Your deputy Desley Simpson was openly considering a run at the mayoralty and then she announced that she would stand as your deputy. You have a Fix Auckland ticket. And she said at the time, “We have the same policies”. Given that, why did you not step back and allow Desley Simpson to run for mayor this time?
You haven’t got the story quite right. She was actually actively contemplating resigning. And it was my supporters that talked her into staying on.
Okay, well she hasn’t said that.
No, but that’s what happened. I promised not to say much about that and I gave her a period of time to make her mind up, but she’s a good lady and complements me quite well.
Do you think she would make a good mayor?
I think so.
You think so, but you weren’t up for that this time.
Well, this time I was determined to finish the things that I started.
It was said at the time of the last election that you had spent half a million dollars. Is that true?
Yeah, I actually spent more if you look up the thing, but it was half a million of mine …
Do you think if you spend that much money on a mayoral election, it’s a barrier to entry for others? Do you think it intimidates other candidates?
Well, I don’t know. I spent it because I came from right outside to a degree. And I think that was in keeping with what Mr [Phil] Goff had spent.
You are attending very few meet-the-candidate meetings. Why is that?
Well, there’s two reasons for that. We’ve had a really busy last flurry at the council just recently and so to get things like the intensification through took a lot of side work to encourage everybody over the line.
Plus, I went to three of them, I think. And sitting in a room with 10 or 12 people who’ve never even been a chairman of a committee, let alone run something bigger than a dairy, telling you that you’re useless and done nothing and you’re corrupt. I was just thinking it was really unpleasant and it informs nothing.
So in Whangaparāoa, you did attend a candidate meeting and while they were talking about accountability, you got up and said, “I’m off for a beer”.
Well, at that stage I’d heard such a lot of drivel. And they talk about accountability. I meant to bring in about three inches [thick] of paper, which is this year’s report, the annual report from the council. And everything you need to know is in there. They just don’t read it. And they make speeches about accountability.
Even people around me in the council have not read that stuff. We are very accountable. There is no similar book from the Government about the amount of money they’ve spent.
You are negotiating a regional deal with the Government. What do you want for Auckland?
Well, the most important thing is to respect Auckland for what it is, a third of the country. And give us more ability to behave like we’re a big grown-up. We have a very responsible way that we manage our finances, and that’s something you couldn’t accuse the Government of.
New Zealand is in a bit of a funk at the moment. And I’m quite excited about the fact that Auckland’s poised to have some really good stuff happening. I think we’re poised to lead the country out of that.
So are you asking for things like [getting back] GST on rates?
I haven’t actually asked for anything that costs any money. The things that I want are just freeing us up to make better decisions without influence from people who just don’t know a big city very well.
Transport is likely to be at the heart of that regional deal. You’re on record saying that the Government’s key policy of roads of national significance is simply roads of National Party significance. You’ve said their plan for a new harbour crossing is the wrong one. You are upset that they are looking very slowly at congestion charging, which you regard as a key. Is there scope for much agreement with the Government on transport?
I think there’s a lot of scope for agreement, really. I think Minister [Chris] Bishop’s a pretty pragmatic sort of fellow. He’s surrounded by poor advisers in Wellington, to be quite honest. I have dealt with the Ministry of Transport. It’s straight out of a TV programme: Yes, Minister.
What we’re going to get from this is a transport plan for Auckland based on facts, based on where people are moving to, based on where industries are moving to, based on doing the right thing, not based on getting people re-elected in certain parts of the city.
And the idea that we would have a cross-harbour study that’s secret from the city that surrounds the harbour is nuts.
You don’t know what they’re doing?
We don’t, we know nothing. We don’t know where their office is. We don’t know who the consultants are. It’s bizarre. I’ve been keen on making use of Meola Reef for a number of sensible reasons.
If the Government is being secretive about its intentions and is not letting you in, what makes you say that you think you’re going to get a decent deal from Minister Bishop?
There’s an election next year.
You think that’s what it comes down to?
Mate, I’m driven by policies. The policy of National and Labour is let’s get us back in, please. And I’m neutral to both of them. I can work with both sides. Even the other day councillor [Julie] Fairey said that I was the most centrist person she’d met. And I felt quite good about that.
You don’t think the Government’s roads of national significance, for example, is a vote-winner?
Not everywhere. And just think about the harbour crossing. When the river cities of Paris and London and Rome and Moscow wanted to get from one side of the city to the other, they built a bridge. And when that bridge got full, they didn’t build a tunnel under it. They didn’t build a bridge next door. They went 5km along the river and built another bridge, to open up new areas.
We don’t seem to think about demand management on traffic. This is one of the strong things for me. I’ve already got that with the port. It now costs a lot more to get your container off the port in the daytime than at night.
The policy and planning functions of Auckland Transport are coming back into Auckland Council, which is something you strongly pushed for. That’s going to leave the local boards with quite some authority as road controlling authorities, able to make decisions in their areas. Do you think they’re going to have the competence to do that?
Well, we’re going to work out where that level is. It’s not quite determined yet. But there’s a lot of really small stuff that would be better made by the people of Howick than someone in [the council office].
Where the bus stop goes, that kind of thing?
There’s an awful lot of anger over very small stuff. You’ve got to understand that the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh largest cities in New Zealand are suburbs of Auckland. They’ve got to have the ability.
My question really was whether you think the local boards are going to have the skills to do it.
I want them to have those decisions. At the moment, AT are mucking them up. I get endless letters about pretty trivial things and I don’t want to be the person who makes that sort of decision.
Let’s talk about housing density. There are lots of scary ideas out there at the moment. Two million homes in Auckland, 15-storey apartment blocks, fewer character homes. Quite a number of the people who probably voted for you are worried about the new density plans.
A lot of the people who voted for me didn’t quite understand that under MDRS [medium density residential standards] they could have three ugly, three-storey buildings stuck 1m away on the boundary without any say whatsoever.
I’ve had two or three meetings with groups that started off unfriendly, but once you explain exactly… And of course, one or two of my councillors have been a bit disingenuous with raising issues that are not really true in order to lift their chances of reappearing on the council.
We’ve put a lot of work into getting through this last week. Richard Hills is a pretty good councillor, actually.
He’s the chair of your planning committee.
He is the chair of my planning committee. He kind of lives and breathes planning and he does a good job of it. And I understand the practical side rather than the theoretical side. We’ve just spent billions of dollars on an underground rail system and we’ve spent a lot of money on busways. I don’t know why we took so long to do the busways, but we have. And we should be putting people around those. And that means in multistorey buildings. I’ve lived in multistorey apartments in Auckland for years.
That’s the argument for concentrating the density on the inner suburbs, but a lot of people say why not do it half an hour away in places like Henderson or Albany or Mangere?
Mangere is full of intensification.
There are Government ministers saying we should be looking at greenfields, even the Prime Minister’s saying that.
Oh, that’s just economic nonsense, really.
This is the outer edges of the urban limits.
So we have to build houses in Pukekohe so people can keep their seats in Epsom? That makes no sense to me.
You and I attended [the opening of] a very expensive and most impressive sewage system up north that really should have been done as a cheaper version years ago, but unfortunately the growth got ahead of the ability to service it. So it cost a lot to do that.
It cost $450 million.
Yes. The [developers] might pay for footpaths and roads and the sewage system, but people want a swimming pool and a library and a whole lot of other stuff which they don’t pay for. So now we’re pushing up the costs of development contributions. But then they’re saying, “Oh, we can’t afford to do it now”. And I’m saying, “Well, that’s the point. We’ve got unused infrastructure right throughout the city, let’s make more use of that”.
More people in areas where we’ve got the stuff is a lot more sensible and I’m very pleased to argue that. It may annoy one or two people, but when they understand it, they usually get it.
I have some quick-fire questions for you. How well do you know your city? Who is Braxton Sorensen-McGee?
Braxton Sorensen-McGee. Well, I don’t know that person.
She’s the 18-year-old star of the Black Ferns.
Oh, I should have known that. Oh, she’s the little winger.
She is the “little winger”.
So I did know. There you go.
Who is Miles Hurrell?
Miles Hurrell is a good mate of mine who lives around the corner and he is the person in charge of the one business in New Zealand that’s bigger than the council. He’s the boss of Fonterra. He lives right next door to where I play tennis.
Who is Anapela Polata’iavo?
Anapela Polata’iavo? Hmm.
Have you seen the movie Tinā?
Oh! She’s the lady.
Right. Who used to stand on top of the veranda of the Farmers building beckoning to children with his finger?
Yeah. Santa.
Santa.
That’s a bit dodgy. I’m never too sure about that.
Who was Āpihai Te Kawau?
Āpihai Te Kawau. Not sure.
He was the paramount chief of Ngāti Whātua Ōrākei, who gifted the land of Auckland to the Crown.
Oh, I should know that, too. Good man. Thank you for him.
What was the last show you were dragged to? Or went willingly to?
We went to Murder on the Orient Express.
That was the Auckland Theatre Company.
It was.
What did you learn from the 2023 floods?
Lots. I wasn’t particularly well prepared. The council wasn’t particularly well prepared. Auckland Emergency Management wasn’t well prepared. The city wasn’t well prepared. I’ve learned a lot. Auckland Emergency Management is a hell of a lot better than it was, including FENZ has also taken a step forward. What I’m most proud of, it came out of that, is the Healthy Waters programme Making Space for Water. I think that’s a marvellous thing, even if it does upset one or two golfers from Takapuna. In the long term it’s a really good thing to do.
Can you explain Making Space for Water?
The day after the flood, I took at my expense a helicopter ride over the city. And the first thing I noticed was the Devonport Golf Course was flooded, but no houses around it were. And I’m thinking, “Well, that’s a pretty good lesson.” Overland flow paths are much more important than people think.
The other thing I learned, with the focus I’ve got as a long-term trustee of Seacleaners, was the number of manholes and important pipes and things that were jammed up with plastic bottles and other stuff. Rubbish is part the play in stormwater management. And I don’t think the public understand that until they see it. That was disappointing.
Making Space for Water being the idea of creating reservoirs where water can be held and then seep away.
And creating overland flows and just removing houses that have got themselves in the road. The other thing I was surprised about was that people don’t see water for what it is. They had built solid wooden fences between neighbours they didn’t like, which interrupted the flow and flooded their own houses, in some cases, or flooded the neighbours.
There was a lot of small stuff like that, so I pushed for a small booklet, which we took around.
There are some other things that might have been learned from the 2023 floods. It came out recently that there were three hours of Friday-night drinks in your office.
Well, it wasn’t three hours. It was much less than that. [But] the first I heard about the flood was one of the people outside one of my pubs in Ōtāhuhu, who rang me, they were saying, “It’s water in here.” The chief executive didn’t ring us. Nobody rang us. The moment we felt the thing, we all stopped and concentrated and took advice.
But everybody in the city, by the end of the day on Friday, knew about it.
Well, no, we were looking out the window and there’s no flooding [we can see] in the city. Nobody rang me. They had the wrong Wayne Brown, of course.
The drinks in your office weren’t included in Mike Bush’s report. Do you know why that is? Did you ask him not to include that?
No, I didn’t even speak to him during the whole thing. Hardly at all. He just rang me.
Did anyone from your office ask him not to include that?
No, I don’t think that’s true at all. If you read that long, boring report and go right to the bottom, there was a thing there saying that nobody had any alcohol impairment whatsoever.
Okay. One of the things that became clear was that in times of crisis, people want visible, empathetic, competent leadership. Do you feel that you served the city well enough on that occasion? Would you do it differently next time?
Yeah, I would. But I would expect to be informed a bit earlier. My current CEO keeps me informed of all sorts of things. Auckland Emergency Management have already sent me three texts today about what was going to be a bad storm is not going to be a bad storm.
Is the city ready now for the next one?
Way more ready, but we’ve still got buildings in the wrong places. And up until Thursday, we didn’t really have the power to stop buildings being built in the wrong places.
But that’s changed now from the Thursday decision [introducing new zoning plans].
We had to beg them [the Government] to do it. And we had five councillors who voted against it. Can you believe that?
I want to ask you about the style of the way things happen at council. People get called Trumpian a lot these days, and I’ve heard it said about you. Do you think you’re Trumpian?
No, not at all.
There have been accusations of bullying and misogyny around the council table.
Ah, but it wasn’t aimed at me.
Not aimed at you.
No, not at all. I inherited a council that had some deep enmities.
In March last year, five women councillors formally complained that there was a boys’ club operating at council. They talked about, in essence, a crude, jokey belligerence that belittles women. You are the chair of the council meetings, you’re in charge.
I wasn’t really part of that. They have said it wasn’t aimed at me anyhow.
So you don’t accept any personal responsibility?
No. People like Julie Fairey, is she going to fear Trump from me? The same with [councillor] Angela Dalton, she’s had issues with some of her male counterparts. Now some of the men are scared to say anything in case there’s a reverberation. It’s quite a difficult job. There’s 20 very different people in there and I didn’t really know them when I started.
So do you think you’re good at forming a working team?
Well, everything I’ve needed to get 11 votes for, I’ve got 11 votes for. I think one of the good things is that I’ve avoided us ever getting into the red versus the blue team stuff because that prevents anything happening.
You’ll be aware that this has been true of the Super City for its entire time. Both your predecessors did the same. Got their majorities and worked across left and right to do it.
Well, that’s that shows what a difficult job it is. I mean, the Prime Minister has a cabinet of people who are there at his request.
Hence my question, are you good at building a team?
Well, yeah, I’m good at building 11 votes for things that are difficult. And last week’s effort was a very controversial thing, intensification. There were all sorts of people putting up a lot of noise against it. But we got it well and truly passed.
The airport shares [selling them] was a very difficult thing. I mean, the returns already are millions ahead of what we would have got if we kept onto that. And so it was incredibly sensible and people who apparently had economic degrees opposed that, which is bizarre.
Could we talk about the long-term plan? That’s the 10-year budget which the council will be refreshing next year. What are the big difficult issues that budget will face?
I think keeping an eye out for 10 years is a difficult thing in itself because everyone thinks about the next year. There’s all sorts of people promising zero rate rises next year and we’ve said it’s about 7%. And that’s almost entirely to operate the City Rail Link trains. It’s completely pointless building a $6 billion underground train and having nobody driving up and down the damn thing. So in order to have it [the rates rise] that low, we’ve virtually got no money for anything else increased. That’s quite an achievement in some ways.
Parts of the city have had very high rates rises because their land values have risen, particularly in the rural areas. Do you think the council has to review how rates are set to avoid that kind of blowout?
Well, oddly enough, I went out to one of those areas and people said, “It’s just like it’s a tax on our land.” And I said, “Mate, how long have you been on the council and you didn’t work that out? You should give back your money.”
It’s always been a tax on our land. It was a tax on our grandfather’s land. And the values jump about. And this last time, the rural areas rose a bit and the city areas collapsed a bit. The city areas had more than their share of the increases in the previous ones. It evens out in the long term.
Nevertheless, in the country areas, they have complained that was sprung on them, that the increase is enormous.
Well, I couldn’t do anything about that.
I’m asking you if you think the rates-setting system should be reviewed to avoid that level of increase.
I think there should be something about that, but it’s not the rates-setting system. It’s the government valuation over which we have no control.
Valuation is based on the market.
Yeah, but they could have it so it didn’t jump around more than 5%. Should they put a cap on that? That would have eased that pressure. I mean, the idea of a cap on rates is a simplistic idea to a complex problem. And people shouldn’t trust simplistic ideas to complex problems.
You mentioned Making Space for Water before. Is that going to put significant demands on the long-term plan?
No.
There’s not enough money in there now to do what was initially planned.
Yeah, but this is a long-term plan and these things take a while to do. You start with the worst ones and work your way through. It might be something that goes on for 20 years.
Healthy Waters produced a plan that I think said there were 18 areas they wanted to focus on. You’re doing, what, four at the moment?
Yeah, but next year we’ll start the next four. It’s steady progress and I’m a great supporter. The shock in the budget was the need to buy back houses, which came from the Labour Government at the time making a generous offer to fund half of it and then Auckland Emergency Management people coming up with a budget of the number of houses involved, which was grotesquely wrong. We managed to survive paying for that and still work within our overall parameters of the budget. That’s pretty good going.
How do you think the city should tackle climate change?
Well, again, it’s a very complex problem and there isn’t a button somewhere that changes the climate back. And there are a lot of people around, even in my council, who don’t think there is a climate change. And so I keep pointing out, look at Kaitaia. They’re having to change what they grow there.
I’m a great believer in freight moving off trucks and onto trains. There is no downside to that. The port weren’t doing much of that, but now they’re doing trains and trains every day. They said, “Oh, we were subsidising it.” But it was just a matter of getting the right pricing. People’s behaviour follows money, so if you can get the financial incentives correct. When you talk to the various people in the freight sector, the people who make their money just by moving freight, like Mainfreight, they’re very happy about that. The people who own four or five trucks want their trucks to be kept in use, so they’re not happy about it.
Keeping people living right next door to where they’re working is probably the best way [to confront climate change] because we’re eliminating a whole lot of trips that don’t need to be made.
So transport and housing policies are climate change policies.
Absolutely. I totally believe in that.
You made a speech to Grey Power in Northcote recently where you made those points.
I don’t know how it went over with them, but I believe in that.
What do you think should happen in Queen St?
Again, it’s a complex problem. We’ve got people who are living in Queen St and I don’t make the laws about behaviour. Unfortunately, that’s a central Government responsibility. But we’ve taken quite a bit of money out of the mayor’s budget to put more council staff on the street. We can’t arrest them. You can’t arrest a person for being poor, but we’re kind of moving them along.
I’m really asking you a larger question about the economic life on Queen St. How are the shops going to prosper?
One of the things they complain about is the rough sleepers. So that is a problem. I’ve got to work on that. And then, I think I’m a bit patient. I want to see what happens once we’ve opened the City Rail Link. That should recharge things.
People are blaming AT for shutting down Smith & Caughey’s, which my wife had heroically tried to keep alive. But people are buying a lot of things online now. And their speciality was high-quality brands, which has shifted down to the bottom of Queen St. It’s very hard.
We’re nearly out of time. Can you tell me about the Auckland you would like your grandchildren to live in?
It is New Zealand’s biggest city. It’s got to be an international city and it’s starting to be a bit of that. I’d like to see the migration of the sort of buildings at the bottom of Queen St up through the main street and connecting better to K Rd.
I’m proud of starting the Tech Alliance, because we’re not going to make this city richer by milking more cows. We don’t have any. But we have a tech startup setup here, which is lacking leadership. So I’ve stepped into that space. Trade is more city-to-city than country-to-country, and we’re seen as the only major city in New Zealand.
So it’ll be a bright, clean, more sustainable, attractive city that celebrates its harbour and its life and leads the economy as opposed to following it.
Is it fair to say that three years ago when you were campaigning to become mayor, you were a grumpy outsider complaining about a lot of things, but now you’re the mayor of a city that is learning how to embrace density, learning how to embrace efficient transport, learning how to be a modern trading city, as you’ve just outlined? You’ve become a mayor with an attitude to the place that’s rather different from the one you had three years ago.
Well, I think the place is rather different than it was three years ago as well. And I feel good about that.
Do you think you’ve changed, is what I’m asking you.
Yeah, I think definitely. We have a port that makes money.
So who are you now?
Solely because I threatened to sell it. I was never going to sell it, but I discovered that in fact my predecessor was working on that. I worked out what they could pay and said to them, “Make that money.”
And then there are other little things that I love. I’m intensely proud of little Brownie’s Pool, which only cost 200 grand.
And you’re going to build more of those?
I’m going to build a lot more of those.
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues, with a focus on Auckland. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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