Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown has had an eventful first year on the job. Photo / Dean Purcell
Senior political writers Simon Wilson and Bernard Orsman run the rule over Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown’s first 12 months running the Super City.
One thing’s for sure. Wayne Brown is no Len Brown or Phil Goff.
The two Labour career politicians each spent six years running the Super City.
Putting aside his sex scandal, Len Brown will go down in history for a dogged determination to get the City Rail Link built and a big part of that determination came down to a close rapport with Prime Minister Sir John Key.
But Len Brown also fell into the trap of holding down rates and ramping up debt in the early years of Auckland Council, when greater discipline was needed to lay the fiscal foundations.
As for Goff, he practised a managerial style and delivered incremental change before becoming New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK to manage the relationship with Britain as it seeks greater engagement internationally since leaving the European Union.
Goff’s first love was always national politics, foreign affairs and trade in particular, but he did expand revenue sources to increase investment in infrastructure and saw the council through the ravages of Covid-19.
Wayne Brown is a different kettle of fish. For starters, he is fiercely apolitical - although his economic views lean to the right - and far smarter than people realise. If his modus operandi is formed by anything, it’s his background as an engineer first and a businessman second. Politics is an art he grapples with and still learning.
In March last year, Brown put his hand up for the mayoralty in a speech to the Rosedale Business Association. Brown is no great shakes as a public speaker, and the speech dragged on, but it was written on the back of research that came up with the winning slogan to “Fix Auckland”.
He promised five big things that need doing - fix Auckland’s infrastructure, stop wasting money, take back control of council organisations, get Auckland moving, and open up access to the harbour for people to enjoy.
Brown was also very clear about one other thing - decisions about Auckland are made in Auckland, not in Wellington.
On October 14, Brown romped home in the local body elections following a mood for change after 12 years of Labour rule. Restaurateur Leo Molloy and Heart of the City boss Viv Beck paved the way for Brown’s win over the status quo candidate Efeso Collins when they pulled out for different reasons. Molloy’s polling stalled and Beck was dogged by questions over campaign finances.
A year into the job, how has Brown performed?
Things got off to a rough start. Brown’s abrasive manner, making jokes at the expense of others, and terse relationship with the media came as a shock to many people not used to a disruptor in the polite world of local government.
The January 27 floods further dented Brown’s reputation when he was accused of being missing in action. Deputy mayor Desley Simpson stepped up when disaster struck and she shone, communicating in ways beyond the mayor’s grasp.
“People said ‘Where is he in the floods’,” Simpson told the Herald in March this year.
“You didn’t see him because he blended in with everyone else in a high viz vest and work boots on the ground … he’s solution-focused,” she said.
That comes back to his engineering background and, yes, he did drop the ball in the floods, and admitted as much, but Brown has Big Sky aspirations for Auckland in the areas that matter - transport, the environment, social outcomes and a plan to pay for it.
Goff steered Auckland through Covid, but Brown is having to pay for the hangover in the form of high inflation, rising costs, and falling revenue that blew a $300 million hole in his first budget.
Brown’s initial response was harsh. Deep cuts to services and selling the council’s 18 per cent shareholding in Auckland Airport shares, valued at $2.2 billion, to pay down debt. The response from Aucklanders was equally jarring, forcing Brown to retreat on service cuts and eventually settle for selling a 7 per cent stake raising $836 million after councillors blocked a full sale.
The sting in the tail was a 7.7 per cent rate rise for households, and 11 per cent overall - the largest rate rise since the Super City came into being in 2010. Wisely, Brown refused on the hustings to say how much he would raise rates in his first term, but promised they would be less than the previous year’s 5.6 per cent increase.
The budget did, however, prove a turning point for Brown. He listened and took on board the feedback from a record number of submitters and showed a collegial approach chairing all-day budget meetings, making sure everyone around the council table had a say. There were dissenting voices around the council table, but that was expected.
Brown’s call to take back control of council organisations has focused on what he called the “huge bureaucratic monster”, namely Auckland Transport. It began ominously, with AT chair Adrienne Young-Cooper resigning on election night after getting wind that the new mayor wanted her gone.
Brown lined up Paul Majurey, the chair of the council’s property development arm Eke Panuku, as the next to go, only to be outwitted by the powerful lawyer, who charmed his way into the mayor’s good books.
Unsurprisingly, transport is where Brown is most challenged and focused. A fortnight ago in the Weekend Herald, Brown said his mantra is “better, faster, cheaper”.
It sums up his philosophy and goes back to his campaigning days when he called for trialling transponders on buses to activate green traffic lights, and building on dynamic lanes at Whangaparāoa Peninsula, where some lanes shift in direction between the morning and evening peaks with a bus lane on one side, and parking outside businesses on the other side.
It boils down to simple, cost-effective measures to make better use of existing roads without expanding the roading network, he says and doesn’t cost ratepayers $30m, as the Karangahape Rd cycling/footpath/road/bus lane/landscaping improvements did.
Brown’s mantra is particularly valid in the cost of living crisis, although he has come around to the city’s biggest and most disruptive project, the $5.5b City Rail Link that he railed against over a lack of transparency on the cost and opening date at the election campaign.
One of his key promises to open up the harbour for people to enjoy - another way of describing a long-held desire to move the council-owned Port of Auckland to Northport - remains a long way off.
He called Port of Auckland a disgrace occupying $6 billion of the best land in New Zealand and promised to deliver $400m a year in rates and dividends. The port company, under a new board and management, is doing a good job turning round the financial performance and addressing workplace safety, and paid a much-improved $30m dividend to long-suffering ratepayers this year.
In early August, pretty images were released of an open-air swimming pool, an exhibition centre and “Te Ao Māori showcase centre”, and an amphitheatre in the water on the port land, but Aucklanders shouldn’t think anything like this will happen soon. There are years of development still to occur at Wynyard Quarter, including an unfunded park on wasteland at the point.
In the meantime, Brown looks set to put the operating business of the port on the block as part of next year’s new 10-year budget, which is shaping up to be a financial horror show with sky-high rates and water bills pencilled in.
Under the plan, the prime waterfront land would remain in public ownership, but a sale could involve a lump sum payment of about $1b, annual rental and profit share, or a combination of these.
When it comes to dealing with central government, Brown has become pals with party leaders and MPs of all stripes. He has pitched an Auckland Integrated Transport Plan “written by Aucklanders” and last month produced a “Manifesto for Auckland” laying out the deal he needs from the next government with calls for a return of GST on rates, rates to be paid on Crown properties and a national-funded solution to managed retreat.
The manifesto says the council’s hands are tied and Auckland hasn’t been given the funding and financing tools to meet the challenges of growth, but the message has largely been ignored by the major parties focused on the cost of living, crime and wooing the centre ground.
With the polls pointing to a Natonal-led government, leader Chris Luxon last weekend announced Auckland’s Regional Fuel Tax of 11.5c a litre will be scrapped within his first 100 days in office, leaving a gaping hole in the council’s transport budget until plans for congestion charging can fill the void.
Luxon, however, may have to negotiate with NZ First leader Winston Peters, who has put funding sources for Auckland Council and other councils on his wishlist.
What this shows, is no matter how much huffing and puffing Brown makes towards Wellington, central government trumps local government.
After 12 months in office, Brown has gone from all the subtlety of a hand grenade to a better understanding of the job, while retaining a blunt tongue. He’s taken a shredder to the status quo, which was needed, but the hard work comes in the 10-year plan to stamp his mark on where he wants to take the city.
We were walking across the Hopetoun Bridge one day last month when Wayne Brown told me what he thinks of the Nathan Homestead.
The homestead is a spacious two-storey 1920s Arts and Crafts house set in heritage gardens in Manurewa. It was a gift from the Nathan family and has become a much-loved community centre.
But it needs earthquake strengthening and Brown said the job would be too expensive. “It gets used a bit by a sewing group,” he said. “Why bother?”
I told him I’d been to some great events there and knew it was a popular venue for conferences, weddings, concerts and a long list of community activities. And it’s in Manurewa: a major asset in an under-resourced part of the city.
He said it “would be cheaper to knock it down and build a new one”.
That’s our mayor. The engineer with a better, cheaper way to fix a problem. A man who doesn’t know much about the world outside his own orbit and is incurious to find out. And heritage? This is the demolition guy who knocked down His Majesty’s.
But here’s another thing about that conversation. It was during his commute. In this supposedly car-loving town, the mayor walks to work.
And – this is his great strength – he’s determined to see every cent spent well.
Brown knows Auckland is desperately short of revenue. He knows it has backlogs in infrastructure and basic maintenance and that the next crisis could strike tomorrow. On every issue, he asks, “How can we do this better, cheaper, faster?” It is exactly the right question.
And after just one year as mayor, he has revealed another strength: he has evolved.
He swept to office complaining about wasteful spending, out-of-control bureaucrats and road cones. Now, he’s a big fan of the City Rail Link (CRL) and light rail (on the surface, not in tunnels). He wants to prioritise buses and make driving at peak times and parking more expensive. This is not the mayor many people voted for.
Cyclone Gabrielle opened his eyes. He learned the council organisation was not fit for purpose in a weather emergency, despite having some functional components and key personnel. He learned his own job didn’t stop just because he had tennis lined up for the weekend.
And he learned about climate change. Dismissive of the issue during the election, he now believes eco-friendly principles should be at the heart of urban development. He’s full of praise for the council officials who have created a plan to put them there.
Brown has also cajoled transport ministers into helping him draft an Auckland Integrated Transport Plan. This might be a real achievement. Previous plans were drawn up by the Government and imposed on the city, but this one is billed as a partnership.
Does it mean bull-at-a-gate diplomacy works? Or has the Government merely been humouring him? We don’t know yet. It isn’t funded and there’s been no time for progress on Brown’s biggest desire in the sector: to restructure transport administration so it comes under council control.
And, of course, if there’s a change of government he will have to start negotiating all over again.
BROWN HAS insisted that council agencies report regularly, in open session, and this has made them much more forthcoming with information.
He’s fallen out with some councillors who were close and now trusts others he used to be suspicious of. In meetings, he has turned out to be a relaxed and good-humoured chair, although that doesn’t stop him belittling colleagues, officials and others.
Sometimes he does it on purpose, sometimes it’s just the way he talks. He can be boorish at public events, too, and is usually oblivious to the hurt his “humour” can cause.
He has not bothered to learn the correct pronunciation of Māori placenames in his own city.
His treatment of deputy mayor Desley Simpson is instructive. She is loyal to him and her leadership during the summer storms earned her immense public respect. But despite that – or because of it – Brown has not kept her close. She is not a confidante.
Perhaps she has failed in the most important part of her job: making the boss look good.
Something else is probably in play there, too. There are no women close to Brown at council.
Wayne Brown’s election campaign, with the “Fix Auckland” slogan, was created and largely run by National Party operatives, who used him to break Labour’s 12-year stranglehold on the mayoralty, get some change at the port and test a political strategy.
They had market research that revealed voters were fed up with political visions and not even interested in plans or goals. They just wanted things to be better.
“Fix Auckland” was the result. A brilliant slogan that meant everything and nothing, you can hear its echo today in National’s “Get New Zealand back on track”.
The National Party people around Brown are long gone now and his key advisers today are closer to the Labour Party. The shadowy Chris Matthews, an old friend from Northland, operates as the mayor’s minder, while lawyer Max Hardy, married to Labour MP Arena Williams, is his chief of staff.
While Brown sits confidently in the centre of his own universe, senior councillors and officials do their best to manage him.
Together, they steer Brown through the personal conflicts and complex politics of setting budgets and government liaison. It’s Hardy and Matthews, rather than Brown himself, who restrict his contact with media.
None of this means he is doing anyone’s political bidding. Brown frequently scoffs at both National and Labour and he wants, above all, to wrest more power and tax revenue from Wellington. That’s something neither party seems keen on.
The truth about Wayne Brown, politically, is that he’s congenitally incapable of toeing a party line. He’ll pick fights, publicly, with anyone he doesn’t respect or thinks is in his way.
He wants to “fix Auckland” by doing things “better, faster, cheaper”. But what things? With the exception of his cherished dream of shifting the port, he still doesn’t know how to answer that question.
THERE ARE more black marks. Brown was awol at the start of the January floods and airily dismissive of complaints about it, as is his way.
He lacked the political skills to get his draft annual budget adopted this year. The council rolled back most of his proposed cuts and rejected his plea to sell all its airport shares. Brown ended up presiding over a higher rates rise than any other mayor of the Super City.
“No one’s compromised more than I have,” he told the crunch meeting, somewhat sadly.
And “better, cheaper, faster” has sometimes led to absurdity. He thinks cyclists should be able to ride on the footpath, although that’s a terrible idea for pedestrians.
Then there is Andrew Ritchie. Scion of Ritchies Transport, a large bus company he sold to a global investment company, Ritchie was Brown’s choice for a new chair for the board of Auckland Transport (AT).
But Ritchie is a friend of Brown and he gave him $26,000 for his mayoral compaign. The appointments committee said a unanimous no and it’s hard to know why Brown thought he could get away with it.
AT has not had a permanent chair for the whole of Brown’s year.
As for the port, it’s started to make money again, which is a credit to the new board and the new chief executive, Roger Gray. Although Brown takes the credit himself: he told me it’s because of the pressure he put on them.
“He [Gray] didn’t want to take that job on and be criticised by me for not making enough money.” Who knows, maybe he’s right.
Brown wants as much freight as possible moved by rail, which should help with congestion on the roads, but the job is complex and long-term and requires major government investment.
For the nearer term, he’s proposed moving the vehicle-import business and building a seawater swimming pool and other public amenities on the waterfront. To fund this and take pressure off rates, he’s expected to propose selling a lease to operate the port, while retaining public ownership of the land.
That idea will be a lynchpin of the new 10-year budget, also known as the Long-term Plan (LTP), the draft of which will soon be announced.
Brown may fail with this. But with change at the port, gaining council control of transport and access to tax revenue, and a restructure of spending in the LTP, the mayor has set himself some really big challenges. This is uncommon and wholly admirable.
If he succeeds he will create a significant legacy. Will he succeed? It’s too early to know.
A year of Wayne: He’s aiming high, tripping up and learning on the job. As for the road cones, he hasn’t removed a single one.
He’s still working on it. “Temporary Traffic Management” will be in the LTP, because he wants to make money from the cone men. But, as with so much else on Brown’s list of things to fix, he needs the government to change the regulations.
“We need a bit more power,” he said last month. Neither National nor Labour have given any real sign that he will get it.
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