For a politician, the idea of a charm offensive is lost on Auckland mayoral aspirant Wayne Brown.
"Two foolish Phils," he says of retiring Mayor Phil Goff and current Te Atatu MP Phil Twyford. Of the latter, he says Twyford has "made a career of incompetence".
Then there's "that idiot Goff" and people like his deputy, Bill Cashmore, who "broke" Auckland.
"The best of the councillors is Desley Simpson and even she doesn't know how bad it is," says Brown, 76.
And the calibre of those against whom he is competing? At best, Efeso Collins is "honest and likeable". Viv Beck, though, has him asking "why would people back such a talentless person".
There's no end to Brown's shotgun diplomacy - National Party MP Gerry Brownlee's inexplicable (in Brown's view) self-confidence and Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick who he patronised as a "nice young clever lady".
As for the rest of those idiots in Wellington, they better watch out. He's not left and he's not right. He's not Labour or National. He's funded his own campaign and owes nothing to no one.
If Brown gets elected mayor, he says the only people he owes anything to will be those who voted him in. And he has a keen sense of the immense power held by the mayor of a city of 1.7 million people.
"That's why it is so important the mayor is not a member of any party. One of the most appealing things about being mayor is the timing."
That's because the local body elections come a year before a general election which appears to sit on a knife edge. That means the mayor can go to Wellington and ask what it's prepared to offer up in return for Auckland's support.
How many police will you give Auckland, he'll ask Jacinda Ardern and Chris Luxon, and runs through a mock auction in which he plays off one against the other.
"An independent mayor will have immense power," says Brown. "It will be effectively deciding who will be the next government."
That's Wayne Brown. All the subtlety of a hammer in the face, all the grace of meat through a mincer. You don't need to ask what he thinks because he's probably already told you. If you feel he hasn't spared your feelings, that's probably because he forgot you might have some.
Brown comes to the mayoral campaign with a 25-year history of being parachuted into big public sector roles by Labour and National governments. "I bring as an engineer a deep understanding of things that people take for granted."
Those interviewed for this profile agree that Brown sees pretty much everything as a machine. "A hospital is a machine that looks like a building," he says, having chaired three hospital boards (including Auckland's) and helped run another.
In his view, the complex and large machine that is Auckland is running like it has a massive spanner in its works and he can get it running right, like he says he has done so many other times.
It was Brown called in by Helen Clark after Auckland's shameful blackout in 1998. His CV includes roles overseeing Transpower, Land Transport Safety Authority, TVNZ, Maori Television Service, Kordia and others. He wasn't just Labour's Mr Fixit - National used him too.
And he's done all right for himself, too, with his own business endeavours. Asked how much money he's got, he says: "Personally? I've got no idea. I'm not enormously wealthy but I can fund half a million." That's how much the mayoral campaign is costing.
Brown ran for mayor of Auckland for much the same reasons as he did when he became mayor of the Far North in 2007.
"What has generally motivated Wayne is frustration," says Ian Walker, a successful Kaitaia businessman.
Back then Brown was trying to develop commercial buildings on land north of Kaitaia and subdivisions elsewhere across the north. Consenting was "a mess", says Walker.
Brown took the council to task publicly and was applauded for his stand. People told him he should be mayor and he asked that they stump up a campaign fund to see if their resolve reached to their wallets.
In that campaign - and his re-election in 2010 - he really hammered his Northland roots, that he lived in Mangonui and was an "employer, business owner and contributor to the Far North". Of course, he says he's an Aucklander now - a former Auckland Grammar boy who earned his engineering degree at the University of Auckland - even though the electoral roll for the last election lists his home address as Mangonui, as do almost all his Companies Office filings.
At one early council meeting after he won, Brown gave the councillors new jobs. They were stunned to find they had lost roles they held dear as Brown hammered what he saw as a malfunctioning machine into order. Veteran Northern Advocate reporter Peter de Graaf recalls Brown looking about the council chamber in surprise at the devastation he had wrought and asking: "What? What? What did I do?"
Ann Court, who has been on the council since 1995, says: "I didn't like him at all at the beginning. Right from the beginning, I found him abrasive. If he thought you were a fool, he lost no time telling you that you were a fool.
"He would have me in tears, honestly. He would give me such a dressing down, I was just a sobbing mess."
Brown himself has an anecdote about knocking that council into shape, as he sees it, that reflects generally across those elected to local body government.
"Most of the people who stand for councils are well intentioned. Most have never been exposed to balance sheets of enormous entities. They've all sat there eating sausage rolls for years.
"Pretty soon they understand the only person who understands the numbers is me."
Such was the case in the Far North, he says, with one councillor who had "no f***ing idea" of the link between capital expenditure and depreciation. "In front of everyone, I ended up mocking him," says Brown. "He said he's going to ban depreciation. I said 'are you going to ban gravity too'."
Afterwards, says Brown, it dawned on the councillor he'd "made a fool of himself" and never spoke again.
Court saw Brown differently by the end of his second term as Far North mayor. "His desire to make it right wasn't immediately apparent to a lot of people. I found he was a guy who really cares. I found him towards the very end quite loveable."
Then she says: "That might be my Stockholm syndrome talking."
By then, consenting was vastly improved. Brown boasted efficiencies and savings across the council even as his abrasive nature and pragmatism led to relationship meltdowns, particularly after he became locked in a dispute with his own council over a subdivision then refused to pay rates for all his Far North properties.
The Auditor-General inquiry that followed reflected poorly on council and its mayor. Brown was criticised for using mayoral resources to wage his rating dispute, including using mayoral letterhead to write to council staff about his personal issues. It was a "blurring of roles" the Auditor-General said was "unwise and creates risk".
That separation is one of those niceties - like people's feelings - to which Brown appears blind. When Walker of Kaitaia speaks of frustration as a motivator, it's something that Brown sees offending his sense of order rather than himself personally.
"He might be frustrated because he's experienced it but he won't be doing it for himself." And that's what has led to the Auckland mayoralty race, says Walker.
"What's probably frustrated him is that attitude to his port report. He's not doing it because he wants to be somebody. He's doing it because he genuinely believes he can fix something. He wants to do things, not be things."
The port report came out of a working group Brown chaired called the Upper North Island Supply Chain Study. He was appointed by fellow Northlander Shane Jones, then an NZ First Cabinet minister in Jacinda Ardern's first-term government.
Jones, who has known "Browny" for 30 years or so, says: "He's a disruptor, no doubt about that. He has a remorseless style. [He's a] very pragmatic man with acerbic wit and a sharp tongue."
The working group's report recommended moving Auckland's port to Whangarei. It never got government pick up, which infuriated Brown because it was - to his engineer's eye - the obvious solution. "It was dismissed as if I was trying to do something for Northland. It was preposterous to get that treatment."
Like the resource consent issue, Brown has a personal connection. His Northland dairy business needs to get milk to Tauranga to ship it to China. It seems daft to Brown when Whangarei is just down the road.
Sir Bob Harvey, who knows Brown well, says: "The reason it hasn't been read by Auckland Council and the Government is simply the way he behaves. You can't say, 'hey you plonkers, read the f***ing report'. I shudder sometimes when I hear what he says about people."
Brown couldn't see past the sense of the report to engage the diplomacy needed to make it happen, says Harvey. "Some days you swallow a dead rat or you'll have to swallow sawdust. Some days you have to kiss arse. He doesn't do any of that."
Instead, Brown funded his own campaign of speaking events and became an evangelist for freeing up Auckland's premium waterfront land, currently a holding pen for imported vehicles and shipping containers.
He reckons people would approach him after events saying, "that made a lot of sense - why aren't you mayor?". He dismissed it until he saw who was standing this year - a "disgusting" calibre of candidates, he says. "Leo was probably the pick of them and he pulled out."
Harvey welcomes his candidacy, and that of Collins. "When I look at the other candidates, I want to jump out the window. They are so bloody awful. Those two stand out like spare pricks at a wedding."
Harvey's not endorsing Brown but he sees his value, as he does in Collins. "I think they're both decent people doing things very differently."
Brown's way is not traditionally political. "He's a rough diamond. He's a hired killer. He's a gun for hire. He's a man on a mission.
"He said to me, 'I've come to fix this shithole'. And I say to him, 'it's not broken'. He doesn't have a kind eye."
Deputy Mayor Bill Cashmore heard the same. Brown rang him up and asked to meet for lunch to talk about Auckland. Brown made a similar approach to Swarbrick, who says: "It was pretty obvious … Wayne felt he had the most important things to say."
Cashmore also struggled to get a word in. If they'd talked about the port, they might have found common ground. Instead, says Cashmore, "he talked a lot about how much money he had made and what he's achieved.
"He says he wants to fix Auckland. Auckland's not broken at all."
In Cashmore's view, the amalgamated Auckland Council - now 12 years old - has achieved much more than the legacy councils did or could have done.
And it's simply not that easy with 21 people around the council table. "He would have to reform some of his attitudes to get consensus," says Cashmore.
Swarbrick: "Independence is thrown around a lot - in local body politics, particularly. The mayor is one vote of 21. What it comes down to is the ability to work with others."
Brown's not troubled. Consensus isn't hard, he reckons. "[Councillors] want to see a way out and if you have a way out then they will follow you."
There are those whose focus is on arts and cultural elements of council. "I'll empower them to look after those and they'll go away happy."
When Brown bumps into Court in the Far North - almost all of his businesses are registered to his home address in Mangonui - they say hello and hug.
"Everything I hated about Wayne when I first met him, I think is probably good for Auckland at this point," she says. The city is in a tangle, infrastructure in strife. "He's frigging smart. He's a scrapper. And if he thinks the Government is wrong, he will tell them.
"People in Auckland want their mayor to be Auckland's voice in Wellington, not Wellington's voice in Auckland."
Then comes the question: "Was he ultimately good for the Far North?" Court muses and draws breath. Then follows a long pause, before she says: "I don't know."
• As part of our local body election coverage, the Herald will also publish major profiles of Auckland mayoral candidates Efeso Collins and Viv Beck.
