Laws of the land challenged

Michael Laws is controversial and outspoken, loved and hated - but at least people are talking about Wanganui.

Michael Laws is in his element. He's entertaining the media. It's four hours before the code of conduct investigation and everyone wants to talk to the mayor of Wanganui.

One News is waiting outside his office, TV3 are on their way, Sunday is filming a documentary and the furore about his behaviour is all over radio and through the newspapers.

And Laws is loving it. He scoffs at any suggestion of bad publicity - getting Wanganui in the news, he explains, is what the job of being mayor is all about.

"Frankly, when you are a small town, anything that will put you on the front pages and says 'we're a lively community that has some pretty intense political debates', ain't a bad thing."

Laws' flamboyant personality, high public profile and his promise to use it to attract attention to the town was what helped him get elected as mayor last October.

But now that very same profile and personality has caused a rift in the 40,000 strong town and spawned a vocal anti-Laws lobby group.

The 47-year-old has been mayor for less than six months, but already there has been a code of conduct hearing, an anti-Laws blog site, a hostile lobby group formed, and a petition to the Government to review the council is gathering signatures.

Laws himself has filed a defamation suit against the local paper and there have been endless letters to the editor about his antics.

Wanganui just isn't used to it. For 18 years the sedate, unassuming middle-New Zealand town was under the leadership of the sedate unassuming mayor Chas Poynter.

During that time the town was rarely in the spotlight - there was the Moutoa Gardens occupation 10 years ago and last year's floods - but on the whole it was a quiet couple of decades.

Bob Walker, local real estate agent and chairman of Vision Wanganui, says there was a general feeling of stagnation.

"We weren't going anywhere. Wanganui really, really needed someone to lift it out of the rut. Michael was that person."

In last year's election the people decided they wanted change and they decided Laws was the man to deliver it.

He promised a breath of fresh air. But some people are now saying that breath has turned into a tornado. That disquiet has surfaced in a raft of letters to the Wanganui Chronicle.

"Persuasion is preferable to abrasion," wrote Elva Abbott. "Perhaps a semester at charm school would be a beginning."

"Stop throwing your weight around," wrote Matt Dutton. "You're not Ma'a Nonu no matter how much make-up you use."

Wrote Paul O'Sullivan:"I seek absolution in making what some may see as a very public and messy confession, as I believe I have sinned against the community at large. I voted for Michael at the last local body election."

A less vocal section of the town is happy to wait and see if Laws can deliver what he promised his home town.

The former National and NZ First MP decided three years ago he would move back to Wanganui, which he left in 1974 after finishing school.

"I had always wanted to come home," he says. "There is nothing more intense than a nostalgic journey. Ironically, my media career took off after I arrived back in Wanganui."

He says he was shocked to discover the town had progressed little since he left it 30 years ago. "In actual fact if anything it had gone backwards since 1974."

Laws, who established himself as a Wanganui identity by writing an often controversial column in the Chronicle, said the lack of progress was, in his opinion, because of poor governance and decision-making.

"There was a fear of change - more than an intense conservatism - a real fear of change."

There was an attitude, he says, that Wanganui was not good enough and a fear in the community of standing up and being noticed.

"It irritated me enough to a point that I thought, it has to change."

He claims the town's commercial and civic communities have been ruled by the 'old boys network' for the past 20 years.

Laws and his fellow Vision Wanganui councillors are working to change that.

"It will require some pretty upfront and ballsy leadership and it is going to upset people. Of course it is. You can't change a monolithic structure that has been here for 20 years or 30 years and not expect people to go 'what are you doing?' and I think a lot of resentment is coming from that."

One person who found Laws' vision for the town compelling was local business woman Carol Webb.

"I thought he could be really good for Wanganui."

But her period of optimism about her new mayor was shortlived. Her opinion changed during the Sarjeant Art Gallery fiasco and Laws' subsequent treatment of artists in the community.

Webb got involved as a spokesperson for the local artists and says she soon found Laws' abrasive comments coming her way.

The arts community in Wanganui - which has prospered in recent years, establishing the town as a centre for the arts - feels particularly aggrieved by Laws.

When the Weekend Herald visited a local cafe and asked what staff and customers thought of Laws the terse reply was, "You'd be pushed to find anyone who likes him in here - lots of artists come here".

Local artist and former city councillor Ross Mitchell-Anyon says Laws has chosen to attack the arts community to gain populist support. He had already lost the sector's vote by his stance on the Sarjeant Art Gallery extension, so had nothing to lose by alienating them.

Mitchell-Anyon says Laws' antics have actually strengthened the arts community. But he says that isn't the point - a mayor is elected to represent all parts of a community and Laws has failed to do that.

"There is a growing feeling in Wanganui of tension. And I can't see it improving. Michael has showed he is totally unrepentant."

Webb says she watched as Laws attacked people in his column in the Sunday Star Times and in the Chronicle.

"The last straw was when he said the gene pool was deficient in Raetihi. I couldn't believe what was happening. I thought this was really, really serious."

Webb investigated and found she was able to make a complaint under the council's code of conduct."

She says since she made the complaint she has been the repeat victim of Laws' "hurtful" barbs, and says she began to dread reading the Chronicle in case Laws had labelled her a "nutter" or "paranoid".

Five other residents have also made complaints about Laws for breaching the code of conduct.

She believes the opinion of the town towards Laws has changed.

"I think the tide has turned on him. He is firing his last bullets and you can see the whites of his eyes under his eyeliner."

Other residents, such as Bob Walker, say they are sick of people like Webb appointing themselves to speak on behalf of the city. "The silent majority out there support Michael," says Walker. "People have had a gutsfull of the likes of Carol Webb."

She has not been content to stop at making the code of conduct complaints. She has organised a petition requesting the Minister for Local Government to start a ministerial review of the Wanganui District Council to examine whether it is capable of meeting its obligations.

She has also formed a group called Wanganui Concerned Ordinary Citizens - Wanganui COC for short - which has a blog site and is focused on exposing Laws and the Vision team's "divisive and destructive politics".

Laws is not taking Webb or Wanganui COC seriously.

"Wanganui COC - which is the most unfortunate acronym in the history of lobby groups in this country," he says. "I regard Wanganui COC as a joke - obviously with that name it has to be."

It is insults such as this which roll so easily off Laws' acerbic tongue that have put him out of favour with so many in the town.

But many are enjoying the entertainment. Long-time Wanganui resident, hospital chaplain and former journalist David Scoullar says the environment is oddly stimulating and has enlivened the local scene.

"I think people like watching the lively exchanges. It's a bit like being at the Colosseum and watching the gladiators perform."

This, says Scoullar, is entertaining - as long it is not you who is the victim of the heckling.

Laws himself admits that he is often intentionally inflammatory, but once again says it is intended to raise Wanganui's profile. He says those who take offence are simply taking him the wrong way.

"My turn of phrase I mean in a puckish, mischievous way. I'm not going to change - that's the way I have been for 47 years. I'm not going to suddenly change my character."

Asked if he is enjoying being mayor, Laws replies with a terse no. The job, he says, was not something he wanted to do but felt compelled to do.

He has no intention of trying to beat Poynter's 18-year stint, saying he will not serve more than two terms. He is not ruling out a return to national politics, but says it is not within his immediate plans.

For now he is happy spending free time with his 3-month-old daughter Lucy.

"Lucy makes me more determined as a mayor, because I think this is my daughter and if she is going to grow up here I want her to grow up somewhere good."

He also has plenty more surprises for the town, like a Love Festival he's planning for next year.

With a characteristic grin he explains that the festival would provide what some residents are clearly missing in their lives - a sense of emotional satisfaction.

"I would like to celebrate everything from spiritual love to erotic to familial to romantic. I'm a great believer that love is what makes the world go round."

How does Laws think this will go down with his critics?

"They take everything the wrong way. It will become that I am staging a pornography convention in Wanganui - which wouldn't be a bad thing actually."

The rule of laws

* The Sarjeant Art Gallery debacle: the previous council had approved a multimillion-dollar extension to the gallery. Soon after being elected, Laws reversed this plan. The gallery's whole board resigned. Laws raised tensions further by threatening to sell or move some of the artwork.

* The mayor and council became involved in a controversial fight over rimu logging up the Whanganui River.

* In January, the Sarjeant Art Gallery and Laws were in the news again over the exhibition This is not a swastika nor is it a Walters, featuring stylised swastikas.

Laws refused to close the exhibition, saying he would not play censor.

* Last month, the Wanganui District Council said it had commissioned an independent review of council finances. Laws says the previous council left the books in bad shape.

* Last week it was made public that Laws was suing the Wanganui Chronicle for publishing details against him under the council's code of complaints.

* On Thursday, the code of conduct investigation took place after six people alleged breaches by Laws. No decision was made.