Scott grew up in rural Otago, exploring the hills, mountains, waterways and bush. The connections between people and with nature are an essential part of who we all are. Scott and his partner Jenna lived overseas in neo-peasant and activist communities, where Scott worked as an intern at the European Parliament.

Returning to New Zealand to raise their family, Scott co-founded an NGO to work on climate solutions and ran that for 12 years. During that time, Scott experienced the high points of successful projects and the low points and frustrations of trying to change the status quo at the flax-roots. Scott has been Green through all of this, whether in a governance role, as an academic or as an activist.

More recently, Scott worked at a Kaupapa Māori organization, in charge of a home upgrade programme to deliver energy wellbeing to some of our most vulnerable, and was a director at Climate Navigator, a sustainability and climate risk consultancy, helping communities, business and agencies decarbonise and adapt.

For years Scott has worked on community energy – developing and running Aotearoa’s first peer-to-peer electricity retailer, attempting to build Aotearoa’s first community wind farm, helping solarise communities – and was on an advisory group at the Electricity Authority. We can have cleaner, cheaper, smarter power, and I’ll work for that. Healthy housing is a passion. Scott worked to deliver energy wellbeing since 2007 and conceived and built NZ’s first Climate Safe House. Thriving rural communities, through farming, regional development, and rural health are in my DNA: I want our rural communities to flourish, with values not volumes, as we work for a post-growth economy ensuring climate justice as we adapt to the rough road ahead. 

“I’m excited to be part of the biggest, most diverse Green caucus ever!”