The former deputy mayor of Nelson has announced he will be running for Nelson in the upcoming general election for the Green Party.
Rohan O’Neill-Stevens (Ngāti Apakura) said he is looking forward to bringing his experience in collaboration, advocacy and delivering change to the election.
“Together we will build a movement that doesn’t just change the government but delivers transformational change by putting wealth and power in the hands of our communities.”
O’Neill-Stevens has been in politics since he was 19, becoming a Nelson City Councillor, then, when he was 22, he became deputy Mayor for the city.
In the 2025 Local elections, he did not stand to be re-elected into council.
Although he is making the shift from local to central, he has worked with the Green Party prior, helping them on their 2023 general election campaign. He also used to serve as the co-convenor of the party’s youth wing.
“We have more than enough in this country for everyone to thrive, to build a future we can all believe in. But successive governments have told us we have to settle for less and less, they’ve told us genuine change isn’t possible.
“We’ve currently got a government that’s more interested in stoking culture wars and undermining Te Tiriti than tackling the very real problems in front of us, all while tearing through our hard-fought environmental protections so multinational corporations can extract billions from our shared resources.
“It doesn’t have to be this way. We can choose a different path. We can choose our future,” he said.
O’Neill-Stevens joins a list of new Māori candidates for the Green Party, including Tānia Waikato and Heather Te Au-Skipworth, who were announced at Waitangi in 2026 as candidates for Māori electorates.
Currently, the seat is held by Labour MP Rachel Boyack, who won it in 2020 from former National MP Nick Smith after his 24 years in the role.
