Vespa-power wins the race

You might imagine, now the V8 race has disappeared, that Alex Swney would be a dejected man. Swney is the Heart of the City bloke who thought having a lot of horrible noisy cars racing around the heart of the city would be a quite wonderful idea.

When you first meet Swney you think he's a very unlikely sort to have been singing the praises of petrol heads.

For one thing, he is known around Auckland for getting about the city on his Vespa.

And here is his response when I took the mickey out of him for wearing an Armani jacket on a motor scooter: "Hey, you know how I won that Best Dressed Man award a couple of years ago?" he says.

I didn't, but he did.

He won this award, he says, because he always co-ordinates his helmet with his Vespa. Today he and his Vespa are wearing "pistachio".

What is the rider of a pistachio Vespa doing endorsing a V8 race?

He says: "I don't know what all the fuss is about. I thought a V8 race was eight Vespas."

In a cafe downstairs from his Heart of the City office, he is wearing his Armani jacket and wielding a spanner.

He has the spanner because after the interview he is going to remove the windscreen from his Vespa. This is so that he can be photographed riding it without his face being obscured. He is a good sport.

He doesn't realise he is brandishing his spanner, until I point at it while he's pointing it at me.

He is, despite this display, and his role as a lobbyist for his city, not aggressive at all. He just gets quite caught up in what he's doing, which is usually talking. A lot.

He says of the now canned race that "this thing on the V8 race, really, that was appalling, wasn't it?".

He is, or was, so enthusiastic about the vroom-vrooms that it never occurs to him that the person he's talking to might not agree with him.

I suspect he does this often. It is not arrogance, just sheer enthusiasm

He's going on about how much the race would have done for Auckland tourism and I say, snootily, "What sort of people would come to Auckland for a car race?"

This is a stupid thing to say.

"No," he says, hardly impatiently at all, "it's not that they come to Auckland for a car race. What it does is raises the profile, [and shows] that Auckland is a sophisticated destination.

"You don't necessarily come for the V8 race, but you're more likely to visit New Zealand as a consequence of having seen it in that light."

He has seen such a race, on the Gold Coast and "I have never seen so many tattoos, so much bourbon, so much lycra ... It's not really a scene that most of us readily identify with. We don't like to think of ourselves as bogans."

Oh dear, I do hope he's not being elitist? "No," he shouts, "I'm not." Anyway, "we're all tribal, aren't we? It's just another tribe".

He has to think about what tribe he belongs to. "Well, I love that word liberal. Is there such a thing as a liberal tribe?"

I'm sure there is; I'm just not so sure that many Act Party members belong to it. That elicits another squeal. He is not, he says, emphatically, a member of Act. He did stand for Act as a list candidate, "many years ago. I was an idealist".

I think he is an optimist - as he points out, you have had to try really hard to love Auckland at various times over the years.

But at 46, he says, he is no longer an idealist, because "that's what happens with time, isn't it?".

"Pragmatism doesn't wear you down, but you start feeling the art of the possible more. There's no question of passion about these things, but I'm certainly a lot more pragmatic about it. And, you know, you've got to figure out what issues you're going to die in a ditch over."

You don't need to ask the question about Swney's "passion". For the boy who grew up on a farm in Morrinsville, it is Auckland and Auckland business, and has been since before he set up the Heart of the City - it is run as a charitable trust - nine years ago.

It is an odd sort of job. "In Wellington this job would be much more readily understood, because you would be firmly understood as a lobbyist."

He says most people assume that he works for the city council, although he likes to joke that "actually, the council is the enemy".

Of course it is not, because a large part of Swney's job is getting alongside the council so that he can persuade it to adopt his ideas.

He (or he and the trust) have had some good ideas. That big, red free bus that drives around the CBD is one of them; those street ambassadors another.

If Swney had had his way, the ambassadors would have been decked out in fluorescent overalls and would all have been called "Bob".

You would think that, with his former political allegiances, he might get on better with some councils and not so well with others.

But he is very good at getting on with everybody.

He doesn't want "to pre-judge" the Hubbard-led council's plans - involving forums for refugees and migrants, and housing reforms - but "we're seeing a huge, what some would see as a social agenda, being put forward, that some would describe as being left wing".

"But the reality is that it's going to come home and bite them. It's going to require at least a nine per cent rate increase and that's going to affect their constituency. So that social programme, that wish list, is going to be very difficult to enact."

Saying so proves he's no pushover, but that he is adept at delivering his criticisms with charm. So I think that he must be very good at schmoozing, but he denies this because he obviously thinks it makes him sound a bit calculating.

What I meant was that I thought he would be good at parties. He says he likes socialising but "does that mean I'm schmoozing? It just means I'm enjoying it".

He seems to obtain enormous enjoyment out of most things.

He has invented a job for himself that he loves (he also owns Briarwood Shoes with his wife, Ange Marshall).

He is really a marketing man, a head boy who meant to go to university but went travelling instead, which is probably why he's so good at selling a city.

He has a knack of making you feel as though you've known him for years even when you've just met him, which is a good trick in a lobbyist.

He can also take an inordinate amount of teasing, which he deserves because he does dish it out.

As we're leaving, he says he'll see me around, that it's a small city. He then claims this is not a threat. Perhaps he'll run me down on his pistachio Vespa.

Then again, perhaps he won't when he reads that, despite being a pro-V8er, I think he makes a small city a brighter place to live.