Tory Whanau has been elected mayor of Wellington. Video / Mark Mitchell
Opinion by Georgina Campbell
Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau, whose independent campaign was endorsed by the Greens, has decided she will not renew her party membership, the Herald understands.
The key reason behind the move is so she can work more productively with councillors without a formal tie to a political party - butit could also ruffle feathers among those in the Green Party who helped her win the election.
Whanau has now spent almost six weeks in the city’s top job after she romped home with a convincing majority of 17,751 votes over the incumbent.
It was clear Whanau had a sense of which way the tide was turning a couple of weeks before election day, but such a strong majority certainly came as a surprise.
On the campaign trail, Whanau pitched herself as someone who could cross the political spectrum and bring people together. She pointed to her experience negotiating with New Zealand First when she was the Green Party’s chief of staff as an example of this.
So, her first appointments as mayor have raised a few eyebrows.
Green Party councillor Laurie Foon is the deputy mayor, while two Labour councillors and one Green councillor will chair the council’s three big committees.
First-term Motukairangi Eastern Ward councillor Tim Brown told Newstalk ZB Wellington Mornings host Nick Mills he felt “slightly disconcerted” about the appointments.
“It’s because they share her [Whanau’s] views, which I think is a good reason on her part, but of course means that the independent candidates sitting around the table are looking at the equation and thinking well if we don’t share her views, we’re going to be excluded.”
Brown has been appointed deputy chair of the council’s new super committee, which will tackle everything from climate change, Three Waters, housing, and transport, to the council’s capital works programme.
He would make a good committee chair himself one day considering he is the former chairman of Wellington International Airport. Regardless, he is still a council rookie and the council is a very different beast to the world Brown is used to.
It makes sense to put more experienced councillors in positions of power especially considering the mayor is also a rookie, but they didn’t have to be all left-leaning.
Up until now, Whanau has doubled down on her left politics. This looks quite hypocritical considering the way she presented herself in the lead-up to the election.
Before becoming mayor she did genuinely think she would need to reach across the aisle in at least her choice of deputy mayor to get anything done and be truly representative. Experienced councillors like Diane Calvert and Nicola Young would surely have been under consideration.
This was because Whanau didn’t expect a left-leaning majority around the council table or for her own win to be by any considerable margin.
Wellington mayor Tory Whanau with friends and supporters after the election result was announced. Photo / Mark Mitchell
But the election results did in fact deliver both those things. To put it simply, reaching across the aisle was not required.
Foon was chosen as deputy mayor because she would help support the mayor’s platform and had the trust of council staff. She has also been an emotional rock for Whanau through some challenging times on the campaign trail, like when a group of hecklers disrupted a debate in Brooklyn.
On announcing the committee appointments, Whanau’s office pointed to her landslide victory as an indication of Wellingtonians’ appetite for change and a move towards a city that was sustainable, carbon neutral, with people at its heart.
With that in mind, why consider hitting pause on her Green Party membership?
It’s a gesture of goodwill to the independent councillors perhaps.
Whanau will be aware of the discomfort that is sometimes associated with party-aligned mayors and the move could help build trust with her councillors.
It also might help convince Wellingtonians that she will actually listen to them instead of being ideologically driven.
Whanau won the mayoralty with a very convincing mandate but not every Wellingtonian is left-leaning and it’s still her job to represent them too.
She has maintained she will listen during public consultation processes and if the feedback is overwhelmingly negative, she will make changes to the plan (even if it is a cycleway).
But make no mistake, regardless of whether she’s officially a Green Party member she won’t be giving up her agenda of change.
Councillors and the mayor will officially meet for the first time today around the table at Wellington City Council’s headquarters on The Terrace.
The agenda is fairly procedural like maiden speeches for first-term councillors, meeting schedules, and remuneration.
Whether Whanau has managed to get councillors to work together constructively will unlikely be revealed in this setting.
The mayor has already made it clear on several occasions about the level of behaviour required from everyone.
Bad habits were formed during the last term - infighting, Facebook squabbles, eye-rolling, and online tirades became somewhat commonplace.
But with Christmas just around the corner, it’s unlikely Whanau and her council will be truly tested until next year.
Senior Wellington journalist Georgina Campbell’s fortnightly column looks closely at issues in the capital.
