Hūhana Wātene is standing for Te Tumu Araki, Māori vice-president. She says “unionism has been a significant part of my life”. Her father was a watersider and her grandfather a “die-hard unionist”. She’s been active in the union for over 20 years.Hūhana is Ngāti Porou. She has worked at Unitec for 22 years and says: “The place gets into your bones.” She is an academic lecturer in Bridgepoint, a foundation programme mainly preparing nursing students for their degrees and the academic leader for embedding matauranga Māori into Unitec programmes.Hūhana got involved in the union a month into her Unitec job when she attended a strike meeting. “You only have to open your mouth once,” she says.Throughout her time at Unitec Hūhana has been part of the union in a range of roles. She says she’s learnt a lot from the big issues there, including redundancies, bringing in a common semester and the introduction of online learning. She blames poor management — “too fast, too harsh” — for lots of the problems.Currently she is a member of TEU’s Te Toi Ahurangi and a Kaiawhina.Her priorities are to ensure the Māori perspective in the union is clearly identified. She wants a big push to ensure engagement around increasing Māori positions in the union. She’s committed to kotahi mano, the bid to ensure TEU reaches 1,000 Māori members.Hūhana wouldn’t stand if she didn’t believe in the journey the union is on. “Is it perfect? No. Is it a work in progress? Yes. But TEU is so far down the track compared to other organisations.”She is quick to acknowledge “extremely good leaders in the past”. She says: “I have a professional and cordial approach and can work with everybody, Māori and non-Māori. “You don’t have to agree with somebody to have constructive conversations.”