Rudman's city: Dithering Fletcher handed Banks mayoralty on platter

By BRIAN RUDMAN

Christine Fletcher went all Joan of Arc on us at the news of her trouncing by John Banks in Auckland's mayoralty race and suggested we pray.

Well, thanks a bunch, Christine. Perhaps if you had got off the mayoral bottom and done a bit of campaigning when it mattered, you wouldn't be down on your knees now imploring us to join you.

For without detracting from Mr Banks' achievement - 44 per cent of the vote in his first time out - much of the credit for his success must go to Mrs Fletcher. She gave in without a fight as though totally spooked by her old National Party colleague.

Maybe he used to sit behind her in caucus and dip her pig-tails in the ink wells. I don't know. But make a fight of it, she did not. It was more like a ritual suicide.

She dithered about whether she was going to stand until the last moment - even though her rival had been pounding the pavements for months already.

She dithered about policy, and after promising to reveal a list of preferred council candidates, she dithered there as well. Only last week the list finally appeared on her website, and what a bizarre hotch-potch of bedfellows from across the political spectrum she chose.

Oddest of all, in her last few days in office she was still meeting officials about trivial governance issues, as though that was somehow important at a time her political future was collapsing all around her.

As her non-campaign fizzled to a close I couldn't help recalling a threat she made to me during her failed battle to get rid of chief executive Bryan Taylor last year. It was along the lines that either he goes or you won't have me to kick around any longer.

Subconsciously or consciously, she's now carried out that threat.

But if her heart wasn't in it, it would have been more honest to her centre and centre-left allies to have said so before they threw their support in behind her.

While I'm blaming people, the Labour-Alliance coalition of City Vision have to take their share, too. They were so spooked by Mr Banks that they chickened out of backing their long-serving council team leader, Bruce Hucker, for the mayoralty.

Despite three years of belly-aching behind her back about how ineffective and hopeless Mrs Fletcher was, when the force of evil drew nigh, they scurried off to hide in her skirts.

When City Vision wimped out, Alliance president Matt McCarten jumped in, arguing that one Tory is as bad as another. It was the best campaign of the election and gained him a highly creditable 14.5 per cent of the vote.

City Vision are miffed at his intervention, claiming he took votes off Mrs Fletcher and let Mr Banks in. It's the same argument they used for not putting up Dr Hucker and it's flawed.

Mr McCarten says his supporters were unlikely to have supported Mrs Fletcher and I agree. They would have backed a City Vision candidate though, and so might many of the people who voted for Mrs Fletcher only to avoid a Banks victory.

But that's all in the past. Now we have to get used to life under the scary Tory.

One of his earliest campaign promises was to auction the mayoral Volvos. A waster of ratepayer money and all that. This from the man who used a Government limousine when he was a minister of the Crown to commute from his Whangarei electorate to Auckland each Sunday to star as a talkback radio show host.

It should be a fun controversy to start with.

Then there are all the other vote-winning promises. To fix congestion on our roads, to complete the motorways by yesterday, to drive the hoons out of Queen St. All somehow to be achieved by a council dominated by a conservative pledged to freeze rates at present dollar levels.

These rash promises are one thing. Easy enough to fudge and slip out of. A more serious concern is Mr Banks' ability to subdue his ego and his quick quips long enough to work together with the other Auckland mayors and with central government over vital regional issues.

His refusal to rise to the bait yesterday when Minister for Auckland Issues Judith Tizard taunted him with suggestions he might be mad and that "it was John's job to come up to scratch" was a good sign. But the goodwill of post-victory euphoria doesn't usually last very long.

When that honeymoon ends, who knows? Perhaps Mrs Fletcher's knee-bending might not seem so silly after all.

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