This is a transcript of Simon Wilson’s weekly newsletter Love this City – exploring the ideas and events, the reality and the potential of Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. To sign up, click here, select Love this City and save your preferences. For a step-by-step guide, click here.
Wayne again: The 2025 mayoral election campaign has begun – Simon Wilson
Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown made a Christmas video.
Opinion by Simon Wilson
Simon Wilson is an award-winning senior writer covering politics, the climate crisis, transport, housing, urban design and social issues. He joined the Herald in 2018.
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National and Labour don’t stand mayoral candidates under their party names, but they both usually do their best to line up a candidate and then support them.
Not this year. Deputy Mayor Desley Simpson and former party bigwigs Paula Bennett and Simon Bridges lead a strong line-up of potential candidates from National. But none has indicated even the slightest willingness to take Brown on. And there are no serious contenders at all on from Labour or the rest of the centre-left.
Brown, it seems, is a shoo-in. That’s quite a feat, considering how badly he began.
“Don’t blame me blame the weather I’m trying to play tennis,” was the substance of his public leadership during the terrible Auckland Anniversary weekend storm of January 2023. Brown’s entire future as mayor almost got swept away in the floodwaters.
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But look at him now. High and dry, aged 78, having been born in 1946, just a few weeks after Donald Trump. Clearly, the oldest boomers have the bestest fun, as well as giving “booming” a whole new meaning.
We’ll take a closer look at what Wayne Brown has done for Auckland and what might be coming next, in future Love this City newsletters.
Sail spectacular
After SailGP wrapped last weekend, it’s now clear that celebrating the splendid is something Auckland’s sailing community – fans and participants alike – are very good at. The New Zealand team didn’t even make the finals, but that barely seemed to dampen anyone’s enthusiasm.
Fleet racing with a dozen foiling catamarans, tearing across the Waitematā at 80km/h with the best racing sailors in the world on board: how good is that?
My Herald colleague Bonnie Jansen declared the format “unparalleled in the world of international sports events”.
“The racing took place near Wynyard Point and the Auckland Harbour Bridge,” she wrote, “providing the roughly 25,000 attendees on land and water with prime views of boats flying out of the water and their near-crashes”. And that’s without even mentioning all the landside entertainments.
SailGP leaves us with one big question. Now that sailing has become truly spectacular, all without Government subsidies and silly artificial jingoism, what is the point of the America’s Cup?
Also, a word for that ferry master who, knowing he had right of way, steered a line straight through the fleet: Respect.
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What about the mayors we never had?
Given the likely lack of competition in this year’s election, here’s a question: what about the mayors we might have had but never did?
Let’s start with John Banks. When the Super City was launched in 2010, the prevailing assumption was that Banks would win. He’d twice been mayor of the old Auckland City, he was a former Police Minister and an outspoken radio talkshow host. His brand, which he promoted with endless spluttering anger, was old-fashioned social conservative. As Super City mayor, what would he have done?
He said in 1986, when the Homosexual Law Reform Act was passed, that it would be “remembered as a sad and sickening day for New Zealand”. But when he started his second Auckland City mayoral term in 2007, he chose Stephen Rainbow, who is gay (and is now the Human Rights Commissioner), as his chief of staff.
Rainbow took the mayor to a Big Gay Out festival, where Banks wore a beautiful white-on-white embroidered shirt and was clearly happy to be there.
But this supposedly new and massively improved version of John Banks also wanted to put a motorway through Hobson Bay, which rather alienated him from his Remuera heartland and probably cost him the 2010 election. Big roads are not always as popular as some politicians might think.
Banks returned to Parliament in 2011 as the MP for Epsom and new leader of the Act Party.
It’s showtime at Eden Park, whatever you might hear
What was going on in the speechwriting room for Prime Minister Christopher Luxon this week? Have they been to Auckland this summer?
“Kiwis spend thousands flying across the Tasman to see massive concerts, go out to bars and restaurants, and boost the Australian economy, when back home Eden Park sits empty because of council event rules,” he said in his “state of the nation” address on Thursday.
It was less than a week after Nashville megastar Luke Combs performed two sold-out concerts at Eden Park, following other sold-out shows this season by Travis Scott, Pearl Jam and Coldplay. The latter’s three shows had a combined audience of 150,000 people: that’s closing on 10% of the total Auckland population.
Luxon’s point was that we say “No” too often in this country when we should say “Yes”. Play the Yes Game, as parents of little kids would understand it, and you make good things happen. He’s right about the value of the Yes Game, but he’s not right about Eden Park.
Auckland Council has doubled the number of concerts Eden Park is consented to host, and the trust board is taking full advantage of that. The result: best summer for shows yet, 90% occupancy rate for accommodation and, according to Hospitality NZ boss Steve Armitage, for every dollar spent on the concerts, another $3.20 has been poured into the wider local economy.
It’s such a good example of things going well. Would it be too hard for politicians to just say hooray?
Luxon did acknowledge that concert consents have increased, but why didn’t he turn it round and celebrate it? Celebrating the splendid is also a way to make more good things happen.
More mayors we never had
Apart from John Banks, two other high-profile potential candidates were also sidelined in the 2010 Super City election: Mike Lee, chairman of the Auckland Regional Authority, and Bob Harvey, the six-term mayor of Waitakere City.
Both, along with then Manukau City Mayor Len Brown, had hoped to win support from the Labour Party’s formidable organising and fundraising machine. But though Brown was the least experienced of the three, he showed massive political chops to elbow the others out of the way and get the nod. And then went on to win, handsomely.
Lee stood as a councillor, won three terms, lost the next, then won, and is likely to stand again. A former Alliance member, he had a long, proud record promoting conservation parks, freight and commuter rail and keeping the port in public ownership.
But his opposition to housing density, safer streets and other urban regeneration projects saw him lose support on the left and gain it on the right. He was an enthusiast for Wayne Brown in 2022, although the pair soon fell out and seem perpetually furious with each other now. These days Lee is a lone, angry voice at council, rarely mustering support from any of his colleagues.
Harvey became chairman of the council body Waterfront Auckland, which later became part of Eke Panuku. Those two bodies have been principally responsible for most of the good things that have happened along the city’s harbour edge. Harvey, who was knighted in 2013, ran Waitakere as an eco-city and was keen to transfer that thinking to the Super City as a whole.
He was always, and still is, addicted to being a champion: he talks up achievements, inspires audiences with enthusiasm and confidence, gets involved in all sorts of projects and has for years been promoting the city to the world.
Harvey is 84 now, still doing surf lifesaver duty at Karekare on the wild West Coast, and regarded by his legion of fans as the best mayor Auckland never had.
Others might contest that title. After Len Brown’s affair with a council adviser was exposed just after he won re-election in 2013, Brown hung on as mayor but his deputy, Penny Hulse, took on much of the behind-the-scenes planning and management.
She was popular and, if Brown had not refused to resign, she probably would have run, and won. Hulse had also been Harvey’s deputy at Waitakere. She was centre-left but unlike Brown, Harvey and then Phil Goff, who were all in the Labour Party, she was a genuine independent.
Hulse led the enormously complex process of creating the city’s first Unitary Plan, the blueprint for what can be built where. She has a gift for building consensus and a deep commitment to civility in politics. A Hulse mayoralty could have been a revelation.
The mayors we never had, part 2: Love this City, next week.
Are they barking up the right tree?
Auckland Council is updating its dog regulations and wants public input on the proposals.
“A good mix of dog-friendly and dog-free spaces” is the plan, says councillor Josephine Bartley, who’s in charge of the process. Good doggie places and also good places for humans and shorebirds who want to be free of dogs.
There are some hot issues. In some parts of the city, it’s all about multiple dogs being walked together. A limit of six at once is proposed, with no more than three of them being allowed off-leash.
Dog-walking companies are a bit upset. Andy Evans from Fetch Dog Walking says restricting the number of dogs will stop the pack-walking of most dogs and make it affordable only for the rich.
Elsewhere, the problem is menacing and dangerous dogs. They’re supposed to be neutered, but it often doesn’t happen.
Consultation is open until February 23. Check it out on the council website.
New transport fares
Government wants, Government gets. From February 2, public transport fares in Auckland will rise by an average 5.2%, in line with the Government’s view that passengers should pay more for the privilege.
It’s not all bad news. The $50 per month fare cap, introduced by Mayor Wayne Brown, will remain. And the number of zones will reduce, which means some passengers will end up paying less. A bus trip from the Hibiscus Coast to Albany, for example, will now be only one zone and will cost $2.80, down from $4.65. The trip from Beachlands to Botany will also be one zone and cost $2.80, down from $4.45.
An independent review of the fare structure last year revealed that Auckland ranked seventh against 44 comparable cities for short-distance affordability, but 33rd for those travelling longer distances. The new structure will help the latter.
But there is no plan to dispense with zones and charge by distance travelled. If you take a short bus trip to the shops but cross the zone boundary, you’ll pay for two zones. Given that a third of car trips in New Zealand are less than 2km and over a half are less than 5km, Auckland Transport could do more to help reduce that short-trip traffic.
It’s all happening
Anniversary Day Regatta: New Zealand’s oldest sporting event, with the annual tugboat race, dinghy sailing, foiling yachts and dragon boats. Wynyard Quarter, January 27 from 9.30am.
Lunar New Year: Six weeks celebrating the Year of the Snake, with dance battles, traditional music, food tours, calligraphy, street festivals, karaoke competitions and more, all over the city, beginning January 25.
International Buskers Festival: 25 years and still going strong, across venues throughout the waterfront and city centre, January 24-27, from noon daily.
