With Auckland shaping up as the key battleground, the mayor issues the tips and dishes the dirt.
Of all the charges that might be levelled at the Auckland mayor, subjugation to talking points is not among them. Nor is tact. Which made for a crackling, highwire conversation when Wayne Brown took the stage – according to unconfirmed reports having been fired out of a massive birthday cake – as the surprise guest for the 10th birthday of the Spinoff’s Gone By Lunchtime podcast at Q Theatre last week.
As occupant of the office some regard as the second most important elected post in New Zealand, Brown will unavoidably play a part in the parliamentary election that looms later this year. The “super city” is home to 1.8 million New Zealanders – roughly a third of the national population. It thrums to the most pressing of the country’s political challenges, from homelessness through to economic growth. And the so-called “median voter” is everywhere. All of which makes Auckland the most critical battleground for the November vote.
Given that Brown, five months into his second term, has twice chalked up big wins for the mayoralty, and given he has shaken off a calamitous opening chapter, with a highly criticised response to the January floods of 2023 – the responsibility for which he last week pinned largely on the “drongos” of the media – to become the grouchy, avuncular, widely liked city leader, what might his advice be to the leaders of the parties who sit in parliament?
We started with Chris Bishop – acknowledgedly not the National leader but someone intimately involved in Auckland as holder of ministerial warrants including transport, housing and infrastructure, and helmsman of the resource management reforms. What’s his message?
“Chris, when are you going to come and have a beer?” said Brown. “Because the other guy doesn’t do beer and I don’t do Diet Coke.”
And for Luxon: “I don’t do Diet Coke. I said [to him], ‘Well, do you want to win? Because if you ask me how, I can tell you. But he didn’t ask me how, so I didn’t tell him.’
And what would we have said if he had? “Speak English,” said Brown. “He uses words of English, but in a sort of a pattern which I don’t recognise. But I’m not a corporate person.”
How about the minister for Auckland, Simeon Brown? “I have to remind him, you’re the Minister for Auckland, not the Minister to Auckland, which is important.”
As for Chris Hipkins, the advice is to “eat a lemon and sound tougher … If you eat a lemon, you’re always a bit sour, and you get rid of that sort of niceness stuff. I mean, we’ve had niceness and that’s meh.”
Is this a metaphor or practical advice? Does he have a hoon on a lemon before speaking in public? “In my case, I’m better off eating something sweet. Like a grape. To soften the blow.”
On Winston Peters, he paused for thought, before saying: “We first met at Eden Park, and he likes to think that they won that day, and he might have been right. I can’t remember.” Brown’s reference is to a clash between his team, Te Papapa Onehunga, for whom he played lock, and winger Winston Peters’ University side, which the mayor alluded to during a memorable event at the Auckland ground the other day.
“He’s a little bit older than me,” said Brown (Peters was born in April 1945, Brown in August 1946). “But we did play against each other, and we both [have since] said, ‘Geez, we’ve come a long way since those days.’ You know, who’d have thought about either of us doing that? Really, it was bizarre, but there we are.”
Had they shared a drink after the game? “Yeah, I’m pretty sure we had a drink after the game. He probably had a smoke as well, but I didn’t remember that.”
And the Greens – had he built a good working relationship with Chlöe Swarbrick, co-leader and MP for Auckland Central? “We’re both quite socially liberal, but her economics are crazy, and I’m not that silly. But we have a beer and we talk about anything except economics, because I don’t speak gibberish.”
The Te Pāti Māori co-leaders? “I don’t have a hell lot to do with them. To be quite honest, I’m not too keen on the extremes, either. I’m not mad about Te Pāti Pākehā, either, for that matter.”
And at last to David Seymour, leader of Act and elected marquess of the Epsom people. What would Brown say to him? “Don’t really encourage me to whack you,” said the mayor of the man with whom he has clashed recently over housing density rules. “I’m kind of old school, you know. I have a lot in common with stern Vern [Cotter], the coach of the Blues. We’ve kind of got this old school way about settling things.”
Asked to expand on his beef with Seymour, Brown said: “He can be pretty annoying, I gotta say. He seems to be under the misapprehension that we’re going to sort out the intensification of Auckland in order to avoid the good citizens of Epsom. He seems to think we should build houses in Pukekohe so he can keep his in Epsom, and that’s just not going to happen.”
Warming to his theme, Brown continued: “In fact, he’ll be lucky to have multi-storey buildings in Epsom because some of us are toying between a sewage plant and a waste collection centre.”
