Beauty salon owner wants to become Porirua’s first Pasifika mayor
MONIQUE FORD/Stuff
Tapu Elia is running to be Porirua’s first Pasifika mayor. Her aunt Jasmine Underhill, right in the mural, was the city’s deputy mayor between 1989 and 2001.
Cannons Creek business owner Tapu Elia is standing for the mayoralty of Porirua in the October local body elections.
If successful, Elia would become the city’s first Pasifika mayor. She is the first person to challenge incumbent Anita Baker who is running for re-election.
Elia, who runs a beauty salon and heads a collective of local business owners, moved to the area from the Cook Islands at the age of seven with her family in 1991. When she arrived she didn’t know a single word of English.
She describes herself an “actions person” who would shake up the city council to be more active on issues such as the environment, housing and youth.
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MONIQUE FORD/Stuff
Tapu Elia wants the city council to take more action on issues faced by Porirua.
“When I moved to the shopping centre, there was just a lot of rubbish around the place and I wanted something done about it,” she said. “But there wasn’t a lot of action from the council so I took it into my own hands to get a group of volunteers together and we cleaned up over a period of four weeks.”
The mayor, she said, should be the “biggest servant” of the community and the council was too “process-focused” instead of “solutions-focused”.
“There’s