OPINION
Fifty years ago, the country ushered in colour TV broadcasts with the Commonwealth Games – set to the soundtrack of Join Together.
One of the most memorable moments happened on the first day, with Dick Tayler winning the 10,000 metres in Ōtautahi/Christchurch’s Queen Elizabeth II Stadium.
“It was my day in the sun,” the gold medal winner recalled, “and it was amazing to be there with the whole country behind me.”
Who wouldn’t want to rekindle that sense of pride, and create new sporting heroes and memories?
Cometh the hour, cometh the mayor with ideas.
Christchurch’s Phil Mauger is reheating the plan he cooked up during his election campaign – for the city to host the games again. It would be a way to show the world the city had bounced back from the earthquakes, perhaps, and feed into Mauger’s vision of Christchurch becoming the sporting and events capital of New Zealand.
After the Australian state of Victoria pulled out of hosting the Games in 2026, Mauger mused about taking over. However, that seemed risky as Christchurch’s stadium and swimming complex are still under construction.
After lukewarm feedback, including from the New Zealand Olympic Committee which had already ruled out a bid for 2026, the plan seemed to fade away.
Until this past week.
Mauger attracted headlines in Saturday’s Press newspaper for his “wishlist”, including a “serious bid” for the 2030 Commonwealth Games. (The Olympic Committee has said it’s considering bidding for the 2034 event.)
Yesterday, city councillors discussed Mauger’s motion to get the ball rolling. What was agreed to was council staff, with input from the city’s economic development arm ChristchurchNZ, would give advice about whether a bid for 2030, or 2034, was viable.
“This is just getting it under way to ask the question: is it possible?” the mayor said, defensively. “They could come back and say it’s an absolute fizzer.”
He conceded later Christchurch might piggyback on a New Zealand-wide bid.
No one can question Mauger’s passion, but the way he’s jumping around he might yet turn out to be a gold medal-winning high jumper.
Close watchers of the council will be used to this chaotic approach.
Before he was mayor, and just a city councillor, Mauger was part of the so-called “frugal five” who, in 2021, pushed for tens of millions of dollars in savings by cutting staff costs by 10 per cent, and halting work on cycleways not fully funded by the Government.
Yet, those same five councillors – Mauger, James Gough, Aaron Keown, Sam MacDonald and Catherine Chu – voted in favour of finding another $150 million to cover a cost blowout of the city’s new stadium, Te Kaha.
In October last year, a year into his mayoralty, Mauger said the city council was up “shit creek” financially, and it should consider cuts to libraries and swimming pools. “We have got to stop spending dough,” he told the Press.
Late last year, councillors debated selling council-owned assets to lift it out of a debt hole – about $2 billion for the council itself, and another $2 billion for the council’s investment arm, Christchurch City Holdings, CCHL. (In December, a majority of councillors voted against developing a business case to cede control of assets to CCHL.)
And on Tuesday of this week – the day before the discussion of a Commonwealth Games bid – council figures from a briefing on its 10-year plan said the city’s residents are facing a 15.8 per cent rates increase, although that figure’s likely to fall.
Yet, residents are being told they should be ambitious for their city, and entertain hosting a “coming together of nations”. That they shouldn’t give in to fearmongering.
That sounds less like chaos and more like a straight-out contradiction.
The important international context here is Victoria (population: 6.5 million), pulled out of hosting the 2026 Commonwealth Games because of cost overruns. Fears over funding also led the Canadian state of Alberta (population: 4.8 million) to scrap its consideration of hosting the 2030 games.
To add to this grim picture, Birmingham (population: 4.3 million in the wider metro area), the British city that hosted the 2022 games, is in dire financial trouble, with its city council effectively declaring itself bankrupt.
(That might cause uncomfortable echoes for the ratepayers of Christchurch who remember well the city council’s last chief executive Dawn Baxendale, who resigned late last year, arrived four years earlier from Birmingham.)
The games aren’t just struggling for relevance, they’re struggling for venues. And a city of roughly 400,000, whose council is up “shit creek”, thinks it can do better?
It’s one thing to send a message to the world you’re open for business, but what message are you sending your ratepayers, who are possibly facing double-digit rates rises? Especially when there is still infrastructure – the Pages Rd bridge was mentioned at yesterday’s meeting – yet to be rebuilt after the earthquakes.
This council has a history of jumping into a project and then, later, thinking about asking for help to pay for it.
For years, the city’s leaders talked about asking neighbouring councils for a contribution to Te Kaha (budget: $683 million). Yet only yesterday was a motion agreed to make a formal approach. Mauger admitted: “They might say, ‘Get stuffed’.”
Hornby councillor Mark Peters said yesterday there’s no harm in asking for information. “I think holding our heads under rocks is a silly idea.”
Mauger discussed a potential bid with Labour’s Grant Robertson when he was Finance Minister, and New Zealand First leader Winston Peters on the campaign trail of last year’s general election.
But Banks Peninsula councillor Tyrone Fields posited: “Before we even did this, wouldn’t we want a firm commitment from the Government, of something in the order of $2 billion, to start even thinking about it?”
Councillors have been told time and again that resources are tight.
When asked if a report could be done on the economic costs of climate change and adaptation, councillors were told there weren’t the resources without deferring other work. Ironically, there’s a proposal in the council’s long-term plan to cut back on funding to bid for events.
The message seems to be: There’s money there if the project is deemed a vote-winner, of sufficient prestige, or of a certain ideological bent.
Why the hurry, Mauger was asked yesterday. Why is a Commonwealth Games being discussed now when there’s a controversial long-term plan with “terrible” consequences for city services?
“We’ve got plenty going on,” he replied. “This is just something else to keep us on the boil.”
There was certainly some heat at yesterday’s meeting. Restore Passenger Rail’s Aurora Garner-Randolph warned city leaders they shouldn’t indulge in legacy projects when people were struggling.
“You shouldn’t be in politics to be remembered, to be famous, not only because it’s self-centred but because it won’t work.”
Following her presentation, a masked protestor leapt up. “I’m Phil Mauger and I love throwing all of your money round,” he said, throwing fake money into the air. “Billions and billions of your public dollars, wasted on vanity projects.”
It takes courage to make bold decisions, sure. Some would say it’s more courageous to say no to bad ones.
It was Coastal councillor Celeste Donovan who said during the politically charged debate in 2022 over the Te Kaha budget blowout: “Leadership means looking at who benefits, and who pays. This means that the feel-good factors need to be weighed up with the hard realities facing our communities.”
Last September, when the Birmingham council’s predicament hit the headlines, one of its former advisors, Max Caller, told BBC’s Today programme the Commonwealth Games was a “challenge too far” for a council beset with difficulties.
“The problem with councils that are in trouble,” Caller said, “is they just need to focus on getting better, rather than trying to do nice things.”
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