News stories have honed in on the fact Wayne Brown and his staff were left off a ‘vital’ email distribution list on the night of the Auckland floods. But internal emails from the mayor’s chief of staff show he was getting regular briefings from officials.

Internal council emails obtained by The Spinoff show Auckland mayor Wayne Brown and his office asserting that they were getting regular updates from Civil Defence officials on the night of the city’s floods, despite recent media complaints that they had been left off a vital email list.

A story run in the most recent edition of the Weekend Herald says mayoral staff were understood to be “screaming” at their computers as the city flooded on January 27, while requesting and searching for internal emails sent to an emergency management distribution list.

It quotes a spokesperson for the mayor’s office saying they were left out of the loop by staff.

“Neither the mayor nor his staff were on the AKGEOC (Auckland Civil Defence and Emergency Management Team) email distribution list and did not receive critical updates the day before or day of Auckland’s flooding on Friday. This has since been rectified,” the spokesperson says.

The story gives the impression the mayor’s office was kept in the dark as parts of Auckland went underwater.

However an internal council email forwarded to The Spinoff shows Brown’s chief of staff Max Hardy affirming the mayor was being briefed throughout the day of the floods by council officers. 

The email sent at 9.09pm on January 27 is described as an update on the crisis from Brown.

“He is in the office and has been receiving regular updates from Auckland Emergency Management throughout the evening. He is also in touch with the minister,” it reads.

The email is a reply to one sent by council emergency management chief Paul Amaral at 5.48pm on January 27.

Amaral’s email was sent to the AKGEOC distribution list for elected members that the mayor’s office says it was left out of, meaning at least Hardy had seen an update issued to that group by around 9pm.

Another email sent out by AKGEOC at 7.15pm on January 27 contains a media advisory with a quote from Brown.

Council officials spoken to by The Spinoff say the fact the mayor was quoted in one of the emails by AKGEOC shows he was either getting updated on the floods or not asking the right questions of emergency management staff.

Though they’ve been described as “crucial” and “vital” in media reports, those officials say the emails sent to the AKGEOC distribution list were mostly generic, and didn’t contain much more than key messages and updated rain warnings.

A statement sent to The Spinoff by a spokesperson for Brown says when Hardy sent his 9.09pm email, he believed the mayor had been receiving all the relevant information from officials. 

“But it turns out he was not,” the spokesperson says.

“The mayor and his office believe the information that was not received would have been pertinent to the mayor’s decision-making.”

The statement plays down Hardy’s assertion that the mayor was receiving “regular updates” from emergency management, saying he received “a few verbal updates” during the evening. 

It’s understood those updates came at around 6.30pm and 9.30pm. 

As for why Hardy issued a reply to an email sent to a list that didn’t include anyone in the mayor’s office, the spokesperson says he was forwarded the update by a council officer.

“Max did not receive that email from AKGEOC, but it was forwarded to Max during the evening by a council officer. The overall problem appears not to have been rectified until much later.”

In response to a question about why the AKGEOC account sent a PR release including a quote from Brown at 7.15pm, a statement from the mayor’s office explains the account has separate distribution lists for elected members and the media.

The mayor was only receiving the media updates, it says.

Former police commissioner Mike Bush is leading an independent review into the immediate emergency response to the floods, and it’s expected to cover why the mayor and his staff didn’t receive some updates from officials.

Some council sources say the email updates are a “red herring” in any case.

Other information on the flooding was coming in from social media, along with Brown’s own councillors. Waitakere representative Shane Henderson phoned Brown just after 4pm to warn him that the storm was extremely severe out west.

North Shore councillor Richard Hills retweeted footage of a flooded Northern Busway at 6.34pm, calling the situation “scary and horrendous”.

Brown himself told a press conference on January 28 that he was receiving information from a wide range of officials, and was in close contact with emergency services.

The mayor has been heavily criticised for failing to communicate effectively with the public as floodwaters rose, and recently apologised for “dropping the ball”.

However it appears some of his staff are still keen to deflect some blame for the poor communications effort.

Matthew Hooton, a political commentator and communications manager for Brown, has retweeted the Herald’s story on the email slip-up.

The full email trail from Wayne Brown’s chief of staff, Max Hardy

From: Max Hardy 

Date: Friday, 27 January 2023 at 9:09 PM

To: GRP AC All Councillors 

Subject: RE: Update from Auckland Emergency Management General Manager and Controller

Councillors,

An update from the Mayor on the severe weather event.  He is in the Office and has been receiving regular updates from Auckland Emergency Management throughout the evening.  He is also in touch with the Minister.

The Mayor is asking Councillors to stay informed through official channels and share only that official information with your communities, as recommended below.

He is awaiting imminent advice on whether a declaration of a state of local emergency is required or useful. I attach a factsheet for your information about such a declaration. The Mayor will also be seeking assurances that evacuation procedures are in place and communicated, if required overnight.  

Kind regards

Max

Max Hardy | Chief of Staff

Office of the Mayor of Auckland

— 

From: AKGEOCpim 

Date: 27 January 2023 at 17:48:03 NZDT

To: AKGEOC 

Subject: Update from Auckland Emergency Management General Manager and Controller

Good evening Mayor Brown, Councillors and Local Board members,

Auckland Emergency Management has activated in response to severe weather affecting Auckland right now – particularly north, northwest and west Auckland.

We are currently receiving information from emergency response agencies and will provide you with a more fulsome response in due course.

In the meantime, we urge you to please do the following:

1.       Keep a close eye on your phones and inboxes for updates and alerts
2.       Follow us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aklcdem
3.       Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AucklandCDEM
4.       Share information from official channels only.

Key messages:

1.     Severe weather is currently affecting the Auckland region with areas in the north, north west and west of Auckland affected by significant flooding.
2.     If it is safe to, stay home and shelter in place.
3.     If your life is at risk, dial 111 immediately.
4.     Check on friends, neighbours and family members – but do not put yourself in danger to do so.
5.     Do not drive through flood waters and keep off the roads and out of flood zones.
6.     Listen to the radio for updates.
7.     If you live in an area prone to flooding, plan to evacuate – make sure you take essential items, like medicines, with you.

Kind regards,

Paul Amaral – General Manager, Auckland Emergency Management

Andrew Clark – Controller, Auckland Emergency Management

The Human Rights Commission, Te Kāhui Tika Tangata, last week released two reports on racism and the impact of colonialism in Aotearoa. Among their many insights was the necessity of a wider understanding of how racism manifests itself. 

I was honoured to accept an invitation by Te Kāhui Tika Tangata to join the Tangata Tiriti advisory group supporting the preparation of their two reports on racism, released on Friday.

I bring long-lived experience of racism, Islamophobia and misogyny. I’ve also travelled to 46 towns and cities across Aotearoa New Zealand, talking to a very diverse group of people about their sense of belonging here. And facilitated community engagements organised by the Ministry of Justice for their National Action Plan Against Racism.

I wish every New Zealander had the opportunity to sit through these conversations. Perhaps if they saw the tears, understood the impact of racism, sat with the hurt, listened to understand, then we might be better placed to implement the recommendations of these reports: Maranga Mai and Ki te whaiao, Ke te ao Marama.

A key recommendation is to build a wider understanding of racism. Many people think it’s about one person saying a mean thing to someone on the basis of their race, or making a judgement or decision about someone on the basis of their race. Interpersonal racism certainly needs to be dealt with, but we cannot do that without addressing the root causes.

Racism is about power and control; it is about exploitation. It is about the rules we put in place, the design our organisations and institutions. It’s about a culture and way of thinking that is transmuted from generation to generation, an embedded notion of one race being superior to others.

It is this wider context that leads individuals to practise racism in their day-to-day lives. The wider context ensures supremacists retain power, control and resources, making it difficult for victims of racism to prosper and overturn injustices.

Racism is also about violence. In present day Aotearoa New Zealand, we do not see the overt violence of lynching, burning down of neighbourhoods, massacres, physical enslavement. Many look to other countries and assume that things are so much better here.

This ignores our country’s history of racist violence and dispossession, the intergenerational trauma and loss of land and culture by design and through legal processes. Present day racist violence shows itself in the disparity of incarceration rates, the differences in life expectancy, the ethnic pay gap, lack of access to leadership positions, and much more.

Many will respond to these two reports with anger, denial and fear. Political actors will use them as an opportunity to get attention through performative outrage, without addressing or seeking to understand our past and present. As aspect of racism is to deny, to gaslight, to undermine the testimony of those who experience racism, to delegitimise the words they use to describe their oppression and their responses to it.

The recommendations of these reports are challenging but they are doable. They are necessary and urgent. Whether it’s constitutional reform, changes to the immigration system, mandated transparency reporting or hate speech laws: we must build on the work of our past generations for the benefit of our future generations.