Paul Eagle
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Tahere Paul Eagle (born 10 January 1972) is a New Zealand politician and former member of the
New Zealand House of Representatives The House of Representatives () is the Unicameral, sole chamber of the New Zealand Parliament. The House passes Law of New Zealand, laws, provides Ministers in the New Zealand Government, ministers to form the Cabinet of New Zealand, Cabinet, ...
for the
Rongotai Rongotai is a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, located southeast of the city centre. It is on the Rongotai isthmus, between the Miramar Peninsula and the suburbs of Kilbirnie and Lyall Bay. It is known mostly for being the location of th ...
electorate from 2017 to 2023. He was a
Wellington City Council Wellington City Council is a Territorial authorities of New Zealand, territorial authority in New Zealand, governing the city of Wellington, the country's capital city and List of cities in New Zealand#City councils, third-largest city by popul ...
lor from 2010 to 2017 and was the first person of
Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the Co ...
descent to be Deputy Mayor of Wellington, but was defeated in a landslide when he sought the
mayoralty In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a Municipal corporation, municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilitie ...
as an independent candidate in 2022.


Early life and career

Eagle was adopted by a
Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a Protestant Christianity, Christian Christian tradition, tradition whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother ...
minister and his wife, a hospital worker. Eagle has kept contact with his birth mother who told him she couldn't keep him due to the lack of a domestic purposes benefit. When Eagle was five, his adoptive father ran for the Mt Eden Borough Council as a candidate for the Labour Party, a race in which he was ultimately unsuccessful. When he was aged 12 the family relocated to
Wellington Wellington is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the third-largest city in New Zealand (second largest in the North Island ...
, where he became socially and politically active and agitated against the 1981 Springbok tour. Eagle was educated first at Wellington High School and then at St. Patrick's College in Wellington, where he showed an aptitude for art, leading him to study the subject at the
Elam School of Fine Arts The Elam School of Fine Arts, founded by John Edward Elam, is part of the University of Auckland Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries, Faculty of Creative Arts and Industries at the University of Auckland. It offered the first Bachelor of ...
and the
University of Auckland The University of Auckland (; Māori: ''Waipapa Taumata Rau'') is a public research university based in Auckland, New Zealand. The institution was established in 1883 as a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. Initially loc ...
. He graduated with a
postgraduate diploma fILE:Prédio Pós Graduação IMECC Unicamp.jpg, The State University of Campinas, as well as many Brazilian universities, offer Postgraduate courses in Brazil A postgraduate diploma (PgD, PgDip, PGDip, PG Dip., PGD, Dipl. PGD) is a postgraduat ...
in fine arts from the University of Auckland in 1996. He found employment in the desktop publishing design profession before working for
Wellington City Council Wellington City Council is a Territorial authorities of New Zealand, territorial authority in New Zealand, governing the city of Wellington, the country's capital city and List of cities in New Zealand#City councils, third-largest city by popul ...
, Manukau City Council,
Sport and Recreation New Zealand Sport New Zealand (Sport NZ) ( Māori: ''Ihi Aotearoa'') is a New Zealand Crown entity responsible for governing sport and recreation in New Zealand. Their subsidiary High Performance Sport New Zealand deals with elite athletes. Legislat ...
and the Ministry of Economic Development, mostly in event management roles. He later worked for the New Zealand Police as a civilian in the Māori, Pacific and ethnic team.


Political career


Wellington City Council

Eagle was first elected as a Labour Party candidate to the southern ward of
Wellington City Council Wellington City Council is a Territorial authorities of New Zealand, territorial authority in New Zealand, governing the city of Wellington, the country's capital city and List of cities in New Zealand#City councils, third-largest city by popul ...
in
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, replacing long-time
Green Party A green party is a formally organized political party based on the principles of green politics, such as environmentalism and social justice. Green party platforms typically embrace Social democracy, social democratic economic policies and fo ...
councillor Celia Wade-Brown who was that year elected
mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a Municipal corporation, municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilitie ...
. Eagle was re-elected in
2013 2013 was the first year since 1987 to contain four unique digits (a span of 26 years). 2013 was designated as: *International Year of Water Cooperation *International Year of Quinoa Events January * January 5 – 2013 Craig, Alask ...
and in
2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...
with increased majorities. In his second term, he chaired the council's community, sport and recreation committee. In May 2015, he announced he would be the running mate on conservative councillor Nicola Young's upcoming 2016 mayoral bid. However, the following March, Eagle changed his allegiance to support fellow Labour Party councillor Justin Lester's mayoral campaign, stating that he had agreed to support Young in the absence of a Labour candidate but he "should have gone to the party o checkfirst." Lester was elected mayor and appointed Eagle as both the deputy mayor and the chair of the mayor's taskforce on housing. As a councillor, Eagle supported the introduction of stronger rental housing quality standards, opposed the development of a controversial cycleway through his home suburb of Island Bay and voted for the sale and lease of council-held land at Shelly Bay for a controversial housing development. Mid-term appraisal panels coordinated by local media rated him as the best-performing member of the council in both 2012 and 2015. Eagle resigned his seat on the council after his election to Parliament, necessitating a
by-election A by-election, also known as a special election in the United States and the Philippines, or a bypoll in India, is an election used to fill an office that has become vacant between general elections. A vacancy may arise as a result of an incumben ...
in his ward. The by-election was won by
Fleur Fitzsimons Fleur Ann Fitzsimons is a New Zealand local politician, lawyer, and unionist. A member of the Labour Party, she was a member of Wellington City Council from 2017 to 2022. In 2025 she was appointed a national secretary of the Public Service Asso ...
of the Labour Party, who received Eagle's endorsement.


Member of Parliament

Upon the announcement that
Rongotai Rongotai is a suburb of Wellington, New Zealand, located southeast of the city centre. It is on the Rongotai isthmus, between the Miramar Peninsula and the suburbs of Kilbirnie and Lyall Bay. It is known mostly for being the location of th ...
MP
Annette King Dame Annette Faye King (née Robinson, born 13 September 1947) is a former New Zealand politician. She served as Deputy Leader of the New Zealand Labour Party and Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 2008 to 2011, and from 2014 until 1 March 2 ...
intended to stand in the 2017 general election as a
list MP A list MP is a member of parliament (MP) elected from a party list rather than a geographic electoral district. The place in Parliament is due to the number of votes the party won, not to votes received by the MP personally. This occurs only in ...
only, Eagle stated that he had encouragement from local constituents to stand for King's seat. He said that he had not yet decided whether or not to contest the Labour nomination for the electorate. Labour leader Andrew Little, who lived in the electorate, was also considered as a potential candidate but after Little announced he was not intending to stand in the seat, Eagle confirmed he would seek the nomination. He also announced that he had the full backing of Wellington Mayor Justin Lester, and if he was successful in entering Parliament he would step down from the position of deputy mayor. On 3 February 2017 Eagle was confirmed as the sole applicant for the Rongotai candidacy and nominated unopposed. Eagle was also ranked 34 on Labour's party list for the election. His decision to contest the election while continuing to hold office as deputy mayor was criticised by right-wing lobby group the Taxpayers' Union. Eagle's
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opponent
Christopher Finlayson Christopher Francis Finlayson (born 1956) is a New Zealand lawyer and former Member of Parliament, representing the New Zealand National Party, National Party. He was elected to Parliament in 2005. In the Fifth National Government of New Zeal ...
commented on his rival in his 2022 memoir, writing: "Paul is a nice guy and I enjoyed being on the campaign trail with him. At one stage at a meeting with left-wingers in Happy Valley, he whispered, 'When is this dreadful meeting going to finish?'" Finlayson also recalled having to whisper Labour's arts policy to Eagle when the latter did not know the answer to an audience member's question. Eagle won the seat with a 10,900 majority on 23 September and resigned from the council on 27 September. He was the first male Māori candidate for the Labour Party to be elected to a general electorate for nearly a hundred years. During the 2020 general election, Eagle was re-elected in Rongotai by a final margin of 19,207 votes. A list ranking of 47, lower than the previous election, was described by Eagle as a sign of the party's confidence in his ability to hold the seat. His personal policy of fast-tracking the development of a second
Mount Victoria tunnel The Mount Victoria Tunnel in the New Zealand capital city of Wellington is 623 metres (slightly more than a third of a mile) long and 5 metres (16.4 ft) in height, connecting Hataitai to the centre of Wellington and the suburb of Mount ...
was at odds with his party's position. Since Eagle left the city council in 2017, mayor Justin Lester had suffered a shock defeat to Andy Foster in the 2019 election and Eagle had been frequently speculated as a possibility to run against Foster. During the 2020 Rongotai campaign Eagle was asked by fellow candidates
Geoff Simmons Geoffrey Leonard Simmons (born 27 December 1974) is an economist and former leader of The Opportunities Party (TOP), a political party in New Zealand. He stood for TOP in the 2017 Mount Albert by-election, February 2017 Mount Albert by-election ...
and Nicole McKee to rule out running for the Wellington mayoralty in 2022, which he did after further questioning by journalists. In his two terms as a Member of Parliament, Eagle served on the governance and administration, transport and infrastructure and Māori affairs committees, and was deputy chair of the economic development, science and innovation committee from November 2017 to August 2018. Eagle took leave from Parliament between July and October 2022 to campaign, unsuccessfully, to be
Mayor of Wellington The mayor of Wellington is the head of the municipal government of Wellington, the city of Wellington. The mayor presides over the Wellington City Council. The mayor is directly elected using the Single Transferable Vote method of proportional ...
. On 13 December 2022, Eagle announced that he would not be contesting the
2023 New Zealand general election The 2023 New Zealand general election was held on 14 October 2023 to determine the composition of the 54th New Zealand Parliament, 54th Parliament of New Zealand. Voters elected 122 members to the unicameral New Zealand House of Representatives ...
.


Candidacy for Mayor of Wellington

Despite directly ruling it out during the 2020 general election campaign (stating, ”Yes, I will ule it out), on 27 June 2022 Eagle announced he had changed his mind and would run for mayor in the 2022 election. Prior to the announcement, it had been widely speculated he would run for months, with media labelling it an "open secret" or "Wellington's worst-kept secret". He ran as an independent candidate, but was endorsed by the Labour Party. From 8 July 2022 he took three months of leave from Parliament to focus on his mayoral campaign, donating nearly $24,000 from his parliamentary salary for the three months to charity. He promised that if successful, he would leave parliament, which would have triggered a by-election in the seat of . His key campaign pledges were to bring the council "back to basics", to create a new city development authority and to improve the city's main arts and events precinct. Eagle's campaign was marred with controversy. Before he had announced his candidacy, a taxpayer-funded survey asking his constituents for opinions on what should be Eagle's priorities as local MP was criticised as being used to inform a possible mayoral campaign. Immediately after the campaign launch, a disagreement with the council about the applicability and enforceability of its election signage policy was documented through local media. A social media post promoting the redevelopment of the
Mount Victoria Tunnel The Mount Victoria Tunnel in the New Zealand capital city of Wellington is 623 metres (slightly more than a third of a mile) long and 5 metres (16.4 ft) in height, connecting Hataitai to the centre of Wellington and the suburb of Mount ...
was taken down after an accompanying image depicted Eagle standing in front of the Karori tunnel. Tweets sent by Eagle seven years earlier likening council staff who were developing the Island Bay cycleway to the
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also resurfaced. Three weeks before the election, several independent candidates alleged that Eagle had encouraged them to run and provided them with campaign advice. Eagle's Labour endorsement meant he was expected to endorse Labour's candidates. Eagle denied "shoulder-tapping" alternative candidates but at one community meeting endorsed independent Diane Calvert over Labour candidate Rebecca Matthews. Eagle was ultimately unsuccessful in his campaign, placing third after new candidate
Tory Whanau Tory Awatere Whanau (born 1983) is a New Zealand politician. She was elected mayor of Wellington at the 2022 Wellington City mayoral election, 2022 election. Previously she served as the parliamentary chief of staff for the Green Party of Aote ...
and incumbent Andy Foster. On provisional results released on election day, Eagle was recorded as coming fourth behind Ray Chung although special votes counted later reversed their positions. Within two days, Eagle removed all references of his mayoral candidacy from his social media accounts. One commentator suggested that the poor result was the result of “positioning himself as the continuity candidate” in an election where similar candidates struggled. “That speaks to probably a wider issue with his strategy, because we knew what Paul Eagle was against – he was against cycleways, he was against housing intensification. But it was less clear to Wellingtonians – and probably people watching outside of Wellington – what he was for.”


Post-political career

In August 2023, shortly after delivering his valedictory speech to Parliament, Eagle was appointed chief executive of the
Chatham Islands Council The Chatham Islands Council is the local government authority for the Chatham Islands in New Zealand. The council has many of the functions, duties and powers of a district council and of a regional council, making it in effect a unitary auth ...
. The
Chatham Islands The Chatham Islands ( ; Moriori language, Moriori: , 'Misty Sun'; ) are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about east of New Zealand's South Island, administered as part of New Zealand, and consisting of about 10 islands within an approxima ...
formed part of his electorate during his six years in Parliament. ''
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'' and ''
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'' reported that Eagle would be the first former Member of Parliament to serve as a local government chief executive. Media outlet ''Newsroom'' noted only a few days after Eagle's appointment as chief executive, that the Chatham Islands was uniquely exempted from the Labour Government's Three Waters horizontal infrastructure reforms. Opposition MPs called for this exemption to be extended to other small and isolated communities. Eagle defended the special treatment of the Chathams, and the wider water reforms, saying any repeal "for the Chathams... would delay putting in place some of the infrastructure that’s needed."


Personal life

Eagle lives in Wellington with his wife Miriam Eagle, who is an environmental scientist, and their adopted son. He is Māori of Waikato-Tainui.


References


External links

*
Profile
on the Wellington City Council website {{DEFAULTSORT:Eagle, Paul 1972 births Living people New Zealand adoptees Wellington City Councillors Deputy mayors of Wellington University of Auckland alumni New Zealand Labour Party MPs Members of the New Zealand House of Representatives Māori politicians Candidates in the 2017 New Zealand general election Candidates in the 2020 New Zealand general election New Zealand MPs for Wellington electorates