Election 2023 - The Bread and Butter Chats: Meet Brooke Pao Stanley

Welcome to our political profile series The Bread and Butter Chats, where we speak to a range of candidates from a range of parties and backgrounds.

Thick slabs cut from a block of butter, melting on hot white bread, crusts included. An essential within a Pacific household.

Bread and Butter politics - the basic, fundamental matters or issues that concern everyone. The essentials.

It’s a term that’s been thrown around by politicians this year - such as the bread and butter budget. Here at PMN, we’ve used it to get to know some of the Pacific candidates running in this year's election, who are from a range of parties and backgrounds.

First up we have independent candidate for Māngere, Brooke Pao Stanley.

Keep an eye out for more chats in the coming weeks, you can watch the full video below.

When I meet Brooke for our Bread and Butter chat, I’m wearing multiple layers as it’s mid morning in Māngere and winter’s presence is stubborn. 

It’s cold, it’s sunny, but the suburb has been awake for some time.

At the bakery next to Auckland Action Against Poverty's (AAAP) office, most of the cabinet is empty - only stragglers left, including three meat pies, one sweet tart looking thing and one sausage roll.

Unfortunately my Eftpos card declined about five minutes before we were scheduled to convene.

I had been trying to buy bread for our chats. Nothing fancy, just two bakery loaves - which I suspect had been sitting for some time in the display warmer. Luckily, our camera professional Candice had some spare coins.

Brooke texts to say she’s arrived and we leave the bakery to stumble over to her, arms full with camera gear and a bag full of bread.

Brooke spots us and immediately welcomes us into the her space before grabbing some of the gear; leading us upstairs to a quieter place to film our talanoa.

Brooke’s foundation

On the window at the entrance is a large poster. Half of it is Brooke’s face, her arm tattoo on full display. The other half scrawled on a baby pink background is Brooke’s bio.

“That was Mum,” Stanley says later during our interview.

“She went and printed all these massive posters. I didn’t want to do billboards cause it’s just a waste and they’re pretty cheesy. I was like 'oh okay well - we can chuck them on some fences, we’ll use them.”

Stanley says you can’t stop families from wanting to show up and support you - especially Pacific mothers.

“What was I gonna say? I’m not stepping to my mum!”

Stanley credits her mother, her father and her “G.O.A.T daughter” (Greatest Of All Time) for being a support system and her village; a village of privilege that Stanley has mentioned time and time again.

Upon announcing her independent candidacy for Māngere earlier this year, E-Tangata interviewed the 37-year-old Samoan Niuean where she acknowledged growing up in a family that had access to so much choice - something that is limited for the communities she serves as AAAP co-ordinator.

“I move between feeling uncomfortable about my privilege to using my privilege for something that’s for all of us, and especially for the communities that I love and come from.”

Stanley told E-Tangata much of the heavy lifting is in internal work - within ourselves, and in our own homes and our own families, as well as the work that is carried out in our communities.

The first time I met Brooke Pao-Stanley was out in the community earlier this year. She was a source of support - both emotional and practical - for a Māngere Kāinga Ora resident I interviewed​ post Auckland Anniversary floods.

She’s still the same now - poised, cool, not too overly-friendly and like myself, was mustering up some energy for our interview after a busy week.

For our chat, she’s brought in peanut butter as her favourite spread - a spread that reminds her of her Dad - All Black legend “Smokin” Joe Stanley.

Stanley emphasises that it was her Dad who ensured her and her five other siblings had proper meals.

“He was so hundies about the food we ate growing up. Mum was a bit loose - I think she was tired, she did have six kids. And she was a stay-at-home mum," says Stanley.

She smiles, reflecting: “I think we overlook those things - the work that Mums do, especially how tiring it can be.”

Stanley says it was her mother who was responsible for sewing ideas of love, sharing and caring for one another into herself and her siblings growing up.

The Bread and Butter Issues

One of the bread and butter issues that Stanley highlights as a concern for Pacific voters is to be expected: the cost of living.

“Locally in Māngere, it’s about having enough to be secure. A big bread and butter issue is actually climate change.”

A universal services model will be Stanley’s main motivator - making the necessary services free and readily available and paying for it by taxing the wealthy.

Stanley is passionate and driven enough to believe that it is possible: “We’re all clever enough if we work together.”

The coordinator for AAAP, Stanley stepped into the role when Ricardo Menéndez March got into Parliament for the Greens.

At the time of a 2021 interview with The Spinoff, she had zero ambition to follow him into politics, and would only stand if the communities she served asked her too.

Talking to Donna Chisholm she said:

“I hope I’ve never asked. I have the capacity and the ability, I just don’t want to put myself in that space and not be able to enact the change I think is needed.”

A Fresh Wave in Politics

In our interview, Stanley appears to be giving the same energy and zero ambition about becoming a politician and operating within the functions of Government.

Instead, her intentions for entering politics are not to contribute to the system. It is out of necessity and service to her communities.

She's sporting a slightly oversized black tee by local clothing business Twosevenfive​ and I'm reminded of the power of dress. Her grassroots methods and mindset is reflected in the way she shows up too. ​

She speaks about dismantling Western views of leadership and governance, instead turning to indigenous and Moana cultures as valuable structures that have existed for generations for guidance. 

“We come from cultures that are heavily connected to nature and oceans. [We should be] looking at nature for models of existing and being in connection with her [Papatuanuku or Mother Earth].”

It’s clear that Stanley has demonstrated unconventional methods to her election campaign, veering away from more structured tactics.

Every step of the way, the self titled “nesian woman and nesian mama” has intentionally decided to not conform.

Only time will tell if keeping it real has served her well or not.

“It’s been fun. It’s been nice to engage in the space as an independent and being able to remain strong to who I am. I connect to the kaupapa - it’s important that we try and show up as much as we can as who we are.”