A peek in Hubbard's cupboard

Dick Hubbard says you certainly can be nice and still be mayor, but the God-bothering, do-gooder image bothers him. Picture / Greg Bowker

Come in, says the tall mayor in the pin-striped suit, extending a long arm. "Have you been here before?"

Here is what Dick Hubbard calls his "splendid isolation", his very nice office in the Town Hall with its chandeliers and the New Zealand art on the walls. He is about to move out, across the road to the much less nice civic building. I tell him he's mad.

This proves a mad thing to say because he launches into a long explanation - "I'll tell you why" - about how you don't see Helen Clark hanging out in old Parliament building just because it happens to be a nice building. "She's in the Beehive because that's where the ministers and the senior executives are."

How encouraging. Perhaps the mayor, who says he is 120 days into the job the day I go to see him, has turned into a megalomaniac.

But no, he's off on some earnest explanation about how he wants to be able to "drop in for a cup of coffee, have a chat" with the council staff. "You'll just be annoying people," I say, but he ignores this and goes on about how he's looking forward to "getting a feel of what's happening and how it's happening", and very much more.

He says he's only had a little media training, including a couple of hours with the media trainer to everyone, Brian Edwards. He has certainly learned the skill of smiling politely but otherwise paying no mind to silly interjections. He does this quite brilliantly.

Anyway, he says that this "splendid isolation" is not his style. And while you certainly believe this, you also think that he might want to create as much distance, and distinction, between his style and that of the last mayor.

I have been here before, in this office. And it is hard to imagine that Banksie would have had a bike in the corner which, I tell this mayor, is rather ruining the look of the place.

The bike is here because next week he's going to bike to work in support of some programme to encourage such a practice. He plans to cycle in his suit "but with a helmet of course."

The "of course" is redundant. The former mayor got in trouble early on for driving like a maniac on his jet-ski. The current one is a much more sober sort. Hubbard is the nice mayor who, when I say, "You can't be nice and be mayor", replies that you most certainly can: "The most successful ... are the nicest."

Not too nice, perhaps. As that naughty Dr Bruce Hucker, Hubbard's deputy, no doubt found out when he went about upstaging the mayor in the days after the election. I ask Hubbard if he gave Hucker a good ticking off, and he gives me a mild ticking off for saying "that naughty etc." He wouldn't, he says, "use that word."

Yes, yes, but has he got that Dr Hucker under control now? "We've got a good working relationship. We've got the whole situation under control rather than him under control." Right, so did he have to give him a good ticking off to get the situation under control? "No, I wouldn't use the word 'ticking off.' That's demeaning, and there's absolutely no way that I would ever through the media tell that I'd ticked them off. That's not appropriate." What an excellent answer.

He is quite good at answers. He is quite good at anticipating questions. He knows that I am always whinging about Queen St's crappy footpaths to anyone remotely associated with councils. So when I tell him he'll be down the road after a term because of his just announced rates rise, he says: "Pay your rates and we'll fix your footpaths."

He will have to be better than just nice and quite good at answering questions, though, if he is to be a success as mayor. He is aware that people say he is politically naive. He says, "I wasn't politically experienced, but I think that's different from being politically naive. I still maintain that politics is not about rocket science. If you understand relationships and people dynamics, you can handle it."

He also knows that there is a perception that he is the killjoy mayor, a hangover, he says, from the loss of the V8 race - a muddle he inherited. He is more of a go-up-a-mountain man than a petrolhead, but he says, "I do understand the petrolheads that do like it and the emotional connection. I've got to make sure that my own personal likings and dislikings don't affect what happens in Auckland."

That might be part of the problem. As Hubbard acknowledges, Aucklanders like their mayors to have what he calls "a distinct personality; a twinkle in the eye. And I think it's very important that you don't take yourself too seriously. That you laugh at yourself and have the odd colourful epithet." That he would say "epithet" rather rules out any chance that we'll hear one from him. "Oh, watch this space," says the mayor with the twinkle in his eye.

But he hastens to add that "I don't swear like a trooper." He is given to stating the obvious. When I ask him how his mate Helen Clark is, he says: "Oh, I'm certainly not her Toy Boy, I can assure you of that."

The God-bothering, do-gooder image bothers him. "Well, it's quite wrong." I had thought that perhaps he's an old-fashioned character who might have been more comfortable living in times when you could talk about do-gooding without it being a character flaw. But he says he is a very modern bloke in a business environment which is catching up with his modern ideas.

Rather optimistically, he thinks his public image is ... "umm, of someone who is I guess genuine. I like to think that people think I'm genuine." I tell him I have no idea what this means. It is something to do with having "a strong values base." I don't know what that means either: everyone has values. He says, "But some people articulate them a little more than others. I mean, I have my values on public display."

He is a moral conservative whose values copped a fair bit of flak over a letter he signed urging politicians not to allow civil unions. He has since apologised to the gay community for "the harm and distress that I caused." He is going to the Big Gay Out this weekend. He hasn't decided what to wear yet: "I haven't got that far yet, Michele. What do you advise me to wear?"

He has had plenty of advice on what to wear since becoming mayor. We are unlikely to see any more pictures of him in a hairnet. "I have a wardrobe now. The wardrobe for running a cereal factory is a little bit different from the wardrobe for being mayor of Auckland."

But, "I think you'll find there's no gold thread running through the suit." Nice suit, though. "Yes, but it's off the peg." He got it in Newmarket. From Saks, I hazard. "Yes, but a sale I hasten to add."

Like lots of rich people, he has a horror of being thought of as rich. A myth, he says. I say, "I've been to your house. You've got enough money." He regards me in the way my bank manager sometimes does and says, "Have you ever heard of asset-rich and cash-poor?" So, he's cash-poor now? He says, "I think I live reasonably conservatively. I don't have flash cars or flash boats or anything like that."

He may not be as nice as all that. That could be a little dig at his predecessor. As could the talk about the suit.

He tells me that after an emotional Banks phoned him to concede the mayoralty, he never heard from him again. There was, despite a request to meet, no handover; not a scrap of paper in the mayor's office when Hubbard turned up for work.

He shows me where Banks has written in the visitor's book: "Keep the dream alive." It doesn't add: "Good luck, Dick."

This is an interesting story. Even more interesting is the fact that Hubbard tells it.