Critic Te Ārohi recently sat down with Opportunity’s Wellington Bays candidate, Kayla Kingdon-Bebb. Alongside contesting the Wellington Bays electorate, she serves as Opportunity’s spokesperson for climate change, conservation, the environment, oceans and fisheries. This is your go to Opportunity candidate if you’re curious about their environmental policies.
Usually found at the helm of the World Wide Fund for Nature New Zealand (WWF), Kayla has stepped away from her role as CEO while campaigning, helping the organisation retain its independent and apolitical status. “I call it being ‘fun-employed’,” she laughed. For clarity, that is WWF as in “the pandas, not the wrestlers”, a distinction Kayla has apparently had to make more often than you might expect.
Kayla’s decision to enter politics grew out of her experience working as an environmental policy advocate and witnessing what she described as the “quite egregious backsliding” of the current Government, or, put more bluntly, their “war on nature.”
She wondered how differently the term might have unfolded had National and the Greens been able to work together, arguing that there is real value in a centrist environmental party capable of partnering with either establishment party – National or Labour. She noted that, until recently, these two major parties voted together on around 75% of legislation before the House, suggesting that New Zealanders are generally more centrist than our increasingly “hyper-partisan” political discourse would have us believe.
Problems such as climate change, managed retreat, New Zealand’s infrastructure deficit and child poverty are far too complex to be solved within a single three-year term. Instead, they require sustained action across successive governments, something Kayla believes our current political discourse is ill-equipped to deliver without “a steady centrist partner” keeping everyone on track.
Kayla’s WWF experience is also reflected in the policies she hopes to advance. She singled out Opportunity’s Healthy Oceans policy, which seeks to restore marine ecosystems and fish stocks, strengthen climate resilience and invest in a sustainable, high-productivity “blue economy”. More broadly, Kayla and Opportunity wants to rebuild cross-party consensus on climate policy and restore credibility to New Zealand’s climate agenda through measurable emissions reductions and greater support for communities facing adaptation and managed retreat.
Kayla’s clearest message to students, however, was simple: enrol, and do it quickly. She criticised recent electoral changes that she believes will disproportionately affect students, Māori and overseas voters who might otherwise cast special votes. She urged students to check their enrollment, use tools such as Vote Compass to compare party policies and attend local candidate debates. After all, “it is younger generations who will inherit the consequences of the decisions made over the next three years”.
