She’s the deputy leader of the increasingly popular ACT Party and has skimped and saved her way onto the Auckland property ladder. In a chat with political editor Jo Moir, Brooke van Velden reveals the three men in Parliament she admires and how she bought her first home in an hour.
Auckland has always been home. Brooke van Velden's parents had until recently been living on the North Shore and she had been using their place as her base when in the city for meetings.
Her second home was in Wellington, after a job working for ACT leader David Seymour brought her to Parliament.
For years she had been looking to fulfil a dream of owning her own home, so after her parents sold up, she expanded her daily Trade Me search to include Auckland properties.
In May she stumbled across a 60sqm one-bedroom in Greenlane that hadn’t been done up since the 1960s. She booked an appointment to see it between meetings in Auckland, put in an offer, and an hour later got a call to say the place was hers.
At just 28 she’s bought her first home in the most expensive city in the country, all on her own. “It was just meant to be, and now I own a tiny little place, which already feels like home, which is sad because I haven’t actually been there for the last two months,’’ she tells Newsroom.
Like her leader, David Seymour, she jumped on a plane within hours of the Prime Minister announcing nationwide lockdown and headed for Wellington to set herself up at Parliament.
“I talked with David and the caucus about it, and we came to the decision that it was right for David and I to come down so we had leadership representation in Wellington.’’
Jacinda Ardern, Defence Minister Peeni Henare, Attorney-General David Parker and National leader Judith Collins also made Wellington their base for lockdown.
“It was the right call because people genuinely expect that if the Prime Minister is in Wellington, their leaders and representatives should be holding the Government to account,’’ van Velden said.
So, what’s the trick to home ownership success at 28?
“I still to this day eat tuna and rice for lunch. I’m one of the stingiest people you’ll meet in terms of money. I set myself goals and financial challenges of how much I can save – probably to the extremities.’’ – Brooke van Velden
Tuna, rice, and leftovers, according to van Velden.
“Buying a house at 28 has come from a little bit of luck, but also a lot of self-sacrifice.
“I still to this day eat tuna and rice for lunch. I’m one of the stingiest people you’ll meet in terms of money. I set myself goals and financial challenges of how much I can save – probably to the extremities.’’
“I do realise that I am privileged in some way in that I’ve had relatively good income in my 20s to allow me to do that, but at the same time … I still don’t have a credit card because I don’t want to give myself a false sense of security that money is there to be spent,’’ she says.
Her father was always one to point out how much electricity cost each month and where costs could be cut, and advice like “make sure you’re only buying biscuits if they’re on special’’ was in abundance.
She wouldn’t buy a flight for a holiday if she didn’t have the money right there and then to pay for it.
“If I’m wanting to buy a new dress for example, I don’t go and buy it. I set myself a goal of how much money I can save on my food for the next month and then weigh up the cost of that versus the dress.’’
Compared to her friends, van Velden says she’s a bit different in that, “the first things I’m willing to sacrifice are brunches or going out for nice big dinners’’.
“I still cook most of my meals and bring in leftovers for lunch even at Parliament.’’
Asked if that makes her more relatable, van Velden is quick to clarify she’s not living that lifestyle to be relatable.
“But I can empathise with people wanting to set goals … probably the best example is even when I booked my flight to come back to Wellington, I turned off my hot water cylinder so I could save myself money on my electricity bill.
“Every little dollar adds up, and for some families you literally have to do that to survive. For me, I do it for my own financial stability.’’
Behind the scenes
It was van Velden’s work on Seymour’s End of Life Choice member’s bill that ultimately led to her wanting to become an MP.
“That really opened my eyes to a lot of the suffering happening in our society.’’
Along with Seymour she travelled the length of the country holding community meetings to discuss what assisted dying would look like in New Zealand under the proposed legislation.
“We met so many people who were struggling with a family member who had taken their own life because they didn’t feel they had any other option for a terminal diagnosis.
“There was so much pain, and you could see the ripple effects of not having choice in people’s lives. It made me conscious that the laws we make have real effects on people’s lives and not having that choice provoked people to make decisions that are not in the best interests of them or their family.’’
When Seymour’s bill got pulled from the biscuit tin of members’ bills and introduced to the House, van Velden was tasked with doing the heavy lifting to get the numbers needed to pass it.
Seymour credits van Velden for her work, telling Newsroom the easy bit was getting it to the first reading, the hard bit was getting the numbers to ultimately pass it, which van Velden succeeded in doing.
“I definitely felt a responsibility to the people I’d met to get it passed. I worked crazy hours making sure we got every box ticked that we could so I didn’t feel like it would fall back on me if it failed,’’ van Velden says.
There weren’t the resources of a large party to fall back on – at that stage between 2017 and 2020 ACT consisted of one MP.
“Because it was a conscience vote it meant we couldn’t work through the normal parliamentary system of using party whips.
“So, we set up a group of cross-party supporters who would meet regularly and give us advice on what issues they were hearing and what MPs might want more information on.’’
That group consisted of Labour’s Ruth Dyson, National’s Chris Bishop and Andrew Falloon, Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick, and van Velden talked independently with NZ First’s Tracey Martin.
After a 16-month long select committee process and a lot of help from lawyers and public servants, van Velden had a final bill to put before MPs – it was the 14th version of it.
Euthanasia comes into force on November 7, and it won’t be until it's operating in practice that van Velden says the job will feel complete.
Navigating Parliament
After working in Parliament as a staffer, van Velden admits she has a bit of an advantage over her fellow first-term MPs.
“There’s a lot of niche information you have to have, like, reading the standing orders. I suspect not a lot of new MPs have read them, but it was a necessity for me to ensure the End of Life Choice bill would pass. So, I came with a lot of background knowledge,’’ she tells Newsroom.
Te Pāti Māori co-leaders Debbie Ngarewa-Packer and Rawiri Waititi sit by van Velden in the House and all three are new MPs.
It hasn’t gone unnoticed during Question Time that van Velden often helps the pair when they’re struggling with standing orders or how to correctly word a question or point of order.
“Part of wanting to help any MP is that they have a right to be here and to have their voice heard,’’ van Velden says.
“There are rules people won’t know about and I think it’s important that if they have a right to be here and ask questions then they should be helped to do it – it doesn’t matter if I agree with what they’re saying or not.’’
Asked who she considers a friend at Parliament, van Velden is frank that it’s her place of work and there isn’t a lot of time for socialising.
“I don’t know what the Green Party does or what it stands for.'' – Brooke van Velden
So, Newsroom poses if there’s anyone outside of her own party that she particularly admires as an MP.
She can’t help but name-drop Seymour, until that is ruled out as being outside the scope of the question.
“I admire Chris Bishop in that he’s very fastidious and seems to know a lot of detail. He is probably one I would want to work towards – he sets an expectation of how much detail he’s across in his portfolios that I’d like to reach.’’
After pondering a little more, she comes up with another Chris.
“In terms of house procedure and the Business Committee side it’s probably Chris Hipkins and the way he’s able to, in any given moment in time, have so much knowledge on how Parliament is operating.’’
Politics is full of big and loud personalities, but van Velden says she’s not a heckler.
“I don’t believe that’s what I should be doing. I believe in listening and giving people the respect they deserve. I understand why people heckle and throw insults, but I’m not one of them.’’
Once a Green Party supporter, van Velden switched allegiances to the other end of the political spectrum when she met Seymour for the first time and debated policy.
Newsroom asked what she thought of the Green Party now she’s in Parliament across the aisle.
“I don’t know what the Green Party does or what it stands for,’’ responds van Velden.
While she rates Swarbrick as a worker who “genuinely seems to want to advocate for people's rights’’, that’s where the praise stops.
“I don’t see alternative ideas, discussion documents of what they’d wish society to look like or a plan to do it. I see a lot of rhetoric, but I don’t actually see any plans for their vision for New Zealand, and how it could work in practice.’’
Entering Parliament in her 20s, some might see her falling into the career politician trap.
But van Velden says that’s not for her, and she’ll be taking her grandfather’s advice – the day she doesn’t want to get up in the morning and go to work to do the job will be the day she needs to get out.
That’s not the case right now while she says there’s still plenty of work to be done, especially in areas like mental health, housing, and human rights.
Making change in Government requires a couple of things, she says.
“ACT definitely needs a partner. I think National will at some point start to become a cohesive group, and I welcome that, because the reason I’m here is to make sure we have better policies for the future of the country.
“I look forward to the day where we hear about the policies National has for the country and not their internal squabbles,’’ she says.
