Classically trained musician, former teacher and government adviser Emma Chatterton joins Mykeljon Winckel for a wide-ranging eLocal Conversation about the experiences shaping her approach to politics. As she seeks to succeed Judith Collins in Papakura, the discussion explores her personal journey, her ambitions for a rapidly growing electorate and the questions facing New Zealand's next generation
Report by eLocal | eLocal Conversations | 16 October 2026
Original music composed, performed (by Groovexpress) and produced by Mykeljon. © 2026 Mykeljon. All rights reserved. Used by permission for eLocal Conversations.
There is something unexpected about beginning a political interview with a discussion about music. But when Emma Chatterton joined eLocal's Mykeljon Winckel for a 45-minute conversation, their shared musical backgrounds provided an unusually personal introduction to someone hoping to represent one of New Zealand's fastest-growing communities.
Chatterton is the National Party candidate for Papakura, seeking to follow former MP Judith Collins, whose parliamentary career began in 2002 in the former Clevedon electorate.
Her professional journey has been anything but conventional. A classically trained pianist who also plays cello, Chatterton studied music at Cambridge University in Britain on a Girdlers Scholarship before training as a secondary school teacher. She subsequently worked in social investment, using data to assess the effectiveness of public spending, and later became a senior adviser in the Beehive.
Her National Party biography confirms that she has worked with Education Minister Erica Stanford and previously with ImpactLab under Sir Bill English. She also contested the Remutaka electorate for National in 2023.
Yet it was her description of music, rather than politics, that initially offered the clearest insight into how she approaches her work.
From the concert stage to the political stage
Chatterton grew up in a musical household. Her mother was a music teacher, and today all four of her own children play instruments.
For Chatterton, music is much more than an artistic pursuit. It teaches discipline, preparation, attention to detail and the ability to communicate with an audience.
She described the process of mastering an instrument through years of practice, then putting that technical preparation aside when it comes time to perform.
Those lessons, she suggested, translate remarkably well into teaching and political representation.
A teacher must understand the curriculum and assessment requirements, but also engage a classroom. Similarly, a political representative must understand policy detail while being able to explain complex decisions in language ordinary people can understand.
Winckel, whose own professional background includes decades in music, recognised the connection.
Their exchange established a recurring theme throughout the interview: the relationship between technical knowledge, effective communication and the responsibility to deliver meaningful results.
Papakura: A community undergoing enormous change
Chatterton described the Papakura electorate using an unusual geographical analogy: a T-shirt.
Its sleeves extend through Karaka and Kingseat on one side and Clevedon towards the coast on the other. Its northern areas include Papakura and Ardmore, while its southern communities extend through Drury towards Bombay and the surrounding rural districts.
The electorate combines established urban neighbourhoods, productive farmland, horticultural businesses and extensive new residential development.
Drury, in particular, represents one of the region's most significant planning challenges.
Chatterton referred to projections of a future population comparable to the city of Napier, highlighting the scale of housing and infrastructure development anticipated over the coming years.
That growth raises questions about transport, education, healthcare, policing and public services.
During the interview, she pointed to government announcements involving land for a future Drury hospital, new schools, a special school, courthouse investment and additional transport policing.
However, announcing funding or purchasing land is not the same as delivering completed infrastructure.
Chatterton herself acknowledged this distinction towards the end of the conversation, identifying the construction of schools, hospitals and further stages of Mill Road as priorities she would want to champion.
For Papakura residents, the central issue is whether essential infrastructure can be delivered before population growth overwhelms existing services.
A different way of looking at public spending
Perhaps the most substantial policy discussion concerned Chatterton's experience at ImpactLab, where she worked with analytical models designed to assess the social value created by government and community programmes.
Her central argument was straightforward.
"We talk about spending instead of talking about value."
Chatterton explained that two programmes receiving the same amount of public funding may produce very different outcomes.
One programme might deliver modest improvements in employment, education or social wellbeing. Another, costing a similar amount, could produce substantially greater benefits.
The challenge for government is determining which interventions actually work.
She described how social return on investment modelling attempts to quantify the benefits generated by programmes across education, healthcare, housing, youth justice and other public services.
In education, for example, additional funding might be directed towards tutoring, transport, school buildings or improving housing stability for children whose living conditions affect their learning.
Each intervention may have merit. The question is how decision-makers determine which investment produces the greatest measurable improvement.
Chatterton said her experience convinced her that better use of evidence could improve decisions across government.
This raises an important question for taxpayers: Will this in fact make New Zealand stronger?
The answer cannot be determined simply by comparing spending totals or projected financial returns.
Social investment models depend on the quality of their underlying data, the assumptions used to calculate benefits and the ability to establish whether a programme actually caused an improvement.
Some public benefits are also difficult to express in monetary terms.
Better education, reduced family harm, improved health and greater personal independence may deliver value over decades. Conversely, a model that places too much emphasis on easily measurable outcomes could overlook important benefits that are harder to quantify.
The principle of measuring results rather than celebrating expenditure deserves examination. But the models themselves must also remain open to scrutiny.
For New Zealanders, the real test is whether better analysis produces better services, greater opportunity and more effective use of public money.
Artificial intelligence and the limits of data
The discussion naturally moved into artificial intelligence and the increasingly sophisticated tools available for analysing large datasets.
Chatterton highlighted New Zealand's Integrated Data Infrastructure, or IDI, which combines de-identified information from government agencies and other sources for approved research and analysis.
She sees considerable potential in using this information to understand the factors influencing social outcomes and the effectiveness of public services.
However, she was careful not to claim specialist expertise in applying artificial intelligence to that analysis.
Instead, she described her own experience using AI tools to assist with research and information gathering.
One observation stood out: the more a person already knows about a subject, the better equipped they are to recognise when an AI system produces an incorrect or incomplete answer.
Winckel agreed, describing his practice of comparing information across multiple AI models.
Their discussion moved beyond government data to a broader concern about authenticity.
Chatterton recalled one of her children watching an ordinary television advertisement and assuming it had been generated by AI.
For a generation growing up with increasingly realistic synthetic images, voices and video, the distinction between authentic and artificial content may become progressively harder to recognise.
That creates challenges not only for education but also for journalism, public trust and democratic debate.
The opportunities are substantial, but so are the responsibilities surrounding accuracy, privacy and independent verification.
The cost of living and the choices facing families
For Chatterton, economic policy is also personal.
As a mother of four, she recalled the pressure her household experienced when mortgage interest rates increased sharply during the period of high inflation.
With children attending music lessons and participating in sport, the prospect of significantly higher mortgage repayments meant less money available for other family activities.
She connected that experience to National's emphasis on reducing inflationary pressures, controlling government expenditure and encouraging economic growth.
Her argument is that lower borrowing costs, greater business investment and higher wages can give households more financial independence.
But the relationship between government spending, inflation and interest rates is more complicated than any single policy lever.
International energy prices, monetary policy, exchange rates, productivity and domestic competition all influence household costs.
Lower inflation also does not necessarily mean lower prices. It generally means prices are increasing more slowly.
For families already struggling with accumulated price increases, the distinction is significant.
The measure of economic improvement is ultimately not a headline growth figure but whether households can afford more of the essentials and opportunities that matter to them.
Government debt: Who ultimately pays?
Winckel also raised the question of government borrowing and the longer-term consequences of public debt.
Chatterton argued that persistent deficits and rising debt-servicing costs can restrict future governments' ability to invest in public services.
She cited an annual interest burden of approximately $9 billion and said future generations should not be left paying for decisions made today.
Her comparison was with household and business finances, where borrowing must ultimately be serviced from available income.
However, government finances differ from household finances in important respects. Governments can borrow over longer periods, raise revenue through taxation and invest in infrastructure that generates economic benefits across generations.
Borrowing to finance an unproductive expense is not economically equivalent to borrowing for an asset that improves productivity or delivers enduring public value.
The relevant questions are therefore how much is borrowed, what the borrowing finances, its cost and whether the resulting economic and social benefits justify that cost.
Chatterton returned to her central theme of value for money, pointing to changes in school construction methods that she said had substantially reduced classroom building costs.
She credited Education Minister Erica Stanford's approach to standardised designs and off-site construction.
Those claimed savings warrant assessment against comparable projects, including building specifications, land costs, accessibility requirements and long-term maintenance.
Nevertheless, the underlying question is one that should concern every government: can New Zealand deliver more effective public infrastructure without continually increasing the burden on taxpayers?
Energy security: The question that remains unanswered
One of the interview's most consequential exchanges concerned New Zealand's dependence on imported transport fuels.
Winckel questioned the decision to close the country's only oil refinery at Marsden Point and convert the facility into an import terminal.
He argued that New Zealand remains fundamentally dependent on diesel for freight, agriculture, construction and other productive industries.
His concern was not simply the price of petrol or diesel, but the country's exposure to international supply disruptions.
With geopolitical tensions affecting global energy markets and shipping routes, he asked whether surrendering domestic refining capability had been a wise long-term decision.
Chatterton responded by outlining National's commitment to abundant, affordable and reliable energy.
She discussed renewable electricity generation, new infrastructure and the Government's approach to encouraging investment in energy supply.
But Winckel pressed the distinction between electricity and liquid fuels.
Even if New Zealand significantly increases renewable electricity generation, large parts of the economy will continue to depend on imported diesel, petrol and aviation fuel for the foreseeable future.
He then asked directly whether National had a policy to establish another domestic refinery.
Chatterton acknowledged:
"Look, that's not a level of detail that I'm on top of."
She went on to criticise the previous Labour Government's oil and gas exploration restrictions, arguing that they had discouraged investment and undermined market certainty.
That is National's policy position, but it does not directly resolve the question of domestic refining capability.
Nor does increasing domestic crude oil exploration automatically provide the infrastructure required to turn crude into usable transport fuels.
The closure of Marsden Point was a commercial decision made by Refining NZ, now Channel Infrastructure, with the refinery ceasing operations in 2022. The wider policy question is whether successive governments adequately considered the strategic consequences of losing domestic refining capacity.
Domestic refining would not, by itself, guarantee energy independence. A refinery still requires crude supply, operating capacity and economically sustainable production. Equally, reliance on imported finished fuels creates exposure to international refining, shipping and distribution networks.
A proper assessment would need to compare the cost and resilience of domestic refining, strategic fuel reserves, diversified imports and alternative transport technologies.
For a country geographically distant from major energy markets, those questions extend beyond party politics.
They concern national resilience, productive capacity and the ability of essential industries to continue operating during an international disruption.
The interview leaves that issue open.
Education, productivity and the next generation
As the conversation moved towards its conclusion, Chatterton returned to education and the opportunities she believes it can create.
She argued that a productive economy depends on young people leaving school with the skills required for well-paid employment.
That includes both academic and vocational pathways, with greater attention to matching qualifications and training to the needs of employers.
She identified education and social investment as areas in which she would particularly like to contribute if elected to Parliament.
Her emphasis was on evidence-based decisions, stronger educational achievement and ensuring that young people have opportunities to build successful lives.
For Papakura, this also means ensuring that the physical infrastructure keeps pace with population growth.
New classrooms, schools, healthcare facilities and transport links must be delivered in sufficient time to serve expanding communities.
Chatterton acknowledged that while land has been secured for some future facilities, the construction and delivery of those services remain essential next steps.
This is where national economic policy meets local reality.
A growing population may create opportunities for businesses, employment and investment. But growth without sufficient infrastructure can also produce congestion, overcrowded services and rising costs.
The challenge for any incoming electorate MP is to ensure that development improves the quality of life for existing residents as well as those moving into the area.
Political choice and the responsibility of representation
Asked about her political affiliation, Chatterton said National had been her first choice.
She connected that decision to her experience in social investment and her belief that effective public services require sound economic management.
Towards the end of the interview, she contrasted National's economic policies with tax proposals advanced by opposition parties.
She promoted National's commitments to business investment, employment growth, higher wages and no new taxes, while expressing concern about the potential consequences of additional taxation.
These were campaign arguments made by Chatterton, rather than independently established conclusions about the likely effects of competing parties' policies.
Different tax proposals have different economic consequences depending on their design, thresholds, exemptions and how the revenue is used.
Similarly, investment incentives and tax reductions must be assessed against their fiscal costs and measurable effects on productivity, wages and employment.
For voters, the important distinction is between political promises and outcomes that can be independently demonstrated.
Chatterton said her immediate responsibility as a candidate was to seek the trust of Papakura residents, rather than speculate about any future ministerial portfolio.
She wants to bring her experience in education, data analysis and government administration to the role while advocating for the infrastructure and services her community requires.
Beyond the political biography
What made this eLocal Conversation distinctive was the opportunity to hear Chatterton discuss the experiences that preceded her political career.
The classically trained musician who learned discipline and communication through performance became a teacher, then a social investment analyst and government adviser.
Those experiences appear to have shaped her emphasis on preparation, evidence and understanding the outcomes of public decisions.
But the transition from advising government to representing an electorate brings a different responsibility.
An MP must not only understand how government works, but also challenge decisions when they fail to serve the people being represented.
That includes questioning policy assumptions, scrutinising spending, examining long-term infrastructure needs and ensuring that national political priorities do not overshadow local concerns.
Papakura's growth makes those responsibilities particularly significant.
The electorate faces substantial decisions about housing, transport, education, healthcare and economic development, all of which will affect its communities for decades.
Chatterton has outlined the priorities she would pursue. Whether those ambitions translate into effective representation will depend on the decisions made, the resources secured and the results delivered.
The conversation ended where it began, with music.
Chatterton suggested that perhaps their next meeting could include a duet, combining Winckel's guitar with her cello.
It was a light-hearted conclusion to a discussion that had travelled from classical music and family life through the complexities of government spending, artificial intelligence and national energy security.
And it illustrated the purpose of eLocal Conversations: to move beyond prepared political statements and give the public an opportunity to understand the people seeking to represent them, the ideas influencing their decisions and the questions that remain unanswered.
Watch the full 45-minute eLocal Conversation with Emma Chatterton and Mykeljon Winckel below.
Sources
Editorial note: The report distinguishes statements made during the interview from independent analysis. Specific financial figures, construction-cost comparisons, infrastructure commitments and energy statistics quoted by the candidate have not all been independently verified for this accompanying report.