Phil Goff, a happy man now. Photo / Dean Purcell
He's happy now, or so it seems. Phil Goff's a man who's always keen to engage – there's no one better at working the room – but you rarely see him relax.
This week, though, after two terms as mayor, at age 68, after a heart attack, after refocusing council spending, after coping with a public health and economic crisis far bigger than anyone in public office has dealt with before, Goff announced he will retire. Gone by October.
You can see it just looking at him - the weight is off.
The thing Goff is good at is smooth management. No scandals, no sign of desperation. He's had more than 40 years' political experience, 15 of them as a Cabinet minister and three as Leader of the Opposition. He gets in early and goes home late, he reads everything, he does the prep. He's proud of all this. He believes in public service and he backs himself, always, to know what to do.
Even-keeled progress. If Goff was Grant Dalton, he'd tell them never to get up on the foils. The boat wouldn't go fast but it would always get to the finish line in one piece, ready to sail again the next day.
Useless in competitive sailing, of course. But perhaps there's a place for it in politics.
Progress is slow but it happens. You could say it's the Labour way.
And when the system relies on established processes, everyone knows where they stand. When they don't, as Goff has demonstrated several times as mayor, they risk being invited to step into a warm bath and given a razor blade.
Just ask Ports of Auckland, where he followed lacklustre performance and a scathing review of workplace safety with enough pressure to see off both the board chair and the chief executive. He's also eliminated two council-controlled organisations altogether and overseen the resignations of the chief executives of at least two more.
Goff took office determined to draw a line between himself and his predecessor, Len Brown, who had been disgraced in a sex scandal. To do it, he demoted Brown's popular and highly capable deputy, Penny Hulse. She was a uniting force around the council table and had largely been running the place while Brown came to terms with his collapsed credibility, but nope, Goff pushed her down the pecking order.
He's a nice guy who quite likes being a tough guy too.
To start with, it wasn't easy, especially as he became known for keeping his own counsel, aka not listening to advice. A minor controversy blew up in his face when he commissioned a $1 million report into the potential for a waterfront stadium but refused to show it to councillors. That badly damaged their trust in him.
ONE CONSEQUENCE of even-keeled sailing is that there are things you just don't know about.
For Goff, they include urban planning, urban design and city building, an ignorance that has led to a scandalous neglect of Queen St and environs during the CRL build and the Covid crisis. It didn't help that Goff allowed senior council officials to disband the Auckland Design Office, when it should have been strengthened.
Urban planning is a mess on a larger scale than Queen St. In the east, new suburbs with limited public transport make a mockery of supposed plans to transform transport in the city. In the west it's even worse, with major new housing projects disconnected from public transport options altogether.
And while the construction boom continues, the council's consenting process is widely regarded by developers, builders, architects and others as unnecessarily cumbersome. A problem to be overcome, rather than an enabler of solutions as the city confronts the housing crisis. Mayors need to take an interest in these things.
Another thing about even-keeled sailing is that you don't know how to get yourself into a bigger, better boat race. You can't even see to the horizon. Goff struggles to talk, except in generalities, about the potential of the city.
Perhaps the biggest example: He's myopic about the future of the port. There are proposals to move freight off motorways and on to rail and to establish a major new, rail-connected inland port near Kumeu. This would allow the port to be moved from the Waitematā, freeing up the waterfront for more recreational and commercial use and helping reduce the city's carbon emissions.
Goff doesn't want a bar of it. He says he wants the port to move, one day, but has done almost nothing to advance this. Instead of giving the proposals serious attention, he dismisses them as pork barrelling by NZ First, which wants the port to move to Whangārei.
But Goff's own position is also pork barrelling, on behalf of those with a vested interest in things staying as they are.
PHIL GOFF stood for mayor in 2016, five years after losing the leadership of the Labour Party, five years after losing an election. Why did he want the job?
"I was fed up with Opposition," he said in an interview with the Weekend Herald this week. He wanted to be "part of a group of people who are striving to make the country a better place". In Opposition, you "end up being negative all the time".
Yes, but why mayor of Auckland? Did he have any specific goals?
He said it was the city he "grew up in and owed a lot to". He talked about the responsibilities of his generation, the baby boomers. "We were in an incredibly privileged position ...You know, we've taken all these things from society, what is it we can give back, how can we make that better?"
Instead of goals, he listed the issues. "A transport system that didn't meet the needs of the city" and "wastewater pouring into the harbour". Having represented Mt Roskill for 30 years, he was "very proud of the multicultural city".
And mainly, this: "The critical thing was that we had failed to invest in infrastructure. That is what I set out in 2016 to tackle."
Goff continued Len Brown's policy of small but regular rates rises. He participated enthusiastically in Government plans to beef up public transport spending. And he fronted up to the human waste on beaches.
When he came into office, stormwater and sewage "used to flow into the harbour from 77 outlets when it rained". The project to fix this was at the back end of the long-term plan but Goff moved it up for an immediate start.
Watercare's $1.2 billion "Central Interceptor" is a sewage pipe as tall as a giraffe that's now being installed underground from Grey Lynn right through to the treatment plant at Māngere. It will mean cleaner beaches, not just on the isthmus but on the North Shore and the eastern bays too.
The completion date is 2026, so Goff can't celebrate it yet, but this is his monument. Unlike most monuments, it will succeed when we forget all about it, because the problem it addresses will have largely disappeared.
THE THING that gets Goff going? The Ratepayers Alliance. He said they "opposed every single thing that I did. They campaigned against me vigorously in two election campaigns" and were "now welcoming the fact that I'm going. It almost changed my mind, I almost decided to stay."
This is the biggest divide in Auckland local body politics. Do you ensure rates keep up with inflation, so you can grow your spending as the city grows and see to the infrastructure it needs? Or is that burden too large for ratepayers to take on?
Arguing for the latter usually means calling for "unnecessary" and "wasteful" spending to be cut. But Goff was ahead of that. When he became mayor he instituted a "value for money" review, led by councillor Desley Simpson. By the start of 2020 it had implemented $1.9 billion in savings.
There's a sinking lid on top salaries, too. Council-related chief executives appointed in Goff's time earn less than their predecessors.
Critics of Goff's rates policy tend not to mention these things.
And then Covid struck and there was suddenly a bigger imperative to reduce spending. Goff said it was his main regret as mayor: "Covid came along and not only turned our life upside down, but it also ripped a billion dollars out of council revenue."
They shed hundreds of staff. Contract work went on hold, perhaps most obviously in parks and general street maintenance. Transport spending took a big hit.
But Goff is also proud of how they got through. "We are still spending record sums on infrastructure in this city that we weren't before," he said.
Crisis may even have brought out the best in Goff. In his second term he's been more open and sure-footed than in the first, working especially closely with Simpson and his preferred deputy, Bill Cashmore. Both are in the National Party.
He talked about water. "Last January was the second driest on record. Normally we'd have a crisis." A wet spring partly mitigated against that, as he acknowledged, but it was also because "we're now providing nearly a hundred million litres of water a day more for the city, to ensure that we've got that resilience".
The drought of 2019/20 caught Watercare and Goff by surprise. But Goff wasn't going to be caught out twice: Securing that extra water, mainly from the Waikato River, was a major achievement.
He talked about Walmsley Park, which is part of Te Auaunga Awa, the long meandering shared path from Pt Chevalier to Mt Roskill, along the route of Oakley Creek. Scrubby rubbish land is now a beautiful park, with play areas including some in traditional Māori design, and a pretty daylighted stream. It's a very popular local facility.
Goff hasn't driven projects like this – that's down to enlightened council staff and contractors – but he has supported them with budget and he does understand their value.
Again, not many critics of rates rises are prepared to say projects like this are a waste of money.
LISTEN TO any Phil Goff speech and the chances are you'll hear him talking about climate change. Outside of the Green Party, it's hard to think of any other leading politician who speaks about it as passionately or as often.
Under him, Auckland Council unanimously declared a climate emergency in 2019 and an action plan followed last year. But it isn't properly funded. Goff's solution to that is a special targeted rate, the third he's introduced, which will go to public consultation at the end of this month.
It's far from clear whether he has majority council support. That public input will definitely influence their thinking, especially as it's election year.
"I'm still striving to get a climate action plan implemented," he said, "because long after we've forgotten what Covid was, we won't have forgotten what global heating is doing to the world that we live in.
"We've been kind of drifting along thinking this is a problem for the future … but it's a problem right now."
So he's focusing on buses, especially in the south and west, where he said the service really isn't good enough.
"How can we encourage people not to drive so much if there isn't good public transport for them?
In Goff's mind, more buses, with cheap fares available through the Community Services Card, can provide a quick win – unlike light rail, which will take at least 10 years – and would provide an alternative option to driving for "hundreds of thousands of people".
"That's one of the things this targeted rate will provide." He hopes councillors in the affected wards will see the value.
In a way, climate change provides quite a good measure of Phil Goff.
More buses should help reduce emissions, and Goff has sped up the purchase programme for electric buses, which really will help.
But the key to cutting transport emissions isn't to provide more options: having more buses won't make people drive less. You also need to make driving relatively less attractive, by reallocating road space to bike lanes and buses, cutting the number of car parks and raising the parking fees, reducing vehicle access to the central city and so on.
Politically, though, that's much tougher. Goff doesn't think there's much support for such things and he's never championed them.
"Hardly anyone says climate change is not happening any more," he said, but not that we're ready for behavioural change. "The mindset is still not there."
The neglect of cycling is especially obvious. This cheap and easy transport option isn't the solution to everything, but it is a cornerstone of the climate action plan in every city that takes the issue seriously. Yet Goff, throughout his time in office, has allowed Auckland Transport to get away with doing almost nothing about it.
SOMETHING SIMILAR is happening with the city's tree canopy.
Goff likes to talk about his Million Trees programme, which has far exceeded its target and now has a new focus: Fewer but better trees.
"The tree cover in Ōtāhuhu and Māngere," he said, "is only 8 per cent. You compare that to places on the North Shore, where it's 30 per cent. I want to see something done quickly. So we're planting mature natives, one-and-a-half metres tall. It costs more, you could plant 100 seedlings for the cost of one specimen tree, but you get the change quickly."
And yet urban Auckland is losing its tree canopy, because it's too easy for property owners to cut down trees. Goff hasn't supported any of the campaigns to save trees in this city, and there have been many.
It's the Phil Goff way. Keep moving closer to your goal, but without causing too much fuss. Little steps are fine. They add up and they're better than trying to jump and falling flat on your face because the voters tripped you up the first chance they got.
Goff didn't invent this, not by any means, but after 40 years, he's very good at it.
So who wants his job? He won't comment on candidates to replace him. He's got some money left over from his previous campaigns but he won't be giving it to anyone else, because that's not what it was raised for. "I think it should probably go to public good purposes," he said.
What's he going to do now?
During the Waitangi weekend storm, a few trees came down on his small farm in Clevedon and he "spent the day on the chainsaw".
"While I was doing that, I mean I love it, that kind of work, but I decided I'm not sure I want to be a full-time farmworker."
He's been tipped for a diplomatic posting to Washington or Canberra, but he won't say.
"There's spending time with the family, relaxing with a glass of red wine and fishing. I'll do a bit of all those things, but I want more."
• The Central Interceptor: A project to fix stormwater and sewage overflow when it rains, fast-tracked and due for completion 2026.
• Green targeted rates: Funding streams for kauri dieback and other environmental projects.
• Coherent council: Cross-party consensus, sometimes unanimous, on budgets and other big plans.
• Value for money: An efficiency drive that saved $2 billion in council spending, and then a further $1 billion after Covid struck.
• Infrastructure focus: Successfully argued for ongoing moderate rates rises to meet the infrastructure needs of a fast-growing city.
• Incoherent planning: The city is building both up and out, as intended. But Goff has overseen major developments out west, in the east and elsewhere that proceed without good planning, especially for transport.
• Central city neglect: Can a city like Auckland thrive without a vibrant heart? If not, how is it Goff and the council have allowed it to decline so much?
• Inaction on the port: Almost everyone, including Goff, agrees the port can't stay where it is beyond the next 10-20 years, but he hasn't moved the issue along one bit.
• Unaccountable Auckland Transport: AT has been a poor performer and has been allowed to ignore council directives about cycling, walking and safety.
• Abolishing the Auckland Design Office: Under Goff, Auckland has become a city with no creative leadership in its urban planning.
The Covid rebuild and the threat of climate change overshadow everything the new mayor will face. Here are 12 of the biggest challenges.
1. Restore the central city
Covid, the CRL work and the changing nature of shopping in the city have all devastated Queen St and the rest of the downtown precinct. But can a city thrive without a centre?
This is about far more than cars and crime: It's everything that makes up the heart of a city. It's been neglected and it must be fixed.
2. Build community resilience
It's possibly the biggest single lesson from Covid: When local communities are strong, they can deal with crisis. Many suburbs and communities need far more support than they've been given so far.
3. Keep infrastructure moving
Transport, water, power, communications: The funding will never cover it all, so hard choices and strong leadership are required.
4. Ensure value for money
Because there are so many demands, a rigorous approach to ensuring value for money in council spending remains vital.
5. Create a better transport plan
Auckland Transport has the job of doing that, but AT flounders and it needs strong mayoral direction.
6. Establish a viable climate action plan
If the council is serious about its "climate emergency" it will view every policy and spending programme through a climate lens: Does it reduce carbon emissions?
How will this apply to freight haulage, the future of the port, the construction industry, the buildings we already have, the way we move around?
It's not just about emissions, but also adaptation: The city needs a plan for coastal and other flood-prone areas and for the health risks of floods, droughts and rising temperatures and humidity. Tropical weather will bring tropical diseases.
7. Create a better housing strategy
Everything from absurd property prices to obstructive consent processes to rough sleepers on the streets is related to the single, almost incomprehensibly difficult fact that housing is out of control in Auckland. Somebody's got to take the lead.
8. Work well with councillors
There are many strong-willed, independent and sometimes contrarian members of the governing body of the council. The mayor doesn't have a caucus and can't tell any of these councillors what to do. They have to be won over, on each and every proposal.
9. Improve council leadership of the CCOs
Council-controlled organisations, as the name suggests, are supposed to be guided by council policy. But they have their own boards and often find it easy to pay only lip service to the directives of the council and the mayor. With Auckland Transport especially, this has to change.
10. Work well with central Government
Relations with Wellington are critical, especially in relation to transport, housing and water.
11. Water reform
One way of looking at the Government's Three Waters reform plans is that it wants the rest of the country to be more like Auckland. But that involves changing the Auckland setup to include Northland. It won't be easy to resolve.
12. Create a vision for the city
Having a vision is in the mayor's job description and the council has many long-term planning documents that describe a wonderful future for the city. But what does it mean? What will the new mayor want Auckland to become? They'll get a lot done if they can inspire people with their answer to that question.
Mayor Wayne Brown unveils the driver safety screens being rolled out on Auckland buses. Video / Carson Bluck