Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau reflects on challenging year, rates rises, Golden Mile

• Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau rates her mayoralty this year a 7 or 8 out of 10.
• She acknowledges supporting policies she didn’t campaign on has upset her base.
• She says her wins include the Golden Mile project, investing in water pipes and building cycleways.

Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau had admitted she upset her base by supporting a controversial deal to reopen the eyesore Reading Cinemas building and selling the council’s stake in the airport.

It has been a challenging year for the mayor, who now has a Crown observer closely watching her council.

Whanau spoke to Newstalk ZB Wellington Mornings host Nick Mills this morning about the highlights, lowlights and lessons learnt from this year, and her hopes for 2025.

This year Whanau has sparked controversy by championing major policies she never campaigned on.

A $32 million deal to open the closed Reading Cinemas building on Courtenay Place soured following fierce debate over whether the plan was visionary or corporate welfare.

The Reading Cinemas building remains closed and has been put on the market. Photo / Mark Mitchell

Whanau also supported selling the council’s stake in Wellington Airport, which failed and resulted in Local Government Minister Simeon Brown intervening in her council.

The situation left her out of favour with even some of her left-leaning councillors.

Whanau accepted she had upset her base.

“Some of those projects earlier this year were not in line with what I promised I would do and that’s when I think things didn’t go so well.”

She has since changed by learning to read the room and remembering why she stood for the mayoralty, Whanau said.

“Where my performance started to shake a bit was where I wasn’t being Green.”

Asked to rate her mayoralty, Whanau said earlier this year she would give herself a 5 out of 10 but felt she has finished 2024 on a seven or eight.

Whanau said Crown observer Lindsay McKenzie’s appointment to the council had been positive.

“We welcomed Lindsay with open arms. He’s a really decent guy, he’s very knowledgeable and very friendly.

“He really does just stand back and observe and if we ask him for advice on a legislative matter around the long-term plan, he’ll give it - like an independent view.

“I think his presence has helped us as a team to work collaboratively a bit more. Knowing there is a pair of eyes there I think has been good.”

Wellington City Council has had to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from its 10-year budget after Mayor Tory Whanau's plan to sell the council's stake in the airport failed.

After admitting to a having drinking problem at the end of 2023, her personal life has continued to make headlines this year.

In June she revealed she had been diagnosed with ADHD and “significant traits of autism”.

In September she admitted she made a “mistake” when talking about selling her car to help pay the bills and accepted an interview on TVNZ’s Q+A “did not go well”, blaming exhaustion.

In July, the Herald reported that 18 of the 27 promises Whanau announced when she launched her campaign for the city’s top job have either been achieved or are in progress.

However, many of Whanau’s policies had been delivered by projects and work already under way before she took the mayoral chains.

Early in her term, she salvaged the Golden Mile project when the Government put an end to the $7.4 billion Let’s Get Wellington Moving transport plan.

The Golden Mile has survived further attempts to kill it this year. The project will be Whanau’s legacy if she can get spades in the ground in 2025.

Whether that legacy is painful business closures or a transformed city centre remains to be seen.

Whanau has gained credit for leading the council through the process of making big cuts to the long-term plan after the airport debacle.

The wins for her mayoralty included investing a record $1.8 billion in water infrastructure, the Golden Mile project, building cycleways and passing the district plan, Whanau said.

It has recently been revealed that next year’s draft budget has a forecast rates increase of 15.9% but Whanau has promised she will bring that down to 12.8%.

She has acknowledged recent high rates increases have been tough.

Investment in infrastructure accounted for a large chunk of the rates increases, Whanau said.

The same people who complained about Wellington dying and looking ugly were the same people who didn’t want to invest in it, she said.

“I wish previous councils had fronted up then when it would have been much lower cost. They didn’t because they wanted to keep rates lower. I’m taking it on the chin and I will do it.”

Next year, Whanau faces local body elections.

Several high-profile names are being floated as possible candidates to challenge her mayoralty. First-term independent councillor Ray Chung is the only candidate to officially announce a mayoral campaign, so far.

Georgina Campbell is a Wellington-based reporter who has a particular interest in local government, transport, and seismic issues. She joined the Herald in 2019 after working as a broadcast journalist.