New Zealand rejected Michelle Excell. Her parents were both Kiwis, but because she was born in Australia, a change in the law when she was 18 meant she could no longer be a New Zealand citizen.
So she set out to make a name for herself as a tech entrepreneur in America. As an immersive technology consultant, she’s worked with brands and advertising agencies to help them develop big-name products and campaigns, like Taco Bell’s famous metaverse wedding and luxury carmaker Acura’s experiment in which celebrities drove real cars blind, wearing virtual reality goggles and helmets.
“It was,” she says, “totally crazy!”
Now, at 42, New Zealand has welcomed her back. One small town in particular.
She and her husband couldn't afford a family home in overpriced Oakland, California. “It's really tough in the Bay Area. The rat race is real, yeah. And I'm not getting any younger.”
So they moved, in an unlikely move, to the riverside town of Whanganui and bought a three-bedroom leasehold home for $323,000 in November last year.
They love the community, the arts, the nightlife. “We heard rumors about a lot of secret underground gigs. I don't think I want to reveal more!”
“It couldn't have been a warmer welcome to Whanganui. It's incredible because people are amazed and so happy that so many people are moving here.
“I feel like it’s the only time in my life that I’ve moved somewhere that’s really going up. Every time I’ve moved they’re like ‘oh you just missed the great music scene in San Francisco’. Or ‘oh you just missed the crazy times in the agency scene in Melbourne, we’re not snorting cocaine off the boardroom table anymore’. I’ve missed every era, really!
“Now we have moved to a place where we feel 100 percent that things are going well.”
They are at the forefront of what Mayor Andrew Tripe wants: a rebuilding of the city, driven by the first so-called “city deal” with government.
Next week, the Prime Minister is expected to announce the framework for the City Deal at the major annual meeting of Local Government NZ, made up of mayors, chairmen and councillors, in Wellington.
City deals, also known as regional deals or place-based agreements, are one of the few things that the coalition government, the Labour opposition and local authorities all agree on.
What are they? According to last year’s Future for Local Government Review (the recommendations of which have since been scrapped by Minister Simeon Brown), place-based agreements are “bespoke packages of funding and decision-making powers negotiated between central and local government and other local authorities as part of the exercise of kāwanatanga”.
They are designed to deliver long-term, large-scale improvements in local well-being in a way that highlights local priorities.
If this sounds to you like a fancy new name for the familiar practice of central and local governments negotiating the funding of their regional priorities, you are not entirely wrong.
And Michelle Excel? She has now regained her New Zealand citizenship.