Phil Goff making his valedictory speech. Photo / Dean Purcell
There are some who say Auckland needs fixing. Mayor Phil Goff and his deputy Bill Cashmore, both of whom are about to retire, say it's already being fixed.
THERE ONCE was a man who wanted to build a house in Pukekohe. This was only a few years ago. He knew how the council and its processes worked. In fact, it wasn't long since he'd held a senior role at the council. So he got the plans drawn up and his builder applied for a building consent. Nothing happened. Weeks went by. Months. Eventually, the man got hold of his friend, Bill Cashmore, who is the local ward councillor and deputy mayor. Cashmore asked the man to show him a copy of the application.
They'd sent it to Waikato District Council.
Cashmore tells the story as a cautionary tale. Sometimes, when you think the council has screwed you over, it might not be true at all.
I ASKED Phil Goff about potholes last week. There are some on his road. There are some on many roads, all over Auckland. I said I assumed they were a result of cost cutting after Covid struck.
The council lost $900 million in revenue in 2020, because of the pandemic. They deferred a lot of work, cancelled a lot of plans, laid off a lot of staff. Funding to fix potholes was surely one of the casualties.
No, he said. The Emergency Budget the council produced in July 2020 had a limited impact on "renewals", which is what they call maintenance and repair work. Same for the Recovery Budgets that followed. They didn't want the existing assets of the city undermined.
The reason for the potholes on Goff's road, he said, is that we've had an extremely wet winter. Parts of the road have subsided and they're not easy to fix when the land beneath the road is still so wet.
Just one more impact of climate change: increased demand on the renewals budget.
That also happens when there's growth, which is another reason for the holes in the roads in the rural southeast, where Goff lives. There are too many trucks.
Some are logging trucks, most are carrying aggregate from nearby quarries. According to the Aggregate and Quarry Association, it takes 25 truckloads to provide the concrete and asphalt for an average house. It takes 1400 truckloads for a single kilometre of two-lane highway.
The massively sprawling greenfields developments in the south, southeast, northwest and north of the city are part of the largest building boom in the city's history: 47,331 dwelling consents last year alone, and every house in a new subdivision is connected by new roads.
Since the Super City was formed in 2010, Auckland has grown by 300,000 people. As Cashmore told the council on Thursday, that's the equivalent of Hamilton and Dunedin moving to Auckland. And most of the housing growth has occurred only in the past few years.
Another thing about trucks – quarry trucks, freight trucks, all kinds of trucks: they clog up the roads. Auckland is expanding its capacity to carry freight by rail, but there's still much to do.
Phil Goff, who is 69, says he's going to miss being mayor of Auckland. Fair bet he's not going to miss all of it. Congestion, especially in a growing city, is a long, slow slog of a problem to fix. We have an infrastructure deficit that extends from all forms of transport to housing, water, playing fields, schools and hospitals.
There will never be enough revenue. There will always be potholes. There will always be critics.
Goff chaired his last council meeting last week. He's retiring, along with his deputy, Bill Cashmore, who is 65 and also lives in the rural southeast of the city.
They both made valedictory speeches. Cashmore's was a PowerPoint special with 103 slides on it.
Earlier in the week, I sat down with each of them, Goff in his garden with lettuces and plum blossom and lambs in the paddocks beyond, Cashmore in the blandly functional council offices in downtown Auckland, high above the city and the Waitematā.
Both had things they really wanted to say.
CASHMORE TOLD me about an angry public meeting in Drury where he spoke.
"There were 250, maybe 300 people. They'd shifted it to the school hall because the original venue was too small. It was chock-a-block."
These were property developers, builders, locals and was organised by the residents association.
There's an explosion of new housing all the way from Drury to Pukekohe, thousands more jobs on the way and growing pressure on the infrastructure too. Cashmore was there to talk about how the council was managing all this.
They were there to complain about the shocking delays with council building consents.
"They said: 'Why was the council taking so bloody long to process them?' And I told them, 'It's because 80 per cent of your applications are s***.'"
He's a farmer, Bill Cashmore. Big, gruff, looks like the kind of guy Ardie Savea would bounce off.
He spotted a developer he knew up the back who was building 150 houses. He called out to him: "How long did your consent take?"
"Sixteen days," came the answer. Cashmore turned back to the crowd. "Sixteen days. Because he got the paperwork right."
Cashmore told the Drury meeting about the three new railway stations scheduled for the area and the impact rail electrification would have. The new schools, the council programmes to support new employers, the council commitment to master-plan the area – which is being done by Tātaki Auckland Unlimited – so infrastructure gets done well.
He told them the building consents process wasn't perfect, but there are "nowhere near as many delays" as there used to be.
To me, he said: "I'm doing this presentation, and they start to smile. And then they start to clap."
Before Covid, he reckons, he did a PowerPoint presso like that about once a fortnight. And always the same response: angry, then smiling, then enthusiastic.
SO DOES the city need more Bill Cashmores, with a roadshow to keep communities and the council engaged with each other?
"It needs 21 of them," he said. He meant 20 councillors and the mayor, doing the hard yards one community hall after another, explaining what the council does, how it helps, how it's getting better, what the success stories are, introducing the next set of problems they will need to face together.
In the council elections currently underway, it's common in public meetings to hear people complain the council isn't listening to residents or doing anything useful. Trust is said to be low.
Cashmore said he knows and finds it shocking. "But the thing that's really shocking is the people who tell them council isn't listening are some of their own politicians."
He was talking about the small group of councillors and some local board members who have opposed most things on the council programme. Are they right the council's not listening?
Goff's view on this was: "When you're leading people, it's important that you're out front. But always look over your shoulder to make sure people are following. And that's why sometimes you temper the pace at which you're going."
Did Cashmore agree the council needs to work on its processes for consultation and democratic input?
"Always," he said. But he's a bit miffed about it. While others were complaining, he was the guy out doing those meetings every other week.
Goff: "People can say, 'You don't listen.' But often it means, 'You haven't done what I wanted you to do.'
"But actually, we can't do what everybody wants us to do. We always look to make sure we've got a solid group of the public behind what we're trying to do, and we keep looking to work with the others. I'm out every day of the week talking to people, and likewise other councillors."
His favourite example of consultation that works is the climate action targeted rate. It received two-thirds support from public submissions and from a randomised public survey.
"That's amazing. Nearly 70 per cent said, 'Please, we'll pay some more for you to address that problem.'"
Councillor Desley Simpson, who chairs the finance committee, recently noted: "Our decision-making has always reflected the majority of feedback we've received from Aucklanders through consultation." The money gets spent where people say they want it spent.
If Cashmore was starting over would he do things differently?
"I'd push harder. I'd want us to keep proving things at a delicate scale and then move forward."
Even if not everyone is convinced?
"We'll still get the rotten bananas but to hell with them."
GOFF AND Cashmore both say this council is leaving a legacy of three big platforms: budgetary restraint, a large infrastructure programme and a framework for climate action.
On the first, capital investment has increased to more than $6 billion and the council now has $70b worth of assets. "We are not," said Goff, "a small borough council".
And while capex is up, the council has made $2.4b in savings since 2010.
Debt has been used to fund growth, but the debt-to-revenue ratio is well beneath the 290 per cent limit established during Covid. It's below the pre-Covid 270 per cent mark too.
The annual accounts have a clean bill of health from the Auditor-General. S&P Global Ratings and Moody's Investor Services rate the council AA and Aa2 respectively, both with a "stable" outlook.
There's no financial crisis at the council. Even the staunchest critics of the financial management say Desley Simpson has done a good job. But they can't have it both ways.
It's true there will be increased costs at the City Rail Link (CRL), caused by Covid. But who will pay for them, and how, is some way from being decided. The council probably doesn't have the capacity to do it through rates and the project is half-owned by the Government.
AS FOR the infrastructure platform, Goff and Cashmore say it's leapt ahead.
Medium-term spending on transport infrastructure in Auckland has grown from $20b in 2018 to $32b today. Drinking water, in Cashmore's words, is "future-proofed".
The Government is contributing $1.7b to housing infrastructure spending, and the council is adding another $770 million. This is designed to speed up the big new "brownfields" developments in places like Tāmaki, Mt Roskill and Māngere.
At the CRL, tunnelling is now complete. Cashmore chaired a meeting recently of all the council and Government agencies involved in the project. Making a plan for everyone to work together: not a thing that always happens, but it is happening with this one.
"There's one client," he said, "and that's the people of Auckland. Our target is not to get it working on day one. We want to know it will be working well on day 90. Actually, it's the whole first year. And yes, everyone is on board."
There's infrastructure progress everywhere you look. In Hobsonville Point and Millwater, said Cashmore, Auckland now has great examples of well-planned greenfields housing developments.
In town centres like Northcote, Manukau, Ormiston and Panmure, the Unlock programme run by the council's "placemaking" agency Eke Panuku is transforming the housing, transport and other amenities.
Eke Panuku is also in charge at Pukekohe. "It's evolving in front of our eyes. The young people are loving it, though some of the grumpy old crusties not so much. But they'll get it."
There are new bus interchanges at Manukau, Rosedale, Hibiscus Coast, Puhinui, Ōtahuhu and Panmure, some of which Cashmore calls "architectural wonders". The Eastern Busway is now proceeding at pace, the downtown ferry terminal has six new piers and there's a "very flash" wharf upgrade at Northcote Point.
The big new cycleways from Glen Innes to Tāmaki Dr, on Karangahape Rd and along the northwest motorway are looking "absolutely grand".
In the city centre, transformations are complete on Federal St, Freyberg Place and the "gold-award winning downtown programme" of Quay St and the surrounds. "It's world-class and it's so cool."
Goff talked about how controversial some of these projects were. "I had so many complaints about Quay St and now people say, 'Isn't it fantastic?' The trees that you've planted there, and the separated cycleway, and the wider footpaths and the harbour park."
And the scaffolding has just come down on the old Central Post Office building on Te Komititanga Square, the building that houses Britomart railway station, soon to be called Waitematā station.
The problem, said Cashmore, is not that the city is a mess and nobody's doing anything about it. A lot is being done about it.
The problem, in his view, is that the planning is too short-term. "Maybe we need a modern version of the Ministry of Works. Something that can co-ordinate things, not just the transport, things like Three Waters too.
"We need generational planning and we can't keep relying on taxes and rates to fund everything, either. We have to have another look at road user charges."
AUCKLAND COUNCIL leads the country in its climate-change planning. It has the targeted rate, a climate action plan and a transport emissions reduction plan, all of which have been strongly supported by most councillors.
It's a framework to build on, but it's only a framework. It could be dismantled.
In this election, the complaint about communities not being listened to often comes down to car parks, cycleways and speed bumps.
Almost every candidate for office says they're a "greenie".
"But," said Cashmore when I told him that, "no one wants to get out of their car."
Goff said, "I know people are saying, 'Yeah, we should do something about it, we should do more, but please don't change the way I'm living.' Well, I'm sorry, we're all going to have to change the way we live."
Cashmore said: "We all have to answer the question: What are you going to do?"
Goff said investment in public transport isn't enough on its own.
"We also need a change in attitude. People say they won't catch the bus because it's too expensive or it's unreliable or it's too slow. We can fix those things, but it does mean we have to change how we see the roads.
"When I hear people saying we're going to leave those parked cars in what should be bus lanes, well that means it's no good catching the bus because it'll just get stuck in the same queue of traffic as the rest of the cars.
"People are complaining we're anti-car. No. The people who need to use cars will find it easier if the people who can use public transport do so."
And it's not just about congestion or climate change. "It's about health, it's about the 3000 people in our country that die from traffic pollution each year. It's about the tens of thousands who suffer from respiratory diseases. It's about the poor health because we're not getting enough exercise."
With his valedictory slides, Cashmore ran through a lot of other environmental things the council has done.
The kauri dieback programme now has 100km of safe walking tracks in the Waitākere Ranges. In the Hūnua Ranges, the 1080 programme is nearly finished, the rats and possums are gone and the birdlife, including an explosion in kōkako breeding pairs, is back.
Suburban streams have been restored, life is coming back to the Hauraki Gulf, and the world-leading SafeSwim public advisory system predicts the condition of the water at any given beach.
"And," said Goff, "we've got 2.7 million native trees planted. The people who do that work, they're not paid to do it, they've got up early on a Saturday morning to come out because it's part of what they can do for the future of their city."
Auckland is also losing trees, mainly on private land, and Goff said they are working with the Government on how to address that.
"I'm not allowed to say too much just now," he said.
"We need to get better at telling people about all this," said Cashmore.
WHAT IF a new council wants to take a different tack?
"There's an old saying," said Goff. "If it works, don't fix it. We need the change that's happening now. We need the focus on climate change, we need the investment in infrastructure. We need the ability to work with councillors and with central Government."
"If there's a regressive council," said Cashmore, "it will be short-lived. It will fail. We have to do our bit for the climate, we're a trading nation. The markets we need won't trade with us if we don't."
People are coming back. Events are coming back.
"This is what I'm celebrating," he said. "People need to be proud. This is a city of great opportunity. We've just got to move from being a city of cars to being a city of public transport. Giving everybody good options. There's a lot of denial about it, but it will work."
Goff: "I hope it will be constructive. The power of the mayoralty is the power of persuasion, of working with others.
"One thing we've achieved really well is that two-hirds of council are people who are prepared to leave their politics at the door, to be positive and constructive, to work together, to be evidence-driven, and we've had one of the most stable councils in New Zealand."
THERE THEY were, seeing each other off.
Goff, the one-time long-haired student radical and long-term Labour MP, silver-haired now and likely to be named our next high commissioner in London. Cashmore, the farmer and stalwart of the rural wing of the National Party, turned advocate for urban climate action.
A third councillor has retired this term. Cathy Casey, who did 27 years as an elected official in Auckland and in the Wairarapa before that, has not been well and wasn't at the meeting or able to deliver a valedictory. So Goff and Cashmore both spoke about her.
A "leftwing firebrand", Goff called her, who "never let anyone die wondering what she thought".
Casey represented progressive political values: railing against John Banks, frustrated at the slow and steady pace of Len Brown, standing up for decency and fairness everywhere. And she led the successful campaign to have dogs allowed on buses.
"We may not be on the same political page," said Cashmore, "but our hearts are in the same place with our love for this city."
I asked him if he was going to find it hard to let go. "The job is half done," he said, so that's a yes. "But it's time for something else for me, now." So that's a no.
"Though I'm not sure I want to go back to putting fencelines up." He's an urban cowboy now.
"Public service," Goff told me when we were sitting in his garden, "is a privilege."
In his valedictory, he gave "a big thank you to everyone around this table who brought in the Living Wage" and had some special praise for the City Mission and its new building HomeGround, on Hobson St.
Finally, he said: "After March 15, 2019, I think I got around every mosque in the city. I went there to say, 'They are our brothers and sisters, we stand along with them, we stand against racial prejudice and this is a city with respect for everyone. A city we can be proud of.'"
Cashmore thanked his wife, Lynette, and everyone else, in the usual manner. He burst into tears doing it.
Then he managed a grin and finished with this: "Tena koe y'all. Yippee-ki-yay."
Which, for anyone not completely familiar with the great movies of our time, was the deputy mayor of Auckland channelling Bruce Willis in Die Hard. With an expletive deleted.
Goff, who had a wee cry himself, said: "I haven't seen Bill that emotional since he gave Lynette a bulldozer for her birthday."
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