The future takes the floor at HBRC

Published: 12 November 2025

In today’s second meeting of Hawke’s Bay Regional Council, recently elected Chair Sophie Siers received a ceremonial pendant from The Hon. Rick Barker – and a group of secondary school students reminded everyone why the mahi matters.

Three years ago, Ocean Dutta moved to New Zealand from India where she says environmental policy felt distant and abstract – “something talked about in government buildings, disconnected from daily life.”

“Here,” she told councillors, “I learned that land isn’t something you can know from afar; what struck me about Aotearoa wasn’t just its beauty, but the way people treated land as if it were whānau.”

A Year 13 student from Hastings Girls’ High School, Ocean was one of five young speakers invited to address the new council – to share what the environment means to them, and their hopes for Hawke’s Bay 25 years from now.

She was joined by Ananya Tariyal (Hastings Girls’), Liam Pentreath and Max Riley-Harper (Lindisfarne College) and Aiden Walters (St John’s College). Before speaking, each presented a councillor with a kākābeak plant, a symbol of hope, near-extinct but nurtured back to life in local schools and gardens.

Then came their speeches: five assured, thoughtful voices – decent, and far-sighted. They spoke of landfills carelessly filled, of beach walks and bush tramps with their fathers; of a revived Ahuriri Estuary and the maunga that shape their sense of home.

Looking over the horizon

 Earlier, newly elected Chair Sophie Siers had invited Rick Barker – former Tukituki MP, cabinet minister, and past HBRC Chair – to address the new council. His theme, fittingly, was the future.

“You are the preeminent organisation in the region for the environment,” he said. “No one else has the remit you do. If you are going to be promoting environmental issues, you need to be building a relationship between the people and their place.”

“Your job,” he continued, “is to look over the horizon and into the future. To set the strategic direction, to ensure the resources are there to do the job.”

Before his address, Barker presented Siers with the Chairman’s pendant – made in 1999 from Tānekaha (Celery Pine) from north of Wairoa.

“The best ceremonies bring together age and youth,” Chair Siers said after the meeting. “Everything we do from this point on will be measured by what we leave behind. By governing wisely. I liked Rick’s thoughts on wisdom – ‘old men, and old women too, planting trees whose shade they’ll never know’.”

You can watch the speeches as part of the Regional Council meeting (starts at 18 minutes in):

 Our vision for Te Matau a Māui

Five high students addressed HBRC councillors at a meeting on 12 November 2025. Their words exuded clarity, optimism, aroha — and a deep sense of kaitiakitanga for Hawke’s Bay. Here are their speeches in full:
Aiden Walters – St John’s College
Ananya Tariyal – Hastings Girls’ High School 
Liam Pentreath – Lindisfarne College
Max Riley-Harper – Lindisfarne College
Ocean Dutta – Hastings Girls’ High School

Back to News Archive