Auckland mayor Wayne Brown watches as his deputy Desley Simpson signs herself in as a councillor. Behind them, councillors Christine Fletcher and Richard Hills. Photo / Supplied
OPINION
I do love a good inauguration. Music, costumes, jokes, the beautiful town hall filled with a cheering crowd and a slightly chaotic sense of pomp and ceremony. The mayor, with a big grin on his face and a korowai around his shoulders, gets up and talks about his “clear and compelling vision for the direction of this city”, which he’s proud to call “one of the best places to live in the world”.
He quotes from the late Sir Paul Callaghan: Auckland must become a place “where talent wants to live”. He calls Tāmaki Makaurau “the place desired by many”.
Just days earlier, though, he’s been in less generous mode, launching a public attack on one of the council-controlled organisations (CCOs). The attack was so fierce, the chief executive decided it would be prudent to find another job.
No, this is not 2022 and the mayor is not Wayne Brown. All of that happened in 2016, with the inauguration of Brown’s predecessor Phil Goff and his councillors.
There were more fiery days to follow. At the first ordinary meeting of the governing body of council, one councillor told Goff he was speaking “bollocks”. Goff started shouting, then apologised. “Still getting used to not speaking in a Parliamentary chamber way,” he said.
“Actually,” I wrote at the time, “emphatic speech is his default, in conversation almost as much as in meetings: definitive, overloud, every word stressed, it must be hell at the breakfast table.”
Plus ça change. Goff began his time as mayor determined to look tough. He was, I wrote then, “projecting to Aucklanders and council officers alike that he’s not going to put up with any sh**”.
The similarities with our current new mayor, Wayne Brown, are striking. So are some of the differences.
Goff had the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel’s Messiah, along with a sublimely sung Pōkarekare Ana. At the 2022 inauguration of Wayne Brown and his councillors last Friday evening, there were performance items from Pasifika, Indian, Cook Island and Japanese musical groups.
Both mayors wore the chains of office: Goff for almost the only time; it’s likely Brown won’t give them much of a workout, either.
But where Goff’s speech was all about optimism and inspiration, Brown gave the merest nod towards the “celebration” of the moment before launching into his usual theme, that “we are sailing into an economic and fiscal storm”.
It was bleak. “Tonight, I’m sad to say, the wind and the rain is already here. Together, as a team, we need to protect, through the dark times, the Auckland Council services that Aucklanders value.
Climate activists should not get hopeful. Despite the weather talk, this storm is not related to the climate crisis. That didn’t get a mention.
The speech was written by Brown’s head of strategy and communications, Matthew Hooton. Parts of it were remarkably similar to Hooton’s own column in this newspaper, published the same day.
“Very soon, tens of thousands of Auckland families are going to see their interest payments on their mortgages triple,” said Brown.
“Over 100,000 households are going to come off fixed mortgages in the next year, and face a tripling of their monthly interest payments,” wrote Hooton.
“Some are going to be at risk of losing all their savings and perhaps their homes,” said Brown.
“In the worst case,” wrote Hooton, “the bank will foreclose and sell the home.”
You might almost think there’s a campaign underway to make us think everything is now officially awful.
Although the “storm” is not caused by anything council has done, Brown ended his speech by saying, “Let us all get on with the difficult journey ahead of us, to fix our beloved city, and help every Aucklander safely through the storm that has been building for 12 years, but which is upon us now tonight.”
Tonight! There’s no doubt we face tough economic times and it’s likely the council’s own finances are precarious. Revenue from bus passenger numbers, to take just one example, has not bounced back as expected.
But the “storm” is caused by inflation and Covid, so it’s absurd to say it’s been “building for 12 years”. And if it was caused by council sloppiness, it begs a question: Why did Brown appoint Goff’s finance supremo Desley Simpson as his deputy?
But, ah yes, that pomp and slightly chaotic ceremony. A few things went a little awry on Friday evening.
The conch at the start of the karanga could not be coaxed to produce more than a few squirts of noise. Brown and his chief executive, Jim Stabback, led the councillors onto the stage, but then the two of them went and sat with the waiting tangata whenua. They were politely ushered over to be with the manuhiri. Dame Naida Glavish was invited to the stage and interrupted the mihi whakatau when she joined the tangata whenua.
Many of the councillors were resplendent. Simpson (Ōrākei) wore a bright, bright orange sheath dress. Shane Henderson (Waitākere) chose a hi-vis tie of the same orange, while Daniel Newman’s (Manurewa-Papakura) was hot pink.
Brown, Alf Filipaina (Manukau) and Kerrin Leoni (Whau) all wore beautiful korowai; Angela Dalton (Manurewa-Papakura) sported an arapaki, or shoulder wrap. Dalton, Lotu Fuli (Manukau) and Sharon Stewart (Howick) also favoured dresses and coats of iridescent colours. Jo Bartley (Maungakiekie-Tāmaki) wore a large frangipani behind one ear.
The mayor was the first to make his declaration of office. He did it without any sense of ceremony, shaking Stabback’s hand brusquely as he walked past, speaking the words flatly and looking uncertain about what to do. But when Stabback put the chains around his neck he broke into an enormous grin.
Simpson led the councillors in their declarations, announcing she would do it “in te reo and then, for the benefit of my family, in English”. Several others chose te reo and English; Chris Darby (North Shore) and Filipaina used only te reo; Bartley and Fuli also spoke in Samoan.
Leoni announced herself as our first wahine Māori councillor and she was clearly excited about it. But Henderson outdid them all for excitement, repeatedly punching the air and then declaring, “I’m pretty happy!”
All 20 councillors were there and many of them acknowledged partners and parents “with us” in the crowd and “with us in spirit”. Maurice Williamson (Howick), signalling a greater commitment to fun than formality, told the crowd, “My wife is at the vet with the dog. One of my sons is playing sport and everyone else is watching the tennis. So if anyone out there wants to adopt a councillor for the night ...”
In his speech, the mayor said, “We need to ask ourselves, about every activity and line of expenditure: ‘If we stop doing this, would anyone notice?’”
That’s a freighted message. Who’s anyone?
Think of it in terms of buses. Auckland is short of 500 drivers: their pay is too low, they work split shifts and these days they get threatened and abused. So buses keep being cancelled.
The Government announced a relief package at the weekend so bus drivers can be paid more. Yesterday Auckland Transport announced it was following Wellington’s lead and cancelling some services, so it can add some certainty to what remains.
How does this fit the mantra of, “If we cancel it, will anybody notice?”
I’ve said before, the driver shortage is the biggest crisis in transport, because it’s destroying confidence in public transport and adding to the number of cars on the road. But it’s entirely under the radar of people who drive everywhere and complain noisily about cycleways and road cones.
They won’t notice if buses are cancelled. They’ll see more cars on the road but they won’t know why. The people who want to catch buses will, though.
As the mayor and council set about their tough, unenviable task of crisis financial management, how will they decide if anyone “notices” what they cut?
Big three years coming up. Council meets three times this month, just to start to come to grips with it.
At the end of the inauguration, Brown declared the meeting adjourned and announced, “Now it’s time for a beer.”
It follows concerns about use-of-force powers being given to staff.