KEY POINTS:
Q. Do you see yourself as having big shoes to fill ?
A. Sir Barry Curtis was one of the greatest local body politicians this country has ever seen and the fact that he served 24 years as mayor and 15 as a councillor doesn't tell half the story of what he achieved, but I'm wearing my own shoes.
Q. What are the similarities between Sir Barry's leadership style and your own ?
A. He was collaborative and he was able to get support from all across the city by working with people from all sides of the political spectrum. That's exactly what I've done in council and will continue doing as leader of the city.
He was very open to our cultures and I will be looking to really extend that style of being a bridge between the cultures. I want to ensure we are allowing our migrant communities the opportunity to maximise their shift to our country and for us to receive the benefit of them settling well.
He had a very strong philosophy we shared, called the Manukau Way. This was a philosophy around social justice and equity and ensuring we didn't put bars in the way of our communities.
Q. The differences?
A. I have a much stronger focus around financial control and rating control. I have a real focus on public transport and the need for us to develop a long-term transport strategy which has as its focus the fact that in 20 years' time we will have a population of 600,000 people. We will gridlock in five to 10 years if something isn't done about it soon. I have a stronger focus around some of the areas of safety and graffiti and licensing liquor outlets. They are some of the key focuses I will start with. I possibly have a stronger focus on the environment and I'm wary of the continued urban sprawl. The consequence of us growing up rather than out is we are going to have greater numbers living in a smaller area and the issues of stormwater/wastewater treatment will be crucial to how well we set ourselves up for the future.
Q. Your thoughts on the airport shares?
A. There will be no sale of Manukau's airport shares. This was one of the key reasons people voted for me. They wanted me to respect that inherently Manukau way of holding public assets long term.
Q. What do you think of Manukau's role in a super city ?
A. I'm not a supporter. I'm more than happy to go through with the debate but Manukau has some unique philosophies and has some unique financial advantages, with the cheapest water and wastewater services. I cannot see that a one-city based in the Auckland CBD focused on the waterfront and the Viaduct is going to have any real benefit or advantage to our community in terms of representation going forward.
South Auckland and the Manukau community would not receive anything like the benefits they receive from the local representation we now have.
Q. Are you going to keep the chauffeur-driven car ?
A. If you had asked me three years ago I would have said, "Forget it".
But the past three months made me realise I'm going to be flat out. I want to arrive at the end of the day reasonably fresh so I can meet people's expectations.
Hopefully the community won't begrudge me, but it is an essential.
