More than 76,000 people visited Auckland Art Gallery in the three months to September. Photo / Supplied
OPINION:
What a difference a wrong number can make.
Mayor Wayne Brown complained about the cost of the Auckland Art Gallery in a meeting last week. He said he knew it made him “a bit of a Philistine”, but he was annoyed that only 9516 people had visited the gallery in the three months to September this year.
Or so the report in front of him seemed to say. But it wasn’t true.
The report contained a list of the number of tickets sold to the zoo, Auckland Live concert venues, the maritime museum, the sports stadiums and the gallery.
With those other venues, the number of tickets equates to the number of visitors, because everyone pays to get in. But most shows at the gallery are free. The true number of gallery visitors for the period, not listed in the report, was 76,874.
Given the disruptions of Covid, the gallery is actually doing pretty well. The big current show, with work by the great Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is very popular, and so is the Robin White retrospective.
The gallery budgeted for 420,000 people to visit in this financial year (July-June) and says it will hit the target. That compares favourably with the pre-Covid years 2017-2019, which had 400,000-540,000 visitors per year.
In last week’s meeting, officials did not explain the true situation to Brown. Perhaps they did not know it. That was really bad.
But the mayor’s comments about the gallery were problematic, too. He didn’t seem to understand the value of the gallery at all and he found it easy to suggest it was being profligate.
He even disparaged its collection, which is long and strong on New Zealand work and also includes 15 European masterpieces of the 20th century bequeathed by the American philanthropist Julian Robertson.
Brown likes being the tough guy. “Tough decisions need to be made,” he keeps saying. On council, he’s joined in this by Maurice Williamson and Mike Lee. All three of them are fond of lecturing other councillors on the need for “tough decisions”.
But is that really what they’re doing?
This Thursday council will begin to debate the draft of Brown’s budget for the 2023/24 year. A lot of public consultation and wrangling will follow, before the budget comes into force on July 1.
The total spend is a bit less than $5 billion and right now there’s a $295 million shortfall. It has to come from somewhere and the figures don’t yet include any extra demands the City Rail Link will make on council spending.
There’s a common theme to many of Brown’s proposals. He’s proposing a 7 per cent general rates rise, which he wants to reduce to a net average 4.66 per cent by cutting the Natural Environment Targeted Rate and Water Quality Targeted Rate by two-thirds. He says this won’t be so bad because there are “unspent reserves”.
But as Waitakere Ranges Local Board member Sandra Coney noted in this paper last week, the council is required by law to use those targeted rates “for the purposes for which they were collected”. It has already underspent them in order to save money and now the mayor wants to do so again.
“Despite the spin,” wrote Coney, “what it actually means is cumulatively less money going on the environment and water quality.”
Brown wants to close the council’s 10 Kauri Kids early childhood centres, which would save $200,000 in costs and, he believes, allow $800,000 more in income to be found through renting out the sites.
That kind of spending makes no difference to almost everyone, but a very great difference to those it affects directly. Would the private sector be able to plug the gap? That’s not yet clear.
He wants to slash spending at the council agencies Tātaki Auckland Unlimited (TAU) and Eke Panuku. They both run programmes in poor and deprived parts of the city with a focus on business start-ups, helping people into employment and revitalising the town centres.
You’d think a business-focused mayor would be dead keen on that.
Similarly, those same council agencies are attempting to manage the astonishingly rapid growth in the city’s far south. TAU is masterplanning in Drury and Eke Panuku is working closely with the local board to develop the town centre in Pukekohe. Auckland Transport is involved with both.
Brown likes to say that if you make a cut and “nobody notices and nobody complains”, it was the right thing to do.
But that’s often wrong. Cutting funds to a business incubator in Manukau or abandoning Pukekohe to gridlock might not generate complaints. Sometimes, the people who miss out are not the type to burst into print when something’s gone wrong. Other times, they might not even know what they’ve missed out on.
On the other hand, Auckland Council owns the land under 10 golf courses, and owns some of the courses outright. This costs the council $160 million a year.
There’d be an outcry if they proposed to sell or lease any of them. But does that make it wrong?
Shouldn’t the “tough guys” on council be fronting some decisions they personally find tough? Or is being tough just a euphemism for bullying vulnerable recipients of council spending into line?
Here’s another. How about no more free parking? How about higher fees in the city centre?
That’s an incredibly tough sell, but maybe we need it, to send a signal about the true cost of things. The money could be used to improve public transport.
As for the Auckland Art Gallery, fundamentally it’s not even about art. It’s about the life of the city.
In the post-lockdown world right now, the inner-city businesses agency Heart of the City is working hard with its members, the police, Brown’s own council agencies and many others to bring the central city back to life.
The roadworks are complete, new shops like the big new Nike store are open and everything is buzzing with Christmas.
The malls might have an edge if all you want is shopping, so the city centre offers an experience. Te Wainanga, the lovely new park overhanging the waterfront, is a part of it. So is the programme of family-focused entertainments in Aotea Square and live music and dancing in the new Te Komititanga Square outside Britomart Railway Station.
So are Queen St’s widened walkways, all the greenery, the slowed traffic and new seating. So is the art gallery. After the Sky Tower, it’s the second-most popular visitor attraction in central Auckland.
The key to reviving the city centre is events and activities that draw the crowds. The gallery is one of its magnets. We need more of them: More sports events, more concerts and exhibitions, more cruise ships and Santa parades and market days and art and entertainment in the streets.
There’s another aspect to the economic value of a major public art gallery: it’s part of the city’s appeal for people who want to bring their skills and ambitions to live and work here.
We need the gallery in the same way we need good marinas, good commuter and recreational cycling, streets that people feel safe to walk on, a decent orchestra, good shops of all kinds, functional transport networks, thriving popular culture, major sports competitions and great venues for them. It’s all part of being a grown-up city.
You’d think a business-focused mayor would grasp all this.
And you’d think he might be proud of the significance and scale of the gallery’s permanent collection, its education and outreach programmes, its commitment to the wide range of ethnic and national communities in the city, its constant championing of local artists.
You’d think, in fact, that a business-focused mayor might find a little time in his schedule to be a champion himself.
It doesn’t matter what he personally thinks about art. He’s supposed to champion all the good things.
Labour members will debate and vote on the party's tax policy this weekend