June 2017

Chalkeyes presents…
To mayor and back again
Taranaki DO, practice owner, mayor and self-confessed recovering racist Andrew Judd was
a talking book at WOMAD. Jai Breitnauer took him out on loan
A
while ago someone told me Maori are lazy.
They said, Maori don’t help themselves.
They can’t manage their money or their
land, they just fill our jails. Their language is dead
and they’re lucky the English saved them,” says
Andrew Judd as he moves animatedly around a
small tent at the edge of the 2017 WOMAD music
festival in New Plymouth. The Sounds of the Hot
8 Brass Band ride the wind over from the Gables
stage, but not even a jaunty brass cover of Marvin
Gaye can break the tension. Judd’s opening gambit
is decidedly uncomfortable – and it’s meant to be.
“Do you know who said that to me?” he
continues. “I said that to me. My name is Andrew
Judd, and I’m a recovering racist.”
Just three years earlier, Andrew Judd had opened
the WOMAD festival as the newly elected mayor
of New Plymouth. He came from nowhere,
running for the seat after just two terms as a local
councillor and hammering the nearest candidate
with a 16,000-vote majority. People liked Judd,
they felt he had their needs at heart; Judd felt he
did too. He cared about the local community and
that caring came from his experience within the
optics industry.
“My background is in sales and retail, and then I
worked in local radio for a bit,” he says, describing
how a chance meeting with optometrist Michael
Browning led him to study as a dispensing
optician (DO). “He told me the industry was about
to change and that they could really use someone
with my skills. When I started the training, I
became enchanted by the industry, by the idea of
helping people.”
After 10 years practising, Judd launched his
own business in 2006 because he wanted to do
something that was very locally-focussed.
“People said a DO owning an optometrists; it
couldn’t work. But our business model is built
on relationships, on friendship. We get to know
all our customers personally – many of them
are friends or people we know through our
children. We developed a trust with our clientele
that not only kept them coming back to us, but
recommending us to others.”
When Judd took up the role of mayor in late
2013, his practice employed two optometrists
who were busy five days a week, plus support staff
– all of whom he had put through DO training.
“We’d won awards in Taranaki. We were well
known.” It was when Judd Opticians won the Top
Shop award that he was tempted into local politics
by the then mayor. “I thought it would be good
for business, how could it not be? I wanted to help
people, and I thought I’d be helping by negotiating
parking issues in the CBD or trying to keep rates
low. I had the needs of my clients in mind.”
Judd had no idea what was about to hit him and
26 NEW ZEALAND OPTICS June 2017
when it happened, it blindsided him.
“I’d never been on a marae before I was elected.
My first visit as mayor was for Sir Maui Pomare Day
– a celebration of the first Maori doctor and MP. I
watched as some of the iwi leaders cried during the
powhiri and I realised that whatever I think, Maori
think differently. Their experience is different and
who am I to say that experience doesn’t matter?
Who am I to tell them to move on?”
He realised something then, he says, he realised
he was racist and the position he came from, the
position of white privilege, dictated the way he
had always thought about, behaved around and
treated people from other cultures, particularly
Maori.
“I’ve always thought of myself as a good person,
but when I did the cultural competencies course as
a trainee DO, well I was just ticking boxes.”
“Someone said to me, ‘you’re not racist because
you wouldn’t refuse a Maori an eye test,’ and I said
‘no, but I have stood by Maori customers in the
practice to make sure they don’t nick anything’.
It’s all the same in the end, you can’t be half
pregnant.”
Judd’s unlikely claim to fame, and what he’s
become most well-known for and, at the time,
pilloried for, was trying to set up a Maori ward
seat – something available to all local government
bodies, but requires a vote. The public referendum
result was 83% against the seat.
“There’s a rural ward seat, mostly for white,
middle-class farmers, and that doesn’t require
a vote,” says Judd. “If we turned this on its head
and said, ‘we don’t need this rural ward seat’, how
would people feel?”
People began withdrawing their support for
Judd as mayor, telling him they didn’t realise he
was ‘like that’ and accusing him of racism against
the white community. He was called a bigot and
worse by some constituents. But what Judd hadn’t
banked on was the effect on his business.
“It had run itself fine for 12 months, then when
all this happened I had the staff ringing me every
day. They said, ‘You’ve got to stop this Maori stuff,
we’re bleeding’.”
Judd says patients withdrew their records from
his practice in droves. Some did it quietly, others
sent emails that said, “We should have gone to
Specsavers,” or “You’re supposed to help with
vision but you can’t even see that you’re a racist.”
“Those were the most tenacious ones,” says
Judd. “I can’t judge them, I used to be them.”
By the time Judd stepped down at the end of
his term, opting not to run again, he had just one
optometrist working three days a week.
“I felt a sense of responsibility to my staff. After
all, they were relying on me for income and job
security. But if I did a U-turn, to save my business
oDocs’ Hi-Tech Award
Innovative social enterprise,
oDocs Eye Care carried
off the prestigious New
Zealand Hi-Tech Award for
Mobile Innovation at this
year’s award dinner in May.
oDocs is the brainchild of
ophthalmology registrar
Dr Sheng Chiong Hong
(known to all simply as
‘Hong’) who, together with
colleagues, developed an
inexpensive system combining
smartphones with 3D
printable attachments to allow
accurate, mobile visual acuity
tests, slit-lamp examinations
and retinal imaging, wherever
an eye health professional is
Dr Hong Sheng Chiong co-founder of oDocs accepting his award at the 2017 Hi-Tech Awards
based. Originally developed
to bring affordable eye care to
remote locations, oDocs visoScope and visoClip of awards for the company since its launch in
attachments, with associated apps are now being 2015. Dr Hong, accepted the Hi-Tech Award at
rolled out commercially, both in New Zealand and a record-breaking gala dinner in Auckland, with
overseas to help support the company’s social 910 attendees. Now in its 23rd year, the New
endeavours and product development.
Zealand Hi-Tech Awards celebrate New Zealand’s
The 2017 Hi-Tech Award is the latest in a series High-Tech success and innovation stories. ▀
or to secure my political career, what does that say
about me? What’s more important, the truth or
money? If I have to lose my business for the truth,
then I’m ready to pay the piper.”
Judd says in the end it doesn’t matter whether
people agree with you, it just matters that you
agree with yourself.
“I’ve also had a lot of support. People came to
my practice because they agreed with me. And I
also had letters of support from colleagues, from
optometrists. They know who they are and I’d just
like to thank them, it meant so much.”
Six months on and Judd is finding that old
patients are trickling back onto his books.
Sometimes they book an appointment just to have
a moan at him and he takes these opportunities
to talk to them, to explain his thoughts and, if he
doesn’t win them around, to agree to disagree.
“I’m doing a lot of talking events. I’m going to
Auckland University to talk about Maori health
and I’m speaking to the Salvation Army. I’m also
writing a paper for Massey University.”
Judd says he believes if he can get just one
person to readdress their own thoughts and ideas
on this issue, then it’s all worth it. It has also
changed his thoughts about cultural acceptance in
the optical world.
“Your body language, tone, how we present
ourselves – it needs to be changed, to be more
inclusive. Why would Maori come in here? Is it a
safe space?”
Judd says once a GP told him Maori were the
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Andrew Judd, DO, practice owner, mayor and recovering racist
worst at compliance. “I thought to myself, what
are you saying to people with your attitude and
demeanour? How are your assumptions affecting
your patients’ willingness to comply?”
Maori optometrists are, of course, very few and
far between. Judd believes the lack of diversity in
the optical industry needs to be addressed. Why
aren’t materials offered in both languages for
instance? What is it about optics that turns Maori
students away?
“Have we lost sight of what we stand for?” says
Judd. “I became a DO to help people. If I say I’m a
practice that cares about people, it has to mean
all people otherwise it’s just a slogan. We can’t
just be the problem; we need to be the solution
as well.” ▀