Tauranga elections: Four mayoral candidates quizzed at business chamber event

Olympic champion Mahé Drysdale, award-winning musician Ria Hall, former mayor Greg Brownless and former deputy mayor Tina Salisbury battled tricky questions to try to win the votes of Tauranga’s business community last night.

Four of the 15 candidates for Tauranga mayor spoke at the Tauranga Business Chamber event at the University of Waikato

Voting papers will start being delivered on Saturday.

The candidates were selected by chamber members as the contenders they most wanted to hear from.

Questions, some audience-submittedand others on pre-planned subjects, canvassed views on bringing new council members together, managing growth and the council’s constrained finances, infrastructure funding and financing, transport and housing, community-building, and the city centre.

Hall and Drysdale were the first to face questioning from chamber chief executive Matt Cowley – how did they expect to lead the city without having local government experience?

Drysdale said he had experience leading high-performance teams and it was a matter of “finding the right people for the right roles”.

“The most important thing you can do as a leader is listen. It’s very important that you have communication and accountability.”

Asked by Cowley how he planned to deal with a team not of his choosing, Drysdale said the key was to “understand the people, get alongside them as a leader. It’s about leading from the front and leading by example.”

Hall said she would “keep banging on” through the evening about relationships because these were fundamental to progress.

Ria Hall is running for mayor in the Tauranga 2024 local body election. Photo / Alex Cairns

Her background was in communication and she said she had experience of bringing people together “to know them and their whānau”.

Salisbury was asked how she planned to balance fostering collaborative relationships with “getting stuff done and making progress”.

Salisbury said: “One of the things is creating effective team culture at the beginning and a lot of that’s around resourcing. Often in council, when you first start, you are given a phone and a laptop and told ‘go do your job’. Once we have that team resourced with a budget to get the support they need.”

Cowley asked Brownless how he planned to select a deputy mayor and committee chairpersons in a new council structure that would be acceptable to the team.

Brownless said he would interview them each to find out their “aspirations, interests, and skills”.

Former Tauranga mayor Greg Brownless is seeking the top job again. Photo / Sun Media

“Get the whole group together to see if you can come to that decision in a consensus because in the end if you can’t get the support of a council as a whole you aren’t going to be able to appoint those chairs anyway.”

On most subjects the four broadly agreed or responded with similar answers, usually pertaining to progress and relationships.

Drysdale spoke at length about the need to deliver on projects.

“I believe in robust opinion and views but … our job is not to have an opinion, our job is not to get personal, our job is to deliver for the ratepayers, to listen to their views.”

Mahé Drysdale wants to be Tauranga's next mayor. Photo / Alex Cairns

In Brownless’ words, “the first disagreement of the night” surrounded whether Tauranga should submit a joint Local Water Done Well plan to the Government with other councils beyond Western Bay of Plenty.

Hall said she was “very interested” in doing so and Drysdale said he would “if it made sense”.

Browless said he would not.

Salisbury was “similar to Greg” but said it was more likely other councils would court Tauranga due to its superior water system, and that could be worth consideration.

Former Tauranga deputy mayor Tina Salisbury is standing for mayor. Photo / NZME

Each of the four ended the evening with a three-minute speech on why they should be mayor.

Cowley said initially polling members on which three candidates they most wanted to hear from was “the best way to determine” who to invite from the field of 15.

When there were just two votes separating second, third and fourth, the chamber chose to have four candidates.

Cowley said the chamber had done “quite a few” mayoral debates over the years which often came at a large expense to members.

Tauranga Business Chamber chief executive Matt Cowley. Photo / Mead Norton

“We decided to do something different this year that builds on the other public debates that include all of the candidates,” he said.

“We wanted to have a conversation with the top couple of candidates that our membership had chosen that they want to hear from … This conversational format just isn’t possible with all 15 candidates, especially when the venue only has two microphones that are connected to the livestream.”

Cowley said there had not been much negative feedback despite the change of format. Rather, “we’ve definitely received thanks from our members who are looking forward to focusing their attention on the candidates they most want to hear from”, he said.

Cowley said there were key concerns among members leading up to the election.

“There is a touch of anxiety against going back to what we had before the commissioners, a dash of apathy, and sprinkling of excitement for some fresh leaders to give the city back its pride,” he said.

Kiri Gillespie is an assistant news director and a senior journalist for the Bay of Plenty Times and Rotorua Daily Post, specialising in local politics and city issues. She was a finalist for the Voyager Media Awards Regional Journalist of the Year in 2021.