and occasionally interview politicians. From my vantage point, politics is at once a kind of thrilling entertainment, a rich well of article ideas and something fundamental: floundering humans trying to say something, change something about their communities, to represent someone or something.

So, what to make of the 2023 New Zealand election? I’m interested in how elections are a moment to think about what matters to you — for the people in your community, and the people far beyond.

Part of my work as a journalist includes occasionally doing vox pops — quotes from “the voice of the people”, otherwise known as strangers I walk up to and introduce myself to on the street. It’s always fascinating to ask what people care about: many people want to talk about the cost of living or the failures of the education or justice system, but there are other moments too. A man talks, movingly, about his heartache for Indonesian refugees; another discusses the need for fun in the community, for playgrounds and parks and places of leisure. Others don’t know what they care about: I reel off a list of areas — tax, inequality, healthcare, foreign trade — and they consider. (By the by, policy.nz is an excellent non-partisan resource for learning about what each electoral candidate represents.)

It’s easy to be cynical about politics. What can the people who purport to represent us really do, really change? Will they keep their promises? I sympathise with this: talking to people I don’t know about their political beliefs is a reminder that I live in a kind of freakish bubble where it is normal to know what was said in the House last Tuesday, when so many have no time or space to think about this. It’s all too easy for politics to feel distant and irrelevant, like something that happens to other people, not your ordinary grinding days, the weeds in the garden, the receipt reeling its way out of the self-checkout machine at the supermarket.

The election is just one day (with a little advance voting); just a piece of paper with some ink on it, a tiny contribution of imagination to how the next three years could go. But it can be an opportunity, too, to consider: What do I care about beyond myself? And how do I exercise that care? Prayer is one powerful form of action, of course. And we can sign petitions, write submissions, communicate with our neighbours (or our elected representatives), share our time and resources in ways that make the world more abundant with grace. I hope that this election will be, if nothing else, an opportunity to visit or revisit some of these questions.

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 286 October 2023: 26