29 October, 2020

MP wants to be North Shore’s ambo at top of the cliff

Simon Watts is a rarity post- election – a new National Party MP sitting pretty. He tells Janetta Mackay how he wants to make his comfortable majority count for his electorate and what led him to politics.

THIS WEEK, Simon Watts headed to Parliament as the new North Shore MP. Next week, he moves into the family home he and wife Shannon have bought in Belmont.

With a view to Rangitoto, beaches nearby and walking distance to local schools for their two sons, the home’s location comes at a cost. Not because it’s a flash, shiny new pad – more a doer-upper in prime position – but because access to it is via the commuter’s curse of Lake Rd.

“I know this will sound a bit funny, but I wanted to understand and feel some of that pain the locals feel,” he says.

Watts hopes his own “real-world experiences” can help deliver locally, and ultimately, nationally. “I’m hugely humbled to be able to represent the North Shore on the issues that I’ve campaigned about,” he says.

He is eager not to fester over National’s election-night thumping and instead focus on what needs to be done to rebuild the party. “I’m going to be one of the voices around the table, with having a smaller caucus. It’s a time when we will be looking at what the public have said and what we need to do.”

The banker turned health manager, with a sideline as an ambulance volunteer, says: “You’ve got to put yourself in other people’s shoes sometimes.”

He knows the Lake Rd stretch – like the Covid-19-hit economy and built-up demand for housing and infrastructure – will be no easy fix. Politicians and officials, locally, regionally and nationally, need to get better at long-term planning in ways that make sense to the people they serve, he says. This is in contrast to the recent decision to chop the Stanley Bay ferry service, which Watts has started a petition against.

On tackling congestion, Watts is clear encouraging public transport is up there with pushing on with projects where “something must be done”. A second harbour crossing needs to include room for rail, he says.

When the Flagstaff first spoke to Watts before the election, he talked about the need for a small country to operate differently. “We’ve got to think about how we get sustainable change in place that’s not necessarily going to get knocked over every time we change political cycle, whether it’s schools or health or wastewater or stormwater.

“We haven’t kept up with the explosion of growth that we’ve experienced,” he says, likening the state of the country to a poorly maintained house.

Constituents wanted certainty for their businesses, but issues around the environment and climate were also frequent concerns. Infrastructure had to be addressed. “There is a need for us to improve things,” he says. “I think it’s going to have to be cross-party.”

THE DAY AFTER he was elected with a 3982 majority – well down on the 12,716 buffer enjoyed by his predecessor Maggie Barry – Watts wasn’t nursing a hangover at home. He stepped out in his electorate as a “sign that I’m straight into it”. From Smales Farm market he headed onto Takapuna beach for some Sunday sun with Shannon, son Jack, aged 10, and Callum, 8, and their aunt and grandmother.

Election evening had been spent at a party gathering of around 200 supporters at The Grange restaurant at Smales Farm. He popped across the Harbour Bridge to a subdued function at party HQ, from which a number of National MPs were conspicuously absent. Then it was back to Takapuna and a long night.

Faced with starting his new career “learning and working” in Opposition, Watts is deter- mined to be positive. He points out that former Prime Minister John Key did the same. “I’ve always been the sort of person to deal with what is in front of me.”

“It’s a time when we will be looking at what the public have said and what we need to do.”

Long term, he hopes to ascend to Cabinet. On paper, he knows he may look like “another finance/accounting guy joining a list of lawyers in Parliament”, but he insists he brings some unique value.

The health system is underfunded nationally by 4 to 5 per cent a year, Watts believes, a shortfall compounded by end-of-life or ageing infrastructure. Sound economic management is vital, but so too is learning from sector experts and utilising technology to help stretched workforces.

Both he and Key entered politics as not overtly-political finance men who returning from successful careers overseas, convinced they had something to offer. Pictured as he was in regulation blue suit on his billboards, clean- cut Watts does have something of the look of Key, albeit, a trimmer, younger version. He chats affably in similar flat vowels.

Asked if he is ‘John Key Lite’, he says: “But John Key wasn’t a paramedic was he?” He laughs. Watts is definitely his own man. Turns out he can run a marathon, having completed the Queenstown event last year. He also enjoys trail running and sea fishing.

While Watts says he admired Key’s leadership during the earthquakes and other difficult times from afar – while in the UK – he sees himself as part of the next generation of politics.

AT 41, he is a year older than self-described “youth-adjacent” Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, a fellow Waikato University graduate and rural-heartland product. She was politically active as a young person; he was not.

It was while at Waikato just over 20 years ago that Simon met Shannon. He studied accountancy and she marketing. Watts, who was raised on a Cambridge orchard with two younger brothers, had turned down a premed spot at Otago. As a young man he thought finance would be a quicker, easier way to a well-paid career.

The couple graduated, worked for a year, married then embarked on their OE.

A working trip to Dublin, via a fun year in Vancouver, turned into 10 years away. Shannon, now a food-industry marketing director, was offered a promotion in her beauty-industry job and Simon transferred to the Bank of Scotland. “I had to take him kicking and screaming to London, and then he loved it,” she recalls. It was there that Watts’ latent interest in health was rekindled. The capital had been rocked by bombings and he wanted to know what to do in case of an emergency, so he volunteered to train as a community-first responder with the London Ambulance Service.

“I was going into apartment blocks by myself and dealing with things I’ve never dealt with before in terms of life and death and all the other stuff that goes around that.”

Watts still does ambulance shifts every six weeks back in New Zealand, although during the alert-level-4 lockdown it was weekly. While he would like to keep his hand in, the job as North Shore MP is unlikely to leave much free time.

Putting himself on the frontline in London armed Watts with extra confidence and the realisation he wanted to do more with his financial skills than shuffle money. “I wanted to do a job that did good for people.”

A management job at Counties-Manukau District Health Board (DHB) drew him home in 2013. He then squeezed in study for a Bachelor of Health Science, majoring in para-medicine, at AUT. Moving on to the Waitemata DHB, Watts was deputy chief financial officer for three years.

At the DHBs, Watts came to realise politics might be a more effective way to influence change. Sitting down with doctors and nurses at North Shore Hospital was satisfying in that he could draw on their expertise to mount a robust financial case for resources, but Wellington set the budgets.

THE FAMILY had settled on the North Shore, drawn by having friends nearby and because it offered their UK-born babies an outdoorsy Kiwi upbringing. Watts loves to run from Milford along the rocks – “touch Takapuna beach and back” – and is looking forward to having the beach closer in their imminent move from Northcote Point to Belmont. He plans to monitor Takapuna’s town-centre renewal, beach-water quality and, of course, Lake Rd; all are issues he says people raise with him.

Watts joined the National Party soon after returning to New Zealand. The party’s principles were a natural fit for him, he says, having grown up in a National household.

In 2018, he took an “opportunistic” tilt at winning selection to contest the Northcote seat when MP Jonathan Coleman resigned. Four days out from nominations closing, he entered the race. Despite not being active in the party locally, he made the shortlist, but lost to Dan Bidois, who won the subsequent by-election. (Bidois was one of the National MPs who lost his seat on election night last week.)

For Watts, trying for Northcote proved useful experience when he put up his hand to replace retiring three-term MP Barry in her blue-ribbon seat. He says he wasn’t tapped for selection and won it in a hard-fought process.

As a self-described man with a plan, Watts resigned from the Waitemata DHB in January so he could focus on gaining selection and winning over the community. During the campaign, he was happy to listen to the insights of a 20-year-old student volunteer. “I’ve seen the benefit, in private, corporate and public life that the strength of the team will deliver much more than the individual,” he says.

Up to election day he waved his own placards at Hauraki Corner. A few days earlier he visited the AUT Akoranga campus marae, campaigning hard. He was asked ‘why are you bothering?’ “I said ‘this is about long-term relationships, this is about our community and I’m part of the future’.”

Watts says he intends to keep campaigning for the Shore. “I’ll be measured on what I deliver,” he says.

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