At home with the chameleon - John Banks

Does a man who has made a career out of being loud and brash have what it takes to be Mayor of Auckland? MICHELE HEWITSON spoke to John Banks.

A Chamelon by the name of John Banks is opening the door to the apartment he shares with his wife, Amanda, and their three children. He gestures us in, with a throwaway remark that the sort of people who live here include the likes of a High Court judge, well-heeled doctors.

As does, it remains hanging but unspoken, this son of criminals, the self-made man whose latest ambition is to be Mayor of Auckland.

From the balcony he surveys panoramic views of a city he's got his eye on.

Home for the self-made man is this exclusive block in an exclusive suburb. We can't tell you exactly where it is, because when you tell people where Banks and his family live - and this is what happened when they discovered his previous address in Paritai Drive - they come around and graffiti his fences, post pornographic notes in the letterbox, leave used condoms in the garden beds. Such are the joys of a controversial life in the public eye.

Such are the rewards of the brash and the brave or, depending on your point of view, the payback for racism and ranting.

Whatever, Banks is undeterred by the actions of people he would no doubt once have railed against as scum and losers. But today he is in ra-ra mode. He is genial, expansive. The chameleon is playing cheerleader.

Which is why there is coffee on offer, a warm welcome from Amanda, and a polite "pleased to meet you" from two of the children.

On almost any other occasion this would be a very odd situation indeed. Because Banks has called journalists an array of names ranging from, generically, "toe-rags," to, more personally, "a streak of weasel's piss," and, most delightfully, "dregs." The coffee is fresh.

The spiel has had a little longer to percolate. Banks' story is by now well-known: his parents were both convicted back-street abortionists, his father a small-time crim who was often in the clink.

He wasn't wanted at Auckland Grammar School; there was no class for "drongos." He wasn't wanted in a police force; there was no place for "the offspring of a shitbag." By the time he was 15, both of his parents were in jail.

Homeless and parentless, he lived in his Morris 8 in the Auckland Domain, got up at 3 am to collect bottles from sly grog joints around Freemans Bay, went to school at Avondale College, then turned up to work at Finlays Bakery in New North Rd in the evenings. Once a week, he'd go down to the Tepid Baths for "a scrub-up."

He did scrub up - and his underlying philosophy has long been that if he could scrub up, so can you, mate. He went on to become a restaurateur, MP for Whangarei for 15 years (he says "Waangarei," of course), and Minister of Police. He became the scourge of the Broadcasting Standards Authority, as Banksie of Radio Pacific's breakfast show.

It is this story that you get when Banks wants to talk about wanting to be mayor. The point he is making, and interruptions are unwelcome, is that he knows Auckland intimately. He reckons Auckland's been kind to him. Believes he understands "the streets and alleys, the sidewalks, the bars, the cafes. I've been there for a long, long time and I think I understand that part of Auckland." Which anticipates any question of what sort of understanding of the sidewalks he might retain.

There is a BMW, a Mercedes, an Audi, a shining Harley-Davidson and a maroon Silver Cloud Rolls in his garage. His living area is furnished in the conservative manner of a gentlemen's club: fat, buttoned brown leather couches; good rugs; carved pieces of serious furniture. A large, contemporary Maori carving dominates the room, a gift from the Te Arawa people, whom he admires for their initiative. There is a Stephen King paperback open on his desk. Underneath the sideboard is a precise row of toys. It is one of the neatest living rooms I've ever been in.

We sit, though, with the man who would be mayor, in a kitchen with a kitsch fruit clock keeping cheerful time on the wall. The milk is poured from a jug in the shape of a laughing kookaburra. There are two well-thumbed Bibles on the china cabinet. Amanda - who says little except that she thinks "John will be a good mayor," and good-naturedly ticks him off for giving away secrets when Banks lets on that the cat sometimes eats on the table - is seldom out of earshot.

It is all very nice and civilised, in the way that taking morning tea with an affable bear that could show its teeth at any moment would be very nice and civilised.

Because the man who is talking of Auckland as "a dynamic, multicultural city in the South-west Pacific" is the man who was once named by Metro magazine as "the most unculturally safe man in New Zealand." I remind him that he once said that, "If Polynesians aren't urinating in the streets in public they're punching someone in the head."

The man who is talking of all sections of the community as valuable, "including the homosexual community [which] make a major contribution," once talked of the "immoral, unhygenic and unacceptable sexual antics" of that community.

Well, he says, "Muldoon once taught us: state the facts and exaggerate the case." As a politician and talkback host, Banks turned that into an art form. He says now, "the public perception is a lot different from reality when you get to know the facts."

You're not going to get Banksie to admit, exactly, that he was wrong, but he'll go, pseudo-reluctantly, this far: "Let me explain it this way.

"When I first went into Parliament I knew everything and I was right and everybody else was wrong. I had no tolerance for different points of view. Now, the more I know, the more I know I don't know.

"I don't like to admit it to you, but it is about growing up and it is about maturing. Some would describe me as a late maturer."

A cynic might say that he's simply being pre-mayoral - but even when he's on his very best behaviour, a little bit of Banksie asserts itself.

Although he's got big plans for the city, it is the little harassments that exercise his mind. He talks about citizens being "continually harassed by strident swimming pool police and parking meter maids of both sexes." About a "zero tolerance for graffiti, and any form of bad behaviour, including boy racers in Queen St late at night, and drunkenness."

The cheerleader would be marching on Wellington to get more policing resources. He'd be marching on the courts to make sure that vandals are dealt with severely.

"I think that people don't have a problem being surrounded with more security if they feel safe."

He's 54. He gets up at 5 am and runs, and when he runs he thinks about winning.

He's standing for mayor, although he doesn't want to make too big a deal of it, because God told him to do it. "I feel that very strongly."

And equally strongly, he simply can't stop "balancing the family ledger."